Frontline Confidential with Sonia Shah November 6, 2006

Investigative journalist Sonia Shah uncovers evidence that big pharmaceutical companies have carried out drug trials in the developing world that cause serious illness and death.

Experimental drugs trials can be risky even when all the safety guidelines are followed. But overseas clinical trials are often run with little concern for safety or ethics and take advantage of desperate patients. Many patients have died as a result.

The author of The Body Hunters: Testing news drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients, Sonia Shah will talk about some of the most shocking examples of global drug-testing practice. They range from drug addicts on HIV vaccine trials being denied access to clean needles and patients dying from well-known side effects to placebos rather than potentially life-saving drugs being administered to babies born to AIDS-infected mothers.

The event is organised in association with Centre for Investigative Journalism.

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