General News 6 Hospitalized, One of Them Brain-Dead, After Drug Trial in France

This is disgusting. The people responsible for this should be put in jail.

 

As tragic as this is, I think it's a good thing it occurred during testing rather than after it was put on the open market or else this issue would be a lot more hazardous to the public health.

 

This is tragic. RIP

 

Let me edit the article the article...

Does that mean we'll see the government of france doing something about the workforce, and stop botlicking certain companies exploiting the blue collar workers? Or do they think these poor men went to the lab out of being deeply moved about the motives of the pharma industry?

 

It's just brought to mind a very similar occurance in the UK a few years ago, the Northwick Park disaster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TGN1412

That was absolutely horrific, one man's head swelled up to alien proportions, another lost all his fingers and toes. I remember it being all over the news and radio, it was truly like listening to a horror story unfolding in real life.

What made it worse is the damage could have been limited - instead of testing on small samples and waiting an adequate time to see if there were side effects, subjects were given the drug within very short gaps.

 

I remember learning about this in immunology. I thought of it when I saw this article but didn't know the name.

 

This has happened here in Baltimore as well.

Johns Hopkins is famous for praying on the poor people who live in the slums that surround there oh-so-wonderful hospital for the well to do.

In fact, most people who volunteer for these studies are poor, and destitute...I'm amazed this isn't looked at with more scrutiny.

 

Apparently the man left brain-dead has now died.

What is sad is reports indicate this drug (BIA 10-2474) was intended for pain-relief acting on the endocannabinoid system.

We already have a non-lethal drug that to my understanding works on the same principle...cannabis, so this drug was not even medically necessary. Now cannabis is certainly not side-effect free, but if we could just purify it and study it more we could make it as near as damn it.

This drug trial was a minute sample (just 90 given this drug, with all six given the stronger dose severely negatively effected) so it goes to show how dangerous this was. By comparison millions consume cannabis across the globe (with many "over-consuming" probably more than they should) and yet we see no horror stories of brain damage or death.

 

Says right in the article that that's not what the drug was to be used for.

 

Actually, several other articles suggest the drug was to be used for both pain relief and cognitive function/motor problems.

Regardless, my point still stands that marijuana shows promise in all these areas; many people use it medicinally for these purposes and licensed derivatives are used for motor disorders.

 

Just a sidenote for those here who say cannabis is bad. This sounds like some synthesized "bath salts" or "synthetic marijuana" gone horribly wrong down on the pharm.

 

I'm not arguing that. People could stand to be less afraid of marijuana and more afraid of the drugs that actually fuck people up like heroin or meth. Marijuana is essentially harmless in moderation.

 

This is not just to you Plattyrex but to everyone who demand blood here.

There is nothing in the article to suggest that anyone did anything wrong, neglected anything or did anything that could cause this sort of reaction. In medical research casualties are unavoidable. Testing is done exactly to prevent this kind of reaction in the general population.

It is hypocritical to suggest that this testing (or testing in general) is somehow unethical because the subjects were paid. If no one was paid anything, very few people would attend and those who did would still be most likely students or unemployed people. People who work would not take part without compensation because taking a day off from work would mean that they are actually indirectly paying the researchers to part take in the trial. If participation was somehow restricted to higher income people the compensation would have to be significantly better. In that case people would be complaining that the poor are being discriminated against and the rich are taking care of the rich.

 

I mostly agree with Euler. This is tragic, but just as there are a few plane crashes each year out of millions of flights, and one death for every thousand routine surgeries, there is an occasional medical research tragedy. It's important to investigate what went wrong though in case it could have been prevented.