When Experiments Travel

Honorable Mention for the 2014 Diana Forsythe Prize, Committee on the Anthropology of Science, Technology, and Computing of the General Anthropology Division, and the Society for the Anthropology of Work Obama administration officials wondering what to expect from this brewing storm should consult Adriana Petryna's new book When Experiments Travel, which deals with the global clinical trials industry, especially in low-income and middle-income countries. --Helen Epstein, The Lancet She succeeds in presenting a balanced set of viewpoints on a variety of concerns about recruiting practices, informed consent, drug safety, the blurring of lines between clinical practice and research, and issues of distributive justice such as drug pricing and access. --K.H. Jacobsen, Choice In When Experiments Travel, Adriana Petryna has written a timely book. It provides an important anthropological perspective on the issues surrounding clinical trials and how to make medical research more transparent and accessible to the general public. --Dinesh Sharma, Health Affairs When Experiments Travel is a provocative look inside the outsourcing of clinical trials. The issues that it raises are complex and profound. Hopefully, it will spawn further empirical work and influence the terms of the ongoing debate surrounding the ethics and regulation of international research. --Alex John London, IRB Ethics and Human Research [S]cholars of the social organization of medicine would appreciate this book for the window it provides into treatment... The book is also an important information source for economic sociologists interested in how a new industry is recontextualized into distant political and professional regimes. Finally, it should be appreciated for the insight it offers into the production of a form of evidence onto which a remarkable amount of importance is placed in contemporary medicine. --Daniel Menchik, Qualitative Sociology