Technoscientific Musings at WUSTL

In “When Experiments Travel”, Petryna brings up the many ethical questions that arise with clinical trials that are conducted by corporate offices in the United States but carried out in research sites in other countries. It seemed to me like she was discussing drug testing on humans as inherently exploitative, and I had to agree with her. Nobody wants to be tested on for unknown drugs that could have serious side effects unless they are desperate. Petryna mentions patients that have no health insurance with drug testing as the only pathway to treatment, or those with a low income, who need the money that could come from paid drug trials. She also mentions those in countries such as Eastern Europe and Eurasia, where patients come to receive Western medical treatments that they otherwise could not pay for. As with all arguments that come when commodification of human bodies is the focus, there is so much grey area that it is difficult to say what is right or wrong except on a case-by-case basis.

I think the most difficult thing about this topic of ethics of drug testing is that there is no other way to test these drugs that could potentially help heal a lot of people. We see in biology research the budding of these ideas, such as identification of pathways in E. coli to target for certain diseases, but then what? No model is a perfect model for testing out drugs meant for humans. If we discover something in bacteria or even in organisms with many gene homologs like mice, there is no guarantee that it will be effective in humans as well, until we actually test them on humans. This inevitability of human drug testing is a road block that I think many of us ran into when we pondered the questions Petryna illuminated. This is however also based upon the biomedicine-centric perspective that I grew up with, and this idea that most people would believe this could be biased. Furthermore, I think the authority society gives science, which we’ve been discussing in this class, also plays a part in many people justifying it to themselves as “for the furthering of science and betterment of society”. Funny how those go together.

However, it is also important to recognize that the exploitative nature of drug testing could and should be lessened to a much less harmful degree, even if it does end up being necessary for the overall good of society. The risk that these drug trials have is apparent in that they cannot be performed in most areas in the United States, but they can only get away with it in vulnerable populations that don’t have the voice to complain if it goes wrong. Instead of bringing better health care to these areas that need it, they bring untested drugs as the only option for treatment, which to me highlights the blatant exploitation of and lack of care for the people in those communities.