A series of articles published by the Boston Globe in 2001 reveal...

A series of articles published by the Boston Globe in 2001 revealed that the number of children enrolled in clinical trials in 1997 was 16,000: by 2001, the number reached 45,000. The Globe found that children enrolled in clinical trials had suffered and died, and that ethical standards had been violated.[59] Financial incentives for parents, physicians, and researchers had undermined children's welfare. Children are currently being recruited with Toys 'R Us gift certificates. Parents in need of money are offered as much as $1,000 to "volunteer" their children for drug experiments that involve risks of harm.[60] The physicians who are engaged in such coercion receive as much as $5,000 in kickbacks (euphemistically called, "referral fees") for the recruitment of children.[61] None of these disturbing facts were brought to the attention of the U.S. Congress when it passed the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act in 2002. The evidence, however, shows that children are being deprived of existing, more protective federal regulations under 45 CFR 46, Subpart D, and are being subjected to foreseeable risks of harm and discomfort, often on the basis of a presumed potential risk for which there is no empirical evidence.[62] The FDA acknowledged that before FDAMA the use of children as subjects in phase I safety drug studies "had been primarily limited to life threatening diseases and children who had the disease" in question.[63] The policy prior to FDAMA protected children from harmful experiments in accord with the 1983 federal regulations (45 CFR 46.404-409). Following passage of FDAMA, however, federal policy broadened the criteria for inclusion of children in research generally and for participation of children entered in high-risk experiments. In 1999 the FDA acknowledged that the post-FDAMA policy change "led to an increasing number of proposals for studies of safety and pharmacokinetics, including those in children who do not have the condition for which the drug is intended."[64