No better than Guinea pigs
With a seemingly tempting market, job centers also get involved in a bid to gain a slice of the cake by connecting the testees with hospitals and reaping profits from both sides.
Xiuluo (nickname)，an agent as well as a testee, revealed that some big job centers are in fact agencies of hospitals for medicine testing.
"They are acquainted with researchers and help them look for testees once there are vacancies," said Xiuluo, adding that the big centers will receive dozens of yuan in commission on every successful lead, and every testee who gets hired has to submit half of his earnings to the agencies."
"The agencies are in fact exploiting the testees, who, in a sense, are no better than Guinea pigs," commented Cong Yali.
Though the Good Clinical Practice regulation provides that the clinical research investigators should insure the trial sponsors and compensate them for death or injury, according to Cong, the regulation is not practical since it does not specify the compensation standards.
Some investigators offer no compensation or insurance at all, noted Cong. "Currently the professional testees are neither supervised nor protected under any policies or regulations."
Cong pointed out that "now the Chinese ethics committees can only be found in big medical schools, research institutes, and Third-level grade-A hospitals," which play a limited role in protecting the testees as few of them can keep supervising and checking each clinical trial long enough.
Cong has been calling for the ethics committees to enhance protection of the testees. "It is urgent to protect their lawful rights and interests systematically," she said.
