Exploiting Vulnerable Citizens
Exploiting Vulnerable Citizens
Drug Testing and the Mentally Ill
The mentally ill are a highly vulnerable population, but remain remarkably easy for pharmaceutical researchers to exploit. When the US Congress passed the National Research Act in 1974, it was responding largely to scandals involving vulnerable populations. The federal guidelines later enacted provide special protections for certain populations, such as prisoners and the mentally disabled, but provide no special protections for the mentally ill. Drawing on recent psychiatric and pharmaceutical scandals, such as the case of Dan Markingson, a man who killed himself while participating in a clinical study, this chapter examines the financial pressures, conceptual flaws, and regulatory gaps that allow the exploitation of the mentally ill to continue. It argues that these scandals call into question biocitizenship in the context of vulnerable populations called upon to enact citizenship by participating in pharmaceutical trials whose purpose is ostensibly to serve the common good.
Keywords: Vulnerable populations, Clinical research, Psychiatry, Psychopharmacology, Suicide
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