Sonia Shah

June 2, 2008

My opinion piece on the FDA's scrapping of the Declaration of Helsinki, and with it adequate protection for the human rights and safety of clinical trials subjects in the developing world, appeared in The Nation online a couple weeks ago. Check it out here.

This journal features commentary on science and politics from independent investigative journalist Sonia Shah. Sonia Shah is the author of Crude: The Story of Oil (Seven Stories Press, 2004) and The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World’s Poorest Patients (The New Press, 2006.) Sonia Shah’s articles appear in print in Orion, Salon, The Nation and have been widely anthologized. A former writing fellow of the Nation Institute and the Puffin Foundation, Sonia Shah hosts the website ResurgentMalaria.com and is currently working on a book about the politics of malaria, to be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. For more information, email sonia@soniashah.com.

The Body Hunters: Testing New Drugs on the World's Poorest Patients

Preface by John Le Carré

Imagine the uproar if dozens of drug-trial patients in America were to perish from deadly side effects known to the FDA. Consider the commotion if AIDS babies in Europe were to die while being administered placebos rather than potentially life-saving drugs. These scandals did happen-just elsewhere.