'Explosive' Growth in Foreign Drug Testing Raises Ethical Questions
By Talea Miller,
PBS News Hour
| 08. 23. 2011
Peek inside any American family's medicine cabinet and you're likely to find a drug that was tested in a foreign country.
Pharmaceutical companies have been shifting research overseas for
years and the number of foreign trials has skyrocketed. The Department
of Health and Human Services reports more than a 2,000 percent increase
in the number of foreign trials for U.S. drugs over the past two
decades.
In 2008, about 80 percent of drug applications approved by the Food and Drug Administration contained data from foreign clinical trials.
The growth in developing countries and emerging economies in
particular has been "explosive" said Dr. Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics
at University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. Caplan
explained the appeal of holding clinical trials in developing countries
and the ethical issues raised by this research trend (answers have been
edited for length):
NewsHour: What factors make developing countries attractive locations for these trials?
Caplan: Several things -- a developing country has a
lot of people who are more likely to want to be in a trial. It's
getting...
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