In India, oversight lacking in outsourced drug trials

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In India, oversight lacking in outsourced drug trials

Rambha Gajre was desperate. She and her family faced eviction from their

cramped, tin-roof hut if she didn’t soon repay loans she used to cover

life-saving medical treatment for her son. Hauling bags of concrete mix

for $1 a day wasn’t nearly enough to pay back the money she borrowed to

pay a doctor to repair a hole in her son’s heart, let alone feed her

family of five more than one meal a day. So Rambha did what thousands of

other desperate women and men from India’s slums, and across the world,

now do to survive -- she signed up to be a human guinea pig in drug

trials for foreign pharmaceutical companies. “I am helpless, I have to do

this,” she said. “They don’t really force us, but I don’t have a choice.”

Drug trial outsourcing to foreign countries is rapidly becoming an

attractive alternative for pharmaceutical companies that are looking to

save millions of dollars, avoid regulatory scrutiny and tap into a

seemingly endless supply of drug study participants.

Tim Sandler, NBC News

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