The article and five sidebars document how people in the U.S. are injured and killed during clinical trials of experimental drugs. The story shows that in the past 15 years, drug tests have moved from being conducted predominantly in universities and hospitals to private, for-profit test centers. At the same time, much of the oversight of clinical trials has been farmed out by the FDA to private, for-profit companies. The test facilities and the monitors are paid by pharmeceutical companies that stand to make billions if they develop blockbuster drugs. There is little protection for the safety of the participants in drug trials, the story shows. The poorest U.S. citizens and immigrants are usually the subjects of the most dangerous experiments on healthy people, the article shows. The story offers an in-depth look at the largest private test center in the U.S., SFBC in Miami, where unemployed immigrants are paid for participating in tests for which they are inadequately warned of risks or injury or death. The reporting cites examples across the U.S. in which healthy people were killed in clinical trials after receiving inadequate warnings and little or no medical care.
