Could it be a coincidence?

The same week that a Nigerian state government files a lawsuit against Pfizer, seeking $2.7 billion for using some 200 children as guinea pigs in a 1996 clinical trial, a senior UNESCO official criticizes big pharma for failing to inform volunteers of the risks in participating in studies.

Pierre Sane, UNESCO’s assistant director general in charge of Social and Human Sciences, says that, due to a lack of ethical standards in scientific research, some pharmaceutical companies didn’t bother to obtain informed consent from volunteers participating in their trials.

Sane spoke Friday at Kenya’s Egerton public university, west of Nairobi where he inaugurated a bioethics center. He lamented that thousands of people in Africa were being enticed by money and other goodies to participate in clinical trials without fully understanding their possible risks.

The bioethics center, which is said to be the first in the third world, aims to ensure that an ethical framework is maintained to protect society from advances in science and technology, Sane said.

The center is also mandated to promote research in bioethics, create a platform for collaboration, networking and information sharing. “Science without ethics is dangerous as witnessed in such trials where volunteers are not fully informed,” Sane emphasised.

UNESCO, he added, was committed to ensuring the monitoring and analysis of the impact of scientific and technological innovations on human rights through the strengthening of its actions on the ethics of science and technology.

Source: AfricaInteractive[tags]Clinical Trials, Ethics, Pfizer, UNESCO[/tags]