I'd Rather Be a Rodent

A story from the New York Times covers a report from the Department of Health and Human Services saying that the US Food and Drug Administration "does very little to ensure the safety of the millions of people who participate in clinical trials," according to the article. Apparently, in more than two-thirds of cases where clinical trials inspectors determined that there were serious problems, FDA officials "downgraded" the reports in ways that made those problems appear less important. The article quotes U Penn's Arthur Caplan as saying, "In many ways, rats and mice get greater protection as research subjects in the United States than do humans."