EDITORIAL
Russia, Nation of Lab Rats
Last week the world learned that it may finally have found a use for Russia apart from as a nuclear waste dumping ground: Russians make great lab rats.
Yes, it’s true: If you’d like to experiment with dangerous new “medications” on real live human subjects, there’s no place on earth you’d rather be than Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
In that wretched hell-hole, you see, there is a perfect paradise for you: An impoverished, desperate population victimized by totally incompetent economic policies (for more on that, see our lead editorial) combined with a legal system that utterly deprives citizens of legal rights and devalues individual human life to the the Nth degree.
So you can do just as you like with your Russian subjects and nobody will be the wiser, or care a bit if they find out.
There’s no earthly reason, of course not to treat Russians this way. Their own government, which poll show they approve of, treats them this way all the time — so why shouldn’t foreign scientists do the same. The Kremlin liquidates any individual Russian it doesn’t like for any reason at any time, clearly showing that individual Russian lives have no meaning.
The only question is: How long can a country this deeply screwed up survive?
La Russophobe 
“The only question is: How long can a country this deeply screwed up survive?”
I suppose that it depends on how one defines survival. North Korea and Cuba and and other examples prove that there is no “last straw” that humans can comprehend. There is no absolute point where humans will not take any more. It all depends on whether the psychopath in charge knows enough about human nature to manipulate how people feel, think and act.
I don’t know what’s more funny here, the psychobabble itself, or the fact that it makes no sense and isn’t even bound together by any central theme. This doesn’t quite deserve the heading of editorial, more like “hopeless rant”. Yeah, that ought to do. You know what ? I’m dissapointed with the team on this one. knowing you guys, I was expecting at least some half-baked story about how Putin diseccts human bodies in the bowels of the Kremlin and then feeds on them, but you really didn’t meet expectations on this one. And while your at it, consider a tiny little thing called proof.
LA RUSSOPHOBE RESPONDS:
Thanks for the deep belly laugh this morning, you lame-brained idiot!!
While calling for “proof” (a) THERE IS NOT ONE SINGLE SHRED OF IT in your ridiculous rant (nor do you EVER contribute ANY research or anything else of value to this blog, much less operate your own) and (b) YOU DON’T EVEN CARE TO READ OUR PUBLISHED LINK TO SOURCE MATERIAL which clearly states the world is beating a path to Russia’s door so as to use Russians as human guinea pigs for drug testing.
You’re an illiterate, drunken, hysterical ape utterly incapable of contributing any value to society. In other words, a perfect example of what is wrong with modern Russia! As such, we can’t help but thank you and beg you to continue your idiotic, hypocritical scribblings for all the world to see.
“oncology holds the highest share in total number of clinical trials conducted in the country”
“clinical trials by local players continue to lead the market […] sponsors from foreign countries are generally attracted by the quality standards of the Russian clinical studies”
You know what, duff-team? You destort and falsify every source you use in your “stories”…
Perhaps you think that “high quality standards” equals “killing every other volunteer”? Where on earth did you find “lab-ratting” there?
Did you found at least one case – one freaking example, any source, any person, in the internet, in the press – ANYTHING telling somebody’s health was damaged by taking part in laboratory tests?
What you do is no journalistics. It’s not even called “blogging”. It’s just an emotionally charged, useless, mindless insulting another people for your own pleasure.
You don’t pursue any “higher goals” posting this BS – because every post of yours undermines exactly what you pretend to serve – the civil society in Russia.
Dmitry, I live in Smolensk and we have a company called Infarm based here, it was started by a professor at the local medical academy, they have a chain of pharmacies in the city but the bulk of their income comes from organising clinical trials of new drugs at local hospitals. They also organise trials for which they invite volunteers from the street, most of these are usually students from the medical academy. Someone I know in person participated in one such trial, he has some rare chronic condition and he signed up for the trial because he thought that the new untested drug might help him with it; it had zero effect on his condition, but he was lucky, because almost all the other people in his test group had severe side effects, one guy went bald, one woman lost 23 kg (she was actually quite pleased with this side effect). In another trial a bunch of healthy med students were given some new cardiovascular drug, my understanding is it was a drug for side effects, they all ended up on disability pensions after that.
Well my point is:
1) yes I know it for a fact that clinical trials for new drugs are run on people in Russia, of course on a purely voluntary basis
2) If you sign up for a clinical trial like this and your health is undermined as a result there is very little you can do legally to get decent compensation.
I don’t see anything wrong with 1), however there’s plenty of room for improvement in 2), there must be guarantees to ensure that people participating in clinical trials of new drugs as subjects get paid decent compensation by the drug companies in the event severe harm is caused to their health as a result of the trial.
I would agree though that the article is rather poorly written. They could have done much better.
This is definitely not the “Novaya Gazeta”:)
Hear, hear
мой друг
The team should consider renaming this prodigious blog to something like “Artificial Intelligence” as Americans have no congenital intelligence. It’s an alien treat to them.
I think I created a fine slogan for the blog:
Something like 人民日报 but in 英语 and 相反
:)
Hilarious, this one:
>> You’re an illiterate, drunken, hysterical ape
utterly incapable of contributing any value
to society. >>
I, for one, volunteer wholeheartedly to the above nomination, team! You get the readership you deserve :-D