Health Impact News Editor Comments: Dateline NBC News conducted an exhaustive investigation on the drug approval process here in the U.S. To test the drug approval process, they setup a fictitious medical company and then put together a plan to conduct drug trials on a drug that was identical to Merck’s Vioxx. Vioxx is now banned world-wide after causing an estimated 60,000 deaths, in what was possibly the most dangerous drug to ever make it to the market. Could such a dangerous drug be approved again? Dateline proved that indeed it can.
Starting with a medical review board here in the U.S., Dateline found that using a fictitious doctor’s recommendation with fake credentials, they were able to get the needed medical review board to approve the plan for the drug that was identical to Vioxx approved for human trials. Sandler’s crew next contacted two clinical research organizations in India that are used to conduct human trials on new drugs by major pharmaceutical companies. They interviewed some of the people who had conducted trials in the past in India, and found that some of them could not even read the consent forms they were asked to sign, and that some of them were conducting more than one drug trial at a time, to collect the lucrative fees. Sometimes people die during these trials.
Shockingly, both companies in India agreed to accept the money needed for the trials (over $1 million) and start human trials, even after recognizing that the drug profile was the exact same as Vioxx. Watch this stunning report from Dateline, but see if you reach the same conclusion that Chris Hansen of Dateline did that “most drugs today are safe and effective” AFTER you watch the entire report (maybe his producers forced him to say that?)
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Read the article here: http://openchannel.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/04/10562883-in-india-oversight-lacking-in-outsourced-drug-trials