Using Inmates in Drug Trials

Too long. What does it say? Do they get time off if they live? Do they get out of license plate making time? They are criminals fer chrissake, who cares?

You should, that's who. Who'll be next, in the "experimentation" process?

Even prisoners have some basic human rights. And what about those who later prove to be wrongly convicted [it happens you know]. Makes me shudder to think about it when I read these words...

The comment puts me in mind of what was probably the attitude of the experimenters towards their captive guinea pigs when this sort of practise was at its height and is why it musn't be allowed to gather momentum again!

I think that the operative phrase here would be "informed consent". I think that it would be unconscionable to experiment on prisoners without their express consent. I would bet that there are some though, who would be agreeable to enrolling in an experiment.

paull says it very well in the quote below. In fact, I consider these words so intimately connected to paull's brain that we simply need paste it in as succinct replacement for every post he makes...

:wink:

:wink: :wink:

I agree with Phoenix.

Give them the opportunity to say yes or no.
Just like drug companies do on the outside of jail.. informed consent, sign some waivers.. the works.

But I think the prison population is a good market to tap into truthfully.
But in a pretty backwards way.

Im not coming from a " punish them more " stand point..

What I mean is, it is a completely controlled environment ( as much as can be)
A drug company can have recorded their every reaction to the drugs, their behavior, their mental capacity.. even their diet. And if these people consent to testing new drugs in that type of environment, the drug companies can really benefit from the situation and it MIGHT improve the quality of"drugs" we get.

then again.. maybe not. (shrug)

but I am only spewing half thought here.. mostly because I didn't read the whole article. . Im just giving my 2 cents from what i think it was about

Being in the medical research field myself I have some reservations concerning utilizing inmates for testing purposes.
Because of the incentive to either lessen their sentence or whatever they are offered in order to get them to agree to the testing I can easily see where the 'offer' could be coercive.
Criminals or not, they do have basic rights and neither the government or private industry have had a good track record whenever they have attempted to use a 'captive' group of people for experimentation purposes.

What about people who are not incarcerated, but become involved in experiments, just for the satisfaction of maybe doing some good for society?

Personally, I don't think that any "rewards" should be offered. Then there can be no talk of coercion.

I would hate to think that some child perp could simply take some pills for 20 days , and have a few months taken off his sentance so that he can be released to go after more kids.

I dont understand WHY reduced prison time would be offered in those cases.
Why not cash money, like the facilities do for the public?

All prisoners would like a little money in their account so they can buy twinkies and smokes..

I can only speak for the company I work for but it is made crystal clear to anyone who participates in medical research testing that they are free to remove themselves at any time for any reason.
Although I suspect that inmates would be given the same choice, depending on how demanding the prison authorities would be since they would be the ones who made the money not the inmates, it might not be so easy for an inmate to 'opt out' of a program once they were in it.
I know that here in Texas, at least, it is illegal for an inmate to make money for anything while they are in prison. That is why they are not paid a single penny for any of the work they are required to do while incarcerated. It is the Prison system that gets the money for 'farming' them out to private interprise as well as whatever work they do for the Prison system itself.
Prisoner work has become so lucrative that it is starting to be considered a new form of 'slave labour' which brings in millions of dollars a year to the Texas Prison authorities. The United States now has more of its citizens incarcerated than any other country in the world and as the government makes more and more money off of it, it becomes easier and easier to be imprisoned for a crime.
A lot of criminals do truly deserve to be in prison but a lot of them don't , but with the amount of money being made off of them the government has every incentive to put them in prison rather than try to rehabilitate them. The amount of people being falsely imprisoned is growing higher every year and it is difficult if not impossible to get them out. We had a case here where our Texas Supreme Court Justice refused to release a prisoner that was proven innocent because she said if he didn't commit the crime he was convicted of he surely committed something else. It took a federal judge to get this man out of prison yet we still have this State 'Judge' sitting on the bench making decisions about whether someone should stay in jail or not.
People tend to think that if the government says someone should be in jail than that is where they should be and give no thought to the innocents that are locked up. We ALWAYS err on the side of someone being guilty instead of the chance they could be innocent but I would rather see a guilty man go free than see an innocent man locked up for life. These people also would be the ones most likely to be 'encouraged' by the Prison System to allow experimentation and the ones with the most to lose should there be corruption involved.

Prison inmates are not reckoned to be "successful" in their chosen careers. Surely some of them would lack the either the intelligence or the sophistication to give truly informed consent.

I agree, Noddy.

Also, as a former (and sometimes current) clinical research associate who moniters clinical trials, I can think of a number of control issues with operating a study within a prison.

Testing in prisons might be looked at as giving inmates a way to repay society for damages they inflicted.

Prisons are considered a relatively controlled society, good for such testing.

At present, much of the testing by US companies is done in third-world countries where people are less litigious and badly in need of the money paid.

I think I would prefer testing on informed adults to experimentation on animals.

"Informed" adults? How can the adults in these studies truly be informed, when most if not all of the serious side effects of the medications are not even known by the investigators?

That's an issue with any study, Miller. Small scale safety studies are intended to identify serious complications and side-effects, but any Phase III efficacy study participant is at risk of facing unknown complications. That is part of the informed consent.

Using the prison population to perform these safety studies is, IMO, where the risk of abuse comes into play.

What would you suggest the prisoners do when the abuses of the 1970s recur? The prisoner's mail and phone calls would censored by the abusers. Personal contacts are tightly regulated by the abusers. So I think it's fair to ask: what would you do to prevent past outrages from happening again?

There are abuses in everything, but life goes on. You try your best to prevent abuses, but we should not shut down worthy projects. Drug testing is important to all of us and must proceed. Prisoners are not unintelligent and can make informed consents.