Botched Drug Trial
Erin Elizabeth, Founder, Health Nut News
Editor’s Note: NY Times and French Health Minister has announced the drug was NOT cannabis based as was first mysteriously reported around the world.
In fact, it was some lovely pharma company’s drug (that wishes it were like cannabis) that killed 1 man and left 5 others in critical states according to mainstream news. It did NOT contain cannabis.
How can you perfect mother nature? I guess pharmaceutical companies do it when they can’t capitalize on it.
Here’s the story:
Multiple news outlets are reporting that one person has been left brain dead, while five others have been hospitalized, after participating in a clinical trial for a painkiller drug in France. The experimental drug, made by Portuguese company Bial, had previously been tested on animals, including chimpanzees, back in July, and had begun human trials which were approved by French regulators.
There were 90 people that took part in the trial at the Biotrial facility in Rennes, western France, and of them six men aged 28 to 49 were in good health, until starting the oral medication. According to Gilles Edan, chief neurosurgeon at CHU de Rennes hospital, “Four of the six men hospitalized have “neurological problems”– of which three could have “irreversible” brain damage”, reports Fox News.
The health ministry in France has suspended all trials on the drug and any volunteers who took part in the trial have been called back and are being monitored. Prosecutors have also opened an investigation into what happened.
According to the sources below, Europe has strict regulations governing what goes on in clinical trials: in Phase I, drugs are given to healthy volunteers to see how the body handles it and which dose is correct (this work is highly specialized), then in Phase II and III the trials assess the drugs effectiveness and safety- all before the are approved for sale to the public.
There is always risk when you put a foreign, untested substance into a healthy body. Our hearts go out to these men and their families. It’s time to start state funded drug trials on cannabis and perhaps use what we already know (and have known for hundreds of years) works.
Source: BBC News, ABC News , Fox News Health and NY Times
