Huffington Post—December 28, 2009
One such potential danger is medical researchers looking for healthy students hoping to make a fast buck.
Medical research companies often focus on college campuses in order to recruit healthy students for phase three testing of drugs before they make their way to the FDA for approval. Why not? College kids are an easy target. Away from home for the first time, faced with insufficient spending money or reacting to peer pressure because "all their friends are doing it," these self-confident but naive youngsters are lured in as a pharma company's human guinea pigs.
Don't get me wrong. Testing for the efficacy of a potential new treatment is an extremely important part of the process. In fact, the testing and approval by the FDA of various treatments has led to some major medical breakthroughs in every field of medicine. Many physicians will even recommend that their patients with certain conditions enter into clinical trials in the hopes that a new drug or treatment may help them.
So how do you determine whether or not a clinical trial for a new treatment is right for you? Two very easy ways. The first is to get the facts.
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