Wired says a real-life Constant Gardener scenario has just begun playing out in India. New rules against generic knockoffs of Western drugs have emboldened pharmaceutical companies to use India’s poor as cheap drug testing guinea pigs (via Slashdot):

… multinational corporations are riding high on the trend toward globalization by taking advantage of India’s educated work force and deep poverty to turn South Asia into the world’s largest clinical-testing petri dish… trials account for more than 40 percent of drug-development costs. The study also found that performing the studies in India can bring the price down by about 60 percent…

… in March, everything changed when India submitted to pressure from the World Trade Organization to stop the practice and implement rules that prohibit local companies from creating generic versions of patented drugs…. the number of studies conducted by multinational drug companies has sharply increased since March. [Link]

There are attractions other than low cost:

“Doctors are easier to recruit for trials because they don’t have to go through the same ethics procedures as their Western colleagues,” Ecks said. “And patients ask fewer questions about what is going on… ” Companies are attracted to India not only because of the huge patient pool and skilled workers, but also because many potential study volunteers are “treatment naïve,” meaning they have not been exposed to the wide array of biomedical drugs that most Western patients have… [Link]

Ethical shenanigans aren’t restricted to just Western pharmas:

In 2004, two India-based pharmaceutical companies, Shantha Biotech in Hyderabad and Biocon in Bangalore, came under scrutiny for conducting illegal clinical trials that led to eight deaths. Shantha Biotech failed to obtain proper consent from patients while testing a drug meant to treat heart attacks. Biocon tested a genetically modified form of insulin without the proper approval from the Drug Controller General of India or the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee. [Link]

The saddest thing is that if the drugs work, the testers are unlikely to even have access to the drugs:

Since many pharmaceutical companies are developing the drugs for markets in industrialized nations, it is unlikely that India’s poor will have access to most of the new medicine. [Link]