| Summary: | As ubiquitous as drug trails are becoming, more and more marketing companies in the western world are looking beyond their own borders to recruit participants and conduct such experiments. While this has led to faster turnaround times and higher number of potential drugs being pushed into the market pipeline, such practices often raise questions about procedural thoroughness, propriety and marketing ethics. Are participants being provided the full and unbiased information? Are the recruits educated enough to comprehend the risks? Do the drugs being tested have any relevance at all in the host country? Are the same standards of rigor and oversight being followed in the host country as in their western counterparts? Consequently, the study achieves the following objectives: 1. Helps us better understand the extent of the loopholes that pharma companies exploit while marketing the ‘benefits’ of such drug trials to the intended participants and 2. Encourages more researchers to innovate better marketing strategies, so that future drug trials can be conducted in a systematic, ethical and yet rigorous manner.
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