The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients

Description

This explosive book reveals the unethical drug testing practices of the multinational pharmaceutical industry. In its quest to develop lucrative new drugs for the world's rich, the industry has turned away from the health needs of the world's poor. 90 per cent of the global medical budget takes aim at just 10 per cent of the world's disease burden. And yet, over the past decade, Pharmaceutical companies have exported their clinical research business to the global South - where ethical oversight is minimal, and 'guinea pigs' in the form of sick, poor, desperate patients are abundant. The result is that whilst 500 million cases of malaria rage across the developing world, the working poor of Asia and Africa, desparate for the kind of hi-tech care available to them solely through clinical research, line up for experimental doses of the latest arthritis, heart disease and obesity drugs. Based on several years of original research and reporting from Africa and Asia, investigative journalist Sonia Shah shows how the pharmaceutical industry is using testing procedures in the global South that would cause scandals in the developed world, and is exploiting the misery of millions, for the benefit and profit of a few.

Sonia Shah is the author of Crude: The Story of Oil and an independent journalist. Her articles have appeared in Salon, Playboy, The Nation, Orion, and elsewhere, and have been widely anthologized.

"Shah has written a brilliant book... this is not a Michael Moore-style anti-corporate rant - Shah writes beautifully, with dispassionate, elegant clarity - and it is all the more powerful for it." THE GUARDIAN "An insightful missive." - CLAMOR MAGAZINE "A stinging jeremiad... Shah has a crisp writing style and that knack for deploying statistics judiciously, rather than maniacally... most rewarding." - THE AGE (MELBOURNE) "An engrossing, thoroughly documented warning." - THE ADVERTISER (ADELAIDE)"