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Healthy Volunteers in Commercial Clinical Drug Trials pp 1–24Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Healthy Volunteering and Phase I Clinical Drug Trials in the UK

Abstract

This chapter introduces the rationale, context, and main themes of the book. It explores what clinical drug trials are and why a sociological analysis of human involvement is important. It provides a context of human involvement in clinical drug trials; this includes a discussion on the history of human involvement and interrogation of the volunteer as a concept. This chapter charts the changes to regulatory frameworks and how they brought about the shift from the use of captive populations to ‘volunteers’ capable of rational consent. It also includes a discussion on the commercial contexts in which clinical drug trials take place today.

Keywords

  • Clinical drug trials
  • Healthy volunteers
  • Volunteering
  • Phase I

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  1. School of Applied Social Sciences, University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

    Shadreck Mwale

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  1. Shadreck Mwale
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Mwale, S. (2017). Healthy Volunteering and Phase I Clinical Drug Trials in the UK. In: Healthy Volunteers in Commercial Clinical Drug Trials. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59214-5_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59214-5_1

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