Healthy Skepticism Library item: 5744

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: media release

Shah S.
Reviews of The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients
Sonia Shah's website 2006 Jul 28
http://www.soniashah.com/books/reviews.php?id=3

Notes:

Sonia Shah’s Comments:

The author (me) will be speaking about the book in the U.S. and UK during
October and November. If you know of any organizations that might be
interested in hosting an event, please contact Ina Howard at The New Press,
ihoward@thenewpress.com or me at soniashah@igc.org.

Full text:

Reviews of The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients

“Journalist Shah isn’t afraid to ask hard questions. …With references to medical experimentation’s grim history, including Nazi concentration-camp inmate “studies” and the Tuskegee syphilis study, Shah reveals how the poor, underinformed, or simply powerless have born the weight of medical advances. The story is as big as the issue is complex, and Shah’s heavily documented account endeavors to be evenhanded, given what are clearly her own feelings about the topic.” -Booklist

“Government officials from India and other developing countries that seek to exapnd the local presence of the commercial clinical trials ‘industry’ should read this book, as should patient advocates everywhere.” -James Love, director, Consumer Project on Technology

“Impressive and very much needed.” -Vincent Navarro, professor of health policy, Johns Hopkins University

“This eye-opening account offers an inside look into how the pharmaceutical industry, aided and abetted by FDA policies, carries out ethically problematic research in developing countries.” -Ruth Macklin, professor of bioethics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine

“Shah’s ‘The Body Hunters’ draws a two-pronged conclusion about Big Pharma: that it is too aggressive about ‘body-hunting’ vulnerable patients to test some drugs-ones that can be marketed in the West-but not aggressive enough in researching and providing others, particularly those with less profit potential.” -Boston Globe, July 2, 2006. (Read the full article.)

“Having spent years gathering research in Africa and Asia, investigative journalist Shah…explores the ethical issues involved….she provides compelling evidence and suggests solutions that would still provide clinical data without exploiting the poor.” -Library Journal, June 15, 2006

“Raises the curtain on a trend that’s harming patients and health care systems.” -Alternet, June 9, 2006

“A trenchant exposé…Meticulously researched and packed with documentary evidence, Shah’s tautly argued study will provoke much needed public debate about this disturbing facet of globalization.” –Publishers Weekly, May 1, 2006

“This book is an act of courage on the part of its author and its publishers…Using clear, accessible language and carefully annotated case histories, Sonia Shah struck a blow for all who dream of harnessing the huge power for good that is invested in the pharmaceutical industry, of seeing its products made available to those who most need them, and of curtailing the greed that drives its worst practices.” -John Le Carré, from the preface to The Body Hunters

Amazon > | www.thenewpress.com