Body Hunters: How the Drug Industry Tests Its Products On the World's Poorest Patients (Hardcover)

by Sonia Shah (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In a trenchant exposé of a sinister new trend in the pharmaceutical industry, investigative journalist Shah (Crude: The Story of Oil) uncovers a series of recent unethical drug trials conducted on impoverished and sick people in the developing world. Intricately delineating the causal relationships between past drug scares in America, such as thalidomide, and Americans' consequent reluctance to take part in drug testing, Shah demonstrates how a skyrocketing drug market has accelerated the search for "warm bodies" on which to test new products. Saying that the drug industry's main interest "is not enhancing or saving lives but acquiring stuff: data," Shah focuses in particular on the habitual use of a placebo control group, who receive little or no medical care. Shah concludes by spotlighting how drug regulators turn a blind eye to "coercion and misunderstanding between subjects and researchers," and how researchers actively seek countries that can provide them with a high death rate, so crucial to their data. Meticulously researched and packed with documentary evidence, Shah's tautly argued study will provoke much needed public debate about this disturbing facet of globalization. (Sept.)
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From Booklist
Journalist Shah isn't afraid to ask hard questions. While acknowledging that medical science wouldn't be at today's highly evolved stage without the advantages of centuries of human experimentation, how moral is it, she ponders, to use humans for medical and scientific experiments? Her questions get harder when she exposes the manner in which big pharmaceutical companies conceive, research, and develop new drugs. Typically, those drugs don't aim to cure the world's enormous poor-but-sick population. Too often, the goal is to create not new but copycat drugs to prolong the lives of America's wealthy elderly population at the direct expense of people in Third World nations. With references to medical experimentation's grim history, including Nazi concentration-camp inmate "studies" and the Tuskegee syphilis study, Shah reveals how the poor, underinformed, or simply powerless have born the weight of medical advances. The story is as big as the issue is complex, and Shah's heavily documented account endeavors to be evenhanded, given what are clearly her own feelings about the topic. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: New Press; 1 edition (September 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565849124
• ISBN-13: 978-1565849129
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #718,594 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bold Expose without Sensationalism, August 16, 2006

By	Sreeram Ramakrishnan (Yorktown Heights, NY) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

In a remarkably bold 'report', the lurking dangers of recent trends in clinical trials through contract research organizations is well presented. Without adopting an obvious higher moral ground nor using a broad brush to paint all of Big Pharma as pure evil (as some recent books on Big Pharma have done), the author focuses purely on the issue of clinical trials. Using recent examples from various companies (all familiar names to the average reader), the author poses interesting ethical questions regarding the "use" of patients in developing countries. In a series of interesting observations, the author explains why it is more "economical" and "practical" for drug companies to perform the FDA-required trials using measures such as "events" (number o f deaths during a particular number of days, or n'th death). While the bulk of the book is devoted to examples ranging from India, Latin America, and Africa to discuss the modalities of clinical trials and raise pertinent questions, the conclusion of the book is not very substantial. However, the author does point out that drugs should be seen as "social goods" and not mere new products; thus the means of developing them should be fair. Point well-made. A must read for anyone in the medical/pharmaceutical industry, investor, or a patient who uses any medicine.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An eye-opening expose and 'must have' acquisition., September 23, 2006

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

The development branch of the multi-national pharmaceutical industry has begun to expert its clinical research to the developing world, where ethical oversight is minimal and desperate patients abound - there to conduct research forbidden in the U.S. That's the hard-hitting message of a title based on several years of original research and reporting from Asia and Africa, making THE BODY HUNTERS: TESTING NEW DRUGS ON THE WORLD'S POOREST PATIENTS an eye-opening expose and 'must have' acquisition.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Must-Read, May 9, 2007

By	Miss Peabody (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

The Body Hunters by Sonia Shah is a fascinating look at modern drug trials. The FDA prefers drugs to be tested against placebos to show effectiveness. Americans and Western Europeans don't want to risk taking placebos. What to do, what to do? Pharmaceutical companies, instead of offering (usually more expensive) alternatives to the FDA, cheerfully administer placebos to mothers with AIDS and children with diptheria. Big Pharma argues, "Hey, these people are impoverished and wouldn't be getting anything at all if normally, what's the big deal? At least half of them are getting the drugs!" Read the book to read Shah's persuasive argument as to "what's the big deal." Not just an angry voice, she offers real, practical solutions to the problem.

I also enjoyed that the book provides a brief history of experimentation on human subjects. Hits on Tuskeegee, experimentation in Nazi concentration camps, and a few other infamous examples. Gives a rundown of the explosion of "lifestyle" drugs like Viagra and Prozac. (Did you know impotence and depression were hardly ever diagnosed prior to the introduction of these drugs? Are current levels of impotence and depression accurate???)

My only quibble is that Shah's writing is not the best. She is in desperate need of a thesaurus. People in the book tend to be "aghast" and "outraged."

This book is timely and important. Just yesterday I read in my local paper an article on a new STD drug found to slow the onset of AIDS. I read with baited breath...sure enough, the trial was conducted in Burkina Faso, and half the subjects were given placebos. The subjects were improverished women with HIV.