The Outsourcing of Clinical Trials

          In Adriana Petryna’s “Clinical Trials Offshored: On Private Sector Science and Public Health,” she talks about the relationship between the ethical regulations and pharmaceutical industry, problems of the offshoring of clinical trials to several third world countries, and how offshored clinical trials became central to public health. In the article, she explains that "ethics and method are modified to fit the local context and experimental data required" (4). That is, ethics is made variable to fit experimental data, which often leads to an "overemphasis on positive research findings" (4).
            She points out what is happening in the world now when it comes to the offshoring of clinical trials, and what kinds of ethical problems come along with the outsourcing of the trials to the third world countries. She argues that making the citizens in low-income countries become subjects of scientific experiment shows us their poverty status, and insists that equivalent care should follow the medical research.
           Again this article was another hard-to-understand article to me. I didn't even know what has been happening when it comes to clinical trials. I knew that there would be some ethical problems associated with clinical trials since the trials entail the participation of human beings, but I have never been able to think of this idea of "outsourcing clinical trials." It was just beyond my knowledge and experience. After reading many other articles to make sense of this, one thing I came to know is that this article is in line with what we have learned in the last several classes when we covered biological citizenships and biopolitics. I can't be 100% sure, but maybe some people in the state of poverty had to present their bodies in such perverse a way that makes their bodies as mere subjects of pharmaceutical experiments. How can human beings be relegated to mere subjects of drug experiments?
            I've asked this question to myself and I was disturbed by the idea that you can outsource clinical trials to low-income countries, but at the same time, I completely understand this is not as simple as like that. I understand that researchers try to reduce the amount of money spent on clinical trials as much as they can, because money is certainly an important thing to consider. I understand that they can say that it is much easier to find people who haven't tried new drugs in third world countries than in developed countries. I also understand that people who advocate the offshoring of clinical trials in spite of many ethical issues coming along can say that individual is responsible for whatever results he is going to face because he himself chose to do it, regardless of his social and economic status.
           Aa for me, I also think that individual's decision to participate in clinical trials should assume that he who participates in clinical trials agrees to endure what's going to come, but we should be aware of the fact that people who are willing to do clinical trials in third world countries are the economically weak. For example, those who commit a suicide - I don't think they choose to kill themselves, but their situation forces them to kill themselves. The outsourcing of clinical trials seems to be the same case to me;  I don't think they "choose to" do clinical trials, but their situation forces them to do. They are driven into poverty, to the extent where they have to use their health and life as a collateral. Is society that puts the blame solely on individuals who are forced to make such decisions due to their situation and that says that these individuals are entirely responsible for potential risks a healthy society? We have to think about those people who seemingly have powers to make independent decisions but who actually are forced to do so in the name of capitalism. The outsourcing of clinical trials is not the exception.