Wow, Central-Eastern Europe is Very Important to the Clinical Trial Market

In Adriana Petryna’s “Clinical Trials Offshored: On Private Sector Science and Public Health,” she has a section titled “Keeping the clinical trial market in Poland.” I am shocked to read how vital the country of Poland is to the pharmaceutical industry. At the beginning of this part of her work, she states, “Drug companies invest almost half a billion dollars in clinical research in Poland each year” (34). After meeting Dr. Jan Mazur, Petryna explains that Central-Eastern Europe is necessary for clinical research: “The medical director of a major pharmaceutical firm operating in Poland told me in 2005 that Central-Eastern Europe is the ‘second largest producer of clinical data’ after the United States” (34).

When comparing Central-Eastern Europe to nearby countries, there is a huge difference in research efficiency. Poland and its neighbors are able to effectively recruit patients within a short period while Western European countries have a very tough time doing so. Petryna describes the situation:

Mazur also conveyed clinical trial success stories; they all involved what are known in the industry as ‘rescue studies’. The term applies to studies that start in one location and, because of poor recruitment, are moved to another location midway through the trial. So, for example, it takes one year for 50 investigative sites in Western Europe to recruit 200 rheumatoid arthritis patients. Whereas five central-European sites recruit the exact same number in just two months. (34)

While Petryna states, “Mazur’s success stories turned out to be a bit more complicated” (34), I still believe that Central-Eastern Europe, especially Poland, is extremely important to clinical trials because of its good track record. Since drug companies are spending a lot of money to have their products tested in Central-Eastern Europe, those countries must be performing better than other possible testing nations. Before reading Petryna’s piece, I would not have thought that Central-Eastern Europe would be such a hotbed for this type of research, but it is great to see that there are places other than the United States that can be relied upon in this venue.