'Explosive' Growth in Foreign Drug Testing Raises Ethical Questions

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...