[tsimionescu]

Your imagination has veered into the entirely wrong direction.

If such a thing were legal, human test subjects would be the lowest classes, who would accept a pittance to support their family, or worse, who would sell their children for drug testing to score another hit. The vast majority of early drug trials cause extreme harm, so in essence any such contract would be a game of Russian roulette, except bullets to the head are a quick death. The extremely powerful incentive for companies would be to misrepresentat the risks and pay a pittance for the earliest trials, since these are the least likely to lead to profitable new medications.

Not to mention, if we were to replace mouse models with human subjects, the cost to develop new drugs would skyrocket, as even the least pittance afforded to some slave laborer in the this world would be more expensive than a mouse.

[zo1]

I share your concerns about it, and there is definitely potential for it to be abused and for it to create an underclass. But even for those, why not at least explore the option and at the same time use regulation to make it safe and not open for abuse? We're perfectly fine doing all sorts of games of wack-a-mole with other areas that we're trying to regulate but the free-market is constantly working around, so why not here too?

[tsimionescu]

But this is what we've done, right? Drugs are tested on people, but only after they've been proven to be (a) somewhat promising and (b) somewhat safe in animal models. This helps make human trials safe.

Secondly, we've removed the profit motive, so that people are not allowed to be coerced by money into trying out someone's drug, and drug companies are not incentivised to test their drugs exclusively on the poorest people - this helps prevent abuse.