Re: Drug company that put 2 men in Coma testing drugs in India

madiba wrote:

J <analyse@invalid> wrote:

visualseeplus wrote:

World News: Boston's Parexel to tap India's potential in clinical
research

29-April-2004

New York, Boston-based Parexel International Corp., a $615 million
biopharmaceutical outsourcing company, said Thursday it has entered
into a tie-up with Synchron Research Services of Ahmedabad to tap
India's emerging potential in the area of clinical research
outsourcing.

I expected this to happen about a minute after I read about the trial
'mishap' in the local papers. I was at a big meeting on EGFR inhibitors
in Amsterdam at the time where it wasnt even mentioned BTW.
This is cold-blooded outsourcing to the third world, where life is cheap
and you have the courts in your pocket as a multinational...

This happened in UK. The names were foreign but it was a UK hospital they
were (or are) in.
But I know what you mean. I posted this last May

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/03/AR2005050301268.html>

The study also looked at the economics of clinical trials, which are
becoming less lucrative for doctors and researchers. Reflecting that
decline, more clinical trials are being conducted at cheaper sites abroad,
and in southern states rather than in more expensive northern states.
Between 1994 and 2004, the proportion of principal investigators working in
the South grew by nearly 20 percent, to more than 40 percent of the nation's
total. During the same time, the proportion active in the Northeast declined
from 23 to 19 percent of the total.

The study found that the number of female principal investigators is small
and getting smaller. Although 28 percent of all board-certified physicians
were women in 2003, only 12 percent of clinical-trial investigators were
women, a lower percentage than in 1992.

The number of American sites where clinical trials were underway declined
from about 51,000 in 2001 to 48,000 in 2003. During that same period, the
number of FDA-approved investigational drug studies in all phases of
research rose from about 3,900 to 4,500 -- but with less research being done
at U.S. sites.

Getz said his work and conversations with drug industry officials indicate
that new clinical trials are increasingly being done abroad. He said that
although ongoing clinical trials in the United States are generally not
being moved overseas, the lower costs abroad -- and the often greater
professional and public interest -- are leading many companies to set up new
trials in Eastern Europe, South America and India./end quote.


On the one hand they get access to medicines that they might not otherwise
be able to afford, but I have to wonder if many of them have the smarts (or
education) to even understand their own cancer, much less the goals of
various clinical trials or the paperwork that they are signing.

By the way, since you're back, are you fielding questions as to how long a
person can live with certain cancers? (and no treatment). Been getting some
pesky ones on alt.support.cancer.
I would refer them here, if you want to guesstimate.
J

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