It was quite disturbing to read a Reuters news article, re testing of pharmaceuticals in developing or transitioning nations, such as Uganda and India.
Among the 174 trials the researchers examined, drugs against infectious diseases were most likely to be tested in the developing world, closely followed by heart, allergy and arthritis medications
“We are now using vulnerable people in vulnerable countries as drug laboratories,” Dr. Marcia Angell, who was not involved in the new research “It is all about dollars and cents.”
“Whether in children or adults, no clinical trials should be done in undeveloped countries unless they are trials to test a drug for a disease that only occurs there,” said Angell, who teaches social medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
“The trend that we describe brings up some scientific and ethical problems,” said Dr. Sara K. Pasquali, a pediatrician at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, whose findings appear in the journal Pediatrics.
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