The ethics of testing new drugs on the mentally ill and homeless

When drug companies are in the human testing phase of a new medication, they recruit people to participate in their studies. Increasingly, pharmaceutical firms that are creating new drugs for mental illness recruit impoverished mentally ill people and pay them to take part in the studies.

University of Minnesota Bioethicist Carl Elliott reported on this practice for Matter and said he believes this is a new and troubling trend:

Paying any volunteer was seen as problematic, even more so if the subjects were poor, uninsured, and compromised by illness. Payment, it was argued, might tempt vulnerable subjects to risk their health. As trials have moved into the private sector, this ethical calculus has changed. First came a hike in the sums that volunteers could be paid: Many clinical trial sites now offer over $6,000 for an inpatient drug study. Eligibility requirements have changed, too. For years, trial sites paid only healthy volunteers, mainly to test new drugs for safety. These days people with asthma, diabetes, kidney disease, liver disease, and other conditions can be paid take part in trials.

More startling is that recruiters are able to approach patients with serious mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. "We are looking for individuals 18 and over who are diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizo affective disorder," read a recent Craigslist ad in St. Louis. "Earn up to $2,800.00." Around the same time, I saw an ad for a Los Angeles site that was offering three times as much for a related trial.

Elliot joins The Daily Circuit to discuss the ethics of drug trials.