When Experiments Travel: Clinical Trials and the Global Search for Human Subjects

by Adriana Petryna

The phenomenal growth of global pharmaceutical sales and the quest for innovation are driving an unprecedented search for human test subjects, particularly in middle- and low-income countries. Our hope for medical progress increasingly depends on the willingness of the world's poor to participate in clinical drug trials. While these experiments often provide those in need with vital and previously unattainable medical resources, the outsourcing and offshoring of trials also create new problems. In this groundbreaking book, anthropologist Adriana Petryna takes us deep into the clinical trials industry as it brings together players separated by vast economic and cultural differences. Moving between corporate and scientific offices in the United States and research and public health sites in Poland and Brazil, "When Experiments Travel" documents the complex ways that commercial medical science, with all its benefits and risks, is being integrated into local health systems and emerging drug markets.

Providing a unique perspective on globalized clinical trials, "When Experiments Travel" raises central questions: Are such trials exploitative or are they social goods? How are experiments controlled and how is drug safety ensured? And do these experiments help or harm public health in the countries where they are conducted? Empirically rich and theoretically innovative, the book shows that neither the language of coercion nor that of rational choice fully captures the range of situations and value systems at work in medical experiments today. "When Experiments Travel" challenges conventional understandings of the ethics and politics of transnational science and changes the way we think about global medicine and the new infrastructures of our lives.

Genres: Medicine, Anthropology, Academic, Science

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Tara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting look at how human experiments are conducted in different settings in different countries. The book looks at the construction of human subjects and informed consent in a new kind of experimentality, where the clinical trial becomes a substitute for health care. Trials are designed to show a drug performs better than a traditional treatment. The conditions under which the drugs are tested and how they are actually prescribed are often different, leading to different outcomes in treatment. The trials create demand for more medications that local health care systems are required to fund without evidence to suggest these newer, expensive medications are effective.

[Michael Burnam-Fink · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adriana Petryna investigates the strange world of out-sourced clinical trials, and the effects on medicine when trials are being scheduled beyond most oversight, and advanced medical care is available only by become a guinea pig. Petryna's questions are fascinating, and her research impeccable, but she leaves the most interesting questions. As an anthropologist rather than a journalist, she avoids passing judgement (see "White Coat, Black Hat" for that), and I admire her professional detachment, but I wish there had been more of a conclusion.

[Kimberly · Rating 5 out of 5]

What can I say, I'll be writing my dissertation on this topic, so I found it riveting. A top down look at something I've been in the trenches on, so was very interesting to see things from that perspective. Totally recommend this to anyone involved in clinical trials at any level.

[Vivian Blaxell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Under-powered, untheorized (Foucault might have helped) and ulitmately uninteresting.