Review

Abstract

"The words “randomised controlled trials” have taken on new meaning for me. In When experiments travel, Adriana Petryna reveals the experimental machinery manipulated by the globalising clinical trial industry in the quest for blockbuster drugs. She chronicles interviews of people who are not so much heroes or villains but ordinary actors engaged in a partly dirty business across national boundaries. In this anthropological account, Petryna explores how the research industry has mastered the science of “evidence making”, which includes configuring to which countries to offshore clinical trials, teasing out the loopholes of existing regulatory frameworks and seeking out “foolproof, treatmentnaïve, steroid-naïve, statin-naïve” clinical trial populations in the most ailing healthcare systems