Month: August 2006

Early feedback on The Body Hunters

August 29, 2006 / Sonia Shah

Some early feedback from readers of The Body Hunters, both near and far:

“Thank you so much for sending me your book. It is excellent and will
have a special place on my shelf.” —A formerly high-ranking physician with Pfizer

“I really enjoyed reading your book, The Body Hunters. ( Did you base the
title on Paul de Kruif’s book, The Microbe Hunters ?)” —Dr AniruddhaMalpani, Medical Director, HELP – Health Education Library for People, Mumbai, India

“I just read Body Hunters for a review. As an investigative reporter for more than 20 years, I thought it was a very shrewd piece of work. Bravo. I look forward to reading your next book.” –Charles Rusnell, Staff Writer, The Edmonton Journal

“There’s nothing I love more than a good book, unless it is a free good book…Last week I was sent The Body Hunters by Sonia Shah…I can recommend that folks read the book–it’s a well-documented and clearly presented examination of an industry that many of us depend on.” —fenris.org

Experimenting on prisoners

August 13, 2006 / Sonia Shah

Important bans protecting prisoners from medical experimentation are on the verge of dissolution.
As reported by the New York Times today in a front-page story, last month the Institute of Medicine recommended that federal agencies drop the bans. The bans, long justified by the fact that people behind bars can scarcely be viewed as voluntarily consensual, stanched a once-booming industry of experimenting on the incarcerated. Drug companies disassembled the testing labs they’d built next to the prison gates.
If lawmakers take up the IOM’s recommendations as expected, the floodgates may once again be opened.
The IOM takes pains to detail researchers’ transgressions against prisoners in scientific experiments–see this NYT video on the Holmesburg trials, for example–but considered that the hypothetical benefits of prisoner research outweigh the certain and well-documented risks.

These lauded benefits, unlike clearly detailed risks, sound wonderful but are curiously vague.

More details to come…For now, chew on the fact that many of the authors of the IOM recommendations conduct prisoner research (to answer various social science and epidemiological questions) themselves. A conflict of interest, perhaps?

The Body Hunters: now available!

August 2, 2006 / Sonia Shah

I’m thrilled to report that Amazon.com has started to fill orders for The Body Hunters. A fall speaking tour that includes stops in Boston, New York, Washington DC, Tuskegee AL, Athens GA, Spokane, Seattle and London is in the works. I’m really looking forward to hearing what readers think about the book. Please do contact me with your comments or if you are interested in sponsoring an event, at sonia@soniashah.com