Sign Me Up: Recession Attracts Clinical Trial Patients
7 CommentsBy Ed Silverman // December 23rd, 2008 // 8:55 am
Typically, patient recruitment for clinical trials would include some number of college students or folks who were simply down on their luck. Now, though, the lousy economy is prompting all manner of people to enroll, because they can use the money to pay some bills.
A Phoenix television station runs a brief report that includes Katrina Nelson, who doesn’t offer much info about herself, except that she signed up for a trial for an obesity drug in order to supplement her income. Perhaps this trend represents an opportunity? After all, drugmakers are increasingly running overseas for clinical trials, in part, to save money. Yes, oversight still carries a price tag, but if more Americans are willing to line up, pharma may be able to reduce per-patient costs. Or maybe Americans are just too expensive… You can watch the report here.
pharmavet
Other than Phase I studies, clinical trials subjects should only be reimbursed for visit costs, i.e. mileage, parking, etc. Othwerwise it is coercion, and is highly unethical. This is why we no longer do studies on prisoners.
Gregory
pv - I can see how subjecting prisoners to involuntary participation in trials can be coercion but how could volunteers be deemed to have been coerced?
pharmavet
They’re not volunteers if they are being paid to participate. Also, in many studies, the payments afre backloaded so that subjects are incentivized to stay in the study and not do anything that might get them dismissed, like minimizing reporting of side effets.
riv
By not being given full informed consent, all adverse effects that have occurred in lab animals in their trials or other trials of that drug if there have been any and that have happened in other drugs of that class, in trials or in the public use, reported to the FDA, by not being told what will happen to them if they have adverse effects which linger or are permanent and who will pay for treatment to recovery.
By not being told exactly how the drug works, and what population it is being developed for, ie) prevention of somthing that doesn’t exist (cardiovascular disease) or treatment of some condition, or lowering some endpoint, and if there is any population that should not take that drug and there might be the possibility the prospective trial animal (our human) has that ancestry.
Gregory
It’s not a major point but surely being paid doesn’t mean that a study participant did not volunteer? If I hear about a study recruiting over the radio, enrol and then get paid for it why am I not a volunteer?
Just A Thought
They need to pay study participants the way they would pay for any other diagnostic tool. Are their other tools free?
No one should participate without compensation (and any needed follow-up care for any damage done) for the benefit of a multi-billion dollar company.
They don’t believe that someone should forgo compensation for speaking on their behalf. I doubt study participants are paid well enough for the potential risks.
How many people are really going to be sick as a dog and claim that they aren’t because they were slapped X amount of dollars? Maybe if they were paid enough they could be coerced. You know they ain’t getting that much.
pharmavet
I only mentioned one problem with money and coercion. Another problem with getting paid for participation is the temptation to participate in more than one trial at a time, although in every single clinical trial since they were invented this is strictly a protocol violation, not to mention the obvious hazards of being on more than one experimental drug at a time. There is no way to verify multiple simultaneous participation, which is why we don’t pay people for being in Phase 2-4 trials. I believe in paying subjects for participation in Phase I trials for the major inconvenience they pose. Also, since many times the Phase 1 subjects are housed, they can’t participate in simultaneous trials.