大多数儿童药都在成人身上试的。因为试药是有经济补偿的,所以会很谨慎不在儿童身上试因为否则大多数被试都是穷人家的孩子。08年开始有部分放开,引起极大争议。有儿童的实验都是谨慎又谨慎,因为要求不单benefit outweight harm,而且几乎要求是no harm的。
FROM FDA: (http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm164427.htm)
Q: Are medications that are intended for children clinically tested on children?
A: If the product is to be used only for children, then it must be studied in the pediatric population. However, many therapies are developed for adults and then used in children without having been studied in children. Therefore, most marketed products that are mostly used in adults have not been studied in children—even though they may be used by doctors to treat children.
There has been improvement in this area in regard to prescription drugs. As of 2008, an estimated 50 to 60 percent of prescription drugs used to treat children have been studied in some part of the pediatric population. Still, the likelihood that a medicine has actually been studied in neonates—children less than a month old—is close to zero.
So nearly a decade into the 21st Century, most medicines intended for children, including many over-the-counter (OTC) products, haven’t been clinically studied in children—and certainly not in all age populations that comprise the branch of medicine known as “pediatrics.”