http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103576


When we were in class we began to talk about how kids are being over prescribed and causing many problems. It reminded me of this South Park episode, that played about 10 years ago. Please, if you have time, watch this episode. The overall theme is that we prescribe too many drugs for all the wrong reasons. It’s about a boy, Timmy, who is diagnosed with ADD (attention deficit disorder) and eventually all the kids in the city are diagnosed with ADD. Everyone is on Ritalin and completely whacked out.

This episode just illustrates the idea that Americans are over prescribed. We are over prescribed because of the kickbacks that drug companies get, overprescribed because doctors depend of pills to cure all and if one pill doesn’t work then the doctor will try another pill, and because Americans are trained from birth to take the medicine and it will make everything better. This is why Americans also abuse prescription drugs. How does this tie in to the book When Experiments Travel by Adriana Petryna? The point I am trying to explain with this example is that Americans are very dependent on drugs. Petryna said that Americans are not ideal candidates for drug testing because our bodies are so intoxicated with drugs, hormones, and many other bad things that make our results skewed and or wrong during drug trials. This can also cause reactions that drug companies do not want such as mixing drugs or canceling out desired results.

My second example is not a specific example. I am going to explain how statistical materials can be easily skewed and how the wording of statistical results can be changed into desirable results. Correlation can show that two variables are related. The results can be manipulated using size comparables and graphs to show how well they correlate whereby the correlation might be insignificantly small and unimportant. This result would be statistically significant, however the difference is small enough to be utterly unimportant. “Many researchers urge that tests of significance should always be accompanied by effect-size statistics, which approximate the size and thus the practical importance of the difference.” (Wiki)
Other few of words that are thrown around that many people don’t understand are correlation and causation. "Correlation does not imply causation." It is a phrase used in science and statistics to emphasize that correlation between two variables does not automatically imply that one causes the other. The opposite belief, correlation proves causation, is a logical fallacy by which two events that occur together are claimed to have a cause-and-effect relationship.”(Wiki) Many companies including drug companies use this language and techniques to hide results or give false hope to customers. Technically, they are not lying about their product, however they know that most people don’t know the difference in the meanings so they use it to their advantage.
As you can see in the graph the results are exactly the same. When you see the first graph you would see a clear winner but if you saw the second graph you would think that all products were created equal. This is one technique used today to convince people that their product is better.
In the first chapter of the book, Petryna provides a light overview of many of the problems that clinical trials cause and face in the United States and the world. Problems Petryna wrote about were the ethical aspects of giving care in the form of clinical trials to patients that have life threatening illnesses and most likely poverty. There are many reasons why these patients should not be used. For one they are faced with the option of trying experimental drugs that could hurt them or potential death or the inevitable death that would come from their disease. Another reason why these people are not good candidates is because they use these trials for medical care when their own government has no way of helping. People should not have to be put into these situations.

Saturation of human subjects was another thing that clinical trials face. Trials need a large pool of people to test on; also there are a large number of trials being done all over the United States. The competition to grab these people with the symptoms of the desired disease is always being fought over because the pressure to innovate is extremely high. “Regardless of how many Americas are ready to become trial subjects, the pool will never be large enough to satisfy the current level of demand in pharmaceutical research (Petryna, 22).” Petryna later introduces the CRO’s, contracted business organizations, whose sole purpose is to research, that is outsourced by the trial companies, in order to save money. She also introduced the FDA and their numerous rules and regulations to help protect patients and citizens.

In chapter two Petryna tries to give us a history of how clinical trials have evolved and some reasons why these trials are moving oversees. She starts out the chapter with an interview with Dr. Besselaar. Dr. Besselaar, a doctor who has been around the pharmaceuticals industry forever, gave accounts of specific instances and milestones in the clinical research that shaped how it is today. It started out with the thalidomide experiments. This drug was supposed to treat morning sickness in pregnant women and help them sleep. This drug however had horrible side effects that caused deformation in the babies of these pregnant women. “That was really the situation that set the regulators on their course to make the whole process of drug approval and therefore the regulatory affairs business much more rigid than it was before” (Besselaar 55). A little later, Petryna describes techniques of how to show results that are desirable. Such as engineering out harm, meaning choosing only patients that will show good effects and hide bad effects. She also touches on the use of statistics, and how some organizations ignore bad results and hide them. In the past, the pharmaceutical companies have enjoyed phenomenal success. Recently in the US there has been a decline in the profitability. “The intense amount of litigation the industry faces in the United States also reflects, “the fundamental abandonment of the scientific method as it is not being tailored to prioritize safety, it’s a lottery game” (Petryna 87).

In the first two chapters of this book Petryna sets the groundwork of the rest of the book. She sets up the history and reasoning why clinical trials are moving and what that will do to the pharmaceuticals industry.

Parker, Trey. (Photographer). (2001). Timmy 2000. [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103576

Misleading. (2008). [Web]. Retrieved from http://www.k12science.org/ciesemath/misleading1.jpg

Correlation and dependence. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation

Adriana, Petryna. (2009). When Experiments travel. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.