Testing Drugs

Unless you’ve been living in a cave in the desert this week, you’ll know that there’s been a fair amount of hysteria about human drug trials this week, following six people being seriously ill having done a first human test.

Of course, now we’re getting all the shit about “we should never do human trials again”, which seems to me to be missing a couple of pretty relevant points. As Reynolds points out, the drugs that are now being used to treat these men were also tried on humans at some point – they had to be, to get approval in the first place. If human trials are banned, how will any more drugs become approved? Running them on a simulated human in a computer system is all well and good, but then what happens when they’re approved following simulacra testing, and it turns out something was wrong in the sim, and it kills people or harms them in the real world?

Human testing is one of those things that happens. It’s an essential part of drug development, and as such we will always need volunteers to put themselves up for this. Of course, in years gone past, and in cultures now thankfully gone, the people who were the guinea-pigs for new drugs weren’t volunteers at all, but were prisoners of war, people in jails, conscripted soldiers, or “lesser members of society” (in the eyes of that society, anyway) who were seen as sub-human, but who were good for things like this, where in effect it didn’t matter if the results of the trial were fatal or harmful, the victims/subjects could just be buried and forgotten. I don’t want to go back to a society or a perspective like that – but that’s the alternative, forcing people to test these things if people won’t volunteer to do it.

I’ve considered taking part in medical trials before – and been right up to the final selection levels. Personally, I feel that if someone objects to testing drugs on animals, then they should be prepared to stand in the place of those animals and allow the tests to happen on themselves instead. Having the courage of one’s convictions, and all that jazz.

All the people who volunteered to take part in this trial gave their consent. They were made aware of the potential risks, and what could happen. Of course this result was unexpected – and I suspect that the volunteers had the standard human thought-process of “It won’t happen to me”, if indeed they even really thought about the true potential effects of trialling these drugs.

If I’m honest, the potential for life-altering – and potentially long-term damage and alteration – was what put me off going through with the tests and trials. On a cynical point of view, the test I was going for also didn’t pay enough for those potential long-term risks. But I can understand why people do submit to these trials, and I’d hate to see the alternatives make a comeback…