Revisiting Ethics of Global Outsourcing

On his blog, Global Bioethics, Stuart Rennie discusses a topic that we covered last week concerning unethical outsourcing practices. Rennie's take includes, "It is a charming idea that ethics committees would be responsible for stimulating the globalization of research (and indirectly, the ethical problems that go with it), but it seems more likely that streamlining the processes at home will simply increase the number of trials abroad, as long as the economic disparities between countries remain in place. You will simply get your IRB approval faster. Besides, if you want to 'de-incentivize' clinical trials abroad, why not build up ethical review in developing countries, or force pharmaceutical companies to pay to build local health infrastructure and capacity as a cost of doing business, rather than scaling down IRB processes at home?" We encourage you to post your comments here or on Mr. Rennie's blog.