Sometimes volunteering for drug trials can be no different than playing Russian Roulette. At least this was what happened in France this past week when a painkiller’s test trial killed not the pain but one of the volunteers as well as leaving five others hospitalized.
In the first reports on major media outlets, like International Business Times, said that it was a “cannabis-based painkiller” whose trial went terribly wrong, and led to the death of one man and the hospitalization of five others with serious reaction to the drug. The affected were hospitalized Monday through Thursday at the Rennes University Hospital, where the man in coma was announced brain-dead.
Interestingly enough, a day later, reports of cannabis-based drug were denied by the health authorities and in stories as that in The Telegraph, the information about the nature of the drug was changed to a painkiller “based on a natural brain compound similar to the active ingredient in marijuana” but nit marijuana itself.
While news has it that the incident is being investigated for being one of the most serious in drug-trial history, the question about the nature of the drug remains hovering on critical thinkers’ mind. If the drug is not cannabis-based what is it actually based on and what keeps the authorities from declaring the exact name of the active ingredient and its source? It is worth-remembering that over the past few years, legalization of marijuana has become a major issue in the US and elsewhere and marijuana is being portrayed in media as a benign and useful substance that does more good with little or no harm to health.
