In 1996, the multinational pharmaceutical company ‘Pfizer’ carried out unapproved clinical tests in Nigerian children. At that time, brain fevers were common in Nigeria. Therefore, ‘Pfizer’ was administering doses of a medicine to 100 diseased children. As a result of this medication, 5 children died and the others suffer from arthritis. In 2002, the AIDS virus vaccine company ‘VaxGen’ also had trouble with a new drug. In the same year during the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) vaccine clinical tests, ‘VaxGen’ did not offer sterilizers and condoms to Thai subjects. In 2006, the British Broadcasting Corporation produced a TV program called ‘Drug Trials ? The Dark Side’. They informed citizens of the world about multinational pharmaceutical companies’ unethical habits.
Let us understand what multinational clinical tests are. Many multinational pharmaceutical companies want to examine their new drugs virulence and effectiveness. As the need for these clinical tests became more frequent, the number of foreign countries being used for these clinical tests cases increased. This situation was strained due to relations with multinational pharmaceutical companies and the CRO (Contract Research Organization). India and China came into the spotlight as the areas in the Asia?Pacific Ocean region, which had clinical tests. At first, India was lured by the 120 million dollars in global manufacturing of medicine for the study market. The purpose of extended clinical tests in India is getting information from research on the new drugs and earns additional economic profits. China conducts a quarter of the world’s CRO market. China has an advantage in that it can gather many subjects easily. Therefore, a number of multinational pharmaceutical companies are carrying out most of their clinical tests in China.
By the way, here are some of the main reasons multinational’s have clinical tests overseas.
- All of the multinational pharmaceutical companies need clinical tests. Its main target is a member of experiment nation for selling their new drug in foreign countries.
- If they have clinical tests, they can get wide range of new drug information for a small outlay.
As in the remarks above, many countries make clinical tests for a variety of reasons.
However, as the numbers of clinical tests are increasing, there are good sides and bad sides to the issue.
First, let us look at multinational clinical tests good sides.
- Earnings to date include 50 million~100 million won for luring large-scale clinical tests and creating many employers in clinical tests clinics. In short, multinational clinical tests give direct economic effects to the experiment country. For this reason, Australia and Singapore thought multinational clinical tests are national businesses. As they took part in the clinical tests, they began to gain experiences with foreign clinical tests a lot.
In another case in Japan, even though they developed the materials for the new drug, they passed this material to the foreign country because they do not have any experience with clinical tests. In this case, we can see that the multinational clinic gives information about the tests, the expertise and contribution to the develop of a new drug in the interior of country.
- As the number of multinational clinical tests increase, patients of the interior country are in danger. However, most of the developments put into the new drug go to the advanced country’s patients. This means that many multinational pharmaceutical companies use results of their clinical tests for themselves and the advanced country’s patients. These are about multinational pharmaceutical companies marketing goals. According to National Institutes of Health (NIH), an anti-cancer medication’s clinical test that was done in Asia and Africa is now being used in 41% of the world’s diagnosed patience.
However, 20% of the medicine is distributed in the world market. The other 80% is consumed in advanced countries.
Multinational pharmaceutical companies operate clinical tests in developing country to save money, and then distribution is marketed to wealthier markets.
They do not seem concerned about the interior health of countries were the clinical tests take place, but more concerned about a developing country’s high rate of stomach cancer. Therefore, multinational clinical tests need bioethics, and give respect for the dignity of patients, which should be the first consideration.