I've heard about this kind of testing going on in developing countries.
The testing is done through third parties by pharmaceutical companies
so these pharmas have deniability.

Lately there has been much jubilation on the part of these drug
companies who want to outsource such drugs trials in India to test on
the poor who don't understand the dangers or their rights.  They are
just lured in with money much like these 6 unfortunate Britons below.

What is stupid about the drug testing below is that it was given to all
6 people at once.  Common sense says you give it to the first human
guinea pig, wait 1 day for an adverse reaction.  And if not, then give
it to the next one...etc.  These incompetent doctors should be charged
with manslaughter.

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Two Men Remain in Coma After Drug Trial
By TARIQ PANJA,
Associated Press Writer
Tue Mar 21, 9:20 AM ET

LONDON - They were chosen because they were fit and healthy, but
minutes after being injected with a test drug designed to combat
leukemia and other diseases, the men went into convulsions as their
internal organs began to fail.

Two men were still in a coma Tuesday and four others were seriously ill
but improving after participating in the trial last week. The drug sent
the men into vomiting fits; they removed their shirts in panic as their
bodies seized up with pain.

Fresh questions are being asked about the safety of clinical trials and
whether the tests draw vulnerable people with promises of pay. Parexel,
one of the makers of the drug, paid eight men 2,330 pounds (US$4,092)
each to participate, said Raste Khan, 23, one of two patients who had
been given a placebo.

He described the gruesome scene in the hospital ward.

"It felt like we stepped into some sort of horror film," Khan told The
Associated Press. "The three other men in my ward started vomiting,
then they began to fall in and out of consciousness. The person on my
left was begging doctors to help him. I was really scared and was just
waiting for it to start happening to me."

After taking the drug the men lapsed into comas as their organs failed,
forcing doctors to put them on organ support machines, said Dr. Ganesh
Suntharalingam, who was treating the men at Northwick Park hospital in
London.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency - which
authorized the trial - said there was nothing unusual about the
results of laboratory and animal tests on the drug or the methodology
for the human trials provided by Waltham, Massachusetts-based Parexel
and the other maker, TeGenero AG of Wuerzburg, Germany.

TeGenero's chief scientific officer, Thomas Hanke, said the drug
TGN1412 - designed for the treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory
diseases and leukemia - had been tested on rabbits and monkeys with
no "drug-related adverse events."

MHRA spokeswoman Sara Coakley said the reaction of the six study
participants was "completely unheard of."

"There could have been a manufacturing problem, some form of
contamination, a problem with the drug's administration, or ... it
could be that (defects with the drug) just didn't show up in
preclinical data from the tests on primates," she said. "It will be
weeks before we find out exactly what happened."

Some experts, however, said the six men should not have received doses
within such a short period.

"The idea you give six people an injection at the same time is
unusual," said Kate Law, head of clinical trials for Cancer Research
U.K. - Britain's largest cancer charity. "In any of our tests we
never test drugs on the volunteers all at the same time."

The rest of the article at :

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060321/ap_on_he_me/britain_drug_trial_2