"The Constant Gardener", "offshoring", and TGN1412

Although I thought that the movie the Constant Gardener
was excellent, with superior acting and luscious
cinematography, I thought that the focus of the plot,
corruption and conspiracy in the pharmaceutical industry
was far fetched. In this movie, and the novel it came
from, Tessa Quayle, the wife of a British dipolomat, is
murdered in Kenya by a pharmaceutical company, because she
was about to expose their corruption. The pharmaceutical
company was testing a drug to fight TB, and was covering
up the severe side effects.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constant_Gardener

But it seems perhaps it was not that farfetched. In the
March issue of Wired magazine there is an article about a
trend in the pharmaceutical industry, called offshoring,
to use developing nations to recruit volunteers for drug
trials. With the recent revelations of increased risk
from Vioxx, and the near tragedy of Tysabri, it is now
apparent that drugs can make it through clinical trials
without any clear evidence of the real risk the drugs
carry. To find rare severe side effects requires large
numbers of volunteers in phase 2 and phase 3 studies.
 Large numbers are also required because the benefit of
newer medications is often subtle, because they are not
dramatic improvements over previous treatments. The
article in Wired magazine discusses this issue in regards
to India.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/indiadrug.html

Finally, to remind us of how risky this business of human
clinical trials is, there have been some recent disturbing
reports of a recent phase 1 trial conducted in London.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060322/D8GG9G3O0.html
Received on Thu Mar 23 16:09:08 2006