VICE (2013) s06e26 Episode Script
The Road To Asylum and Lab Rat Nation
1 SHANE SMITH: This week on Vice: the end of asylum in America.
(HELICOPTER FLYING) (MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) KRISHNA ANDAVOLU: People are still coming in the thousands, and it seems like they're finding solidarity and strength in their numbers.
SMITH: And then, the bizarre world of human lab rats.
VIKRAM GANDHI: You're not the guy with the 10-hour Viagra erection, right? - No, that wasn't me.
- That wasn't you? Thank God.
(LAUGHS) I'm a freaking guinea pig, lab rat, and I love it.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING) (CROWD SHOUTING) They're saying that right now, it's time for change.
(SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY) In response to the large caravan of Central American migrants attempting to reach the United States, the Trump administration has taken extraordinary steps to fortify the border.
TRUMP: My administration is finalizing a plan to end the rampant abuse of our asylum system.
SMITH: Citing widespread abuse and fraud, the administration began cracking down on the nation's asylum system last year, narrowing legal pathways for people fleeing Central America.
Krishna Andavolu traveled to Central America and the US southern border to see how these new policy changes might impact the fate of these thousands of asylum seekers.
(BOAT MOTORS REVVING) (MAN OVER RADIO) So, where's the river from here? - I'll show you.
- Okay.
(BIRDS CHIRPING) MEDINA: Right here is a known area where they will raft people across.
They'll dock their raft, get five, six people at a time, and tell them to wait up here until the entire group is ready.
(INSECTS CHIRRING) (SPEAKING QUIETLY): Right here, if you look straight, there's a raft.
It's a green and yellow raft.
(MEDINA WHISTLES) (WHISPERING) (MEDINA SPEAKING SPANISH) (ANDAVOLU SPEAKS SPANISH) (ANDAVOLU SPEAKS SPANISH) ANDAVOLU: Wilder.
And what was the situation like in Honduras? (TANIA SPEAKS SPANISH) ANDAVOLU: Families like Wilder and Tania are crossing into the United States at record numbers, even as overall border arrests have fallen for decades, posing a unique challenge for Border Patrol officers.
MANUEL PADILLA, JR.
: Right now, the majority of the apprehensions that we make along the southwest border are primarily Central Americans.
They turn themselves in.
They're not trying to get away from us.
- Why do they do that? - They will always claim that they were escaping gang violence.
- What do you see coming up here? - I think this is people turning themselves in, looks like.
(PADILLA SPEAKING SPANISH) Asylum is there for a reason.
There's people that really need asylum, that qualify for asylum.
To say that all qualify for asylum, I would say that's not true.
JEFF SESSIONS: The system is being gamed.
It has become an easy ticket to illegal entry into the United States.
ANDAVOLU: Deciding which migrants deserve asylum falls on courts run by the Department of Justice.
We spoke to immigration judge Ashley Tabaddor about the state of asylum today.
Asylum allows people to ask for protection from certain types of severe harm that they're experiencing in their country.
The person has to demonstrate they have what's called a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, nationality, religion, political opinion, or this catch-all phrase of membership in a particular social group.
And they have to show that this fear of severe harm for these reasons is either being done by the government or the government is unable or unwilling, to provide them with protection.
The vast majority of the cases that we do see from Central America who are seeking asylum are fleeing gang-related violence or domestic violence.
The United States will no longer grant asylum to victims of domestic abuse or gang violence in most cases.
SESSIONS: Asylum was never meant to alleviate all problems, even all serious problems, that people face every day, all over the world.
ANDAVOLU: The attorney general's June decision overturned immigration court precedent, limiting the legal pathway to asylum.
This reversal followed other measures designed to address a staggering backlog of more than 760,000 pending immigration cases.
ANDAVOLU: Are immigration courts being politicized? Well, we believe that the immigration court system has traditionally been used, that is, unfortunately, as an extension of the executive branch's law enforcement policies.
So, it certainly predates this administration, but more recently, it's just become much more pronounced and much more problematic.
- Hmm.
- There may indeed be a real (CHUCKLES) reason for people who are rushing in, and who are seeking asylum or protection, and the backlog is because the court has been mismanaged and not provided the resource, in addition to that mismanagement.
So, this idea of this correlation of, "Oh well, we have more backlog and we have more people, therefore it means people are abusing it," it's a logical fallacy.
ANDAVOLU: But the court backlog has real consequences.
Asylum seekers must wait months or even years for a final decision.
For some, this is good news.
They can live and work in the US as their case winds through the system.
But for others, the prolonged legal process is reason enough to abandon their claim and be deported.
So this is the San Pedro Sula airport.
It's where migrants who are being deported from the United States back to Honduras land.
And San Pedro Sula is one of the most dangerous cities on the planet.
- (GUNSHOTS) - (SHOUTING) It has a very high murder rat, and the gangs MS-13 and the 18th Street gang both have heavy presences her.
So while some migrants in the United States who are claiming asylum are kind of stuck in limbo, awaiting their immigration court proceedings, those who are denied asylum oftentimes have to come back to cities like this, where they are forced to face the very perils that they were fleeing from in the first place.
We met a small business owner who, after being deported from the US this year, is now living in hiding.
He told us why he left Honduras in the first place.
(MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) (MAN CRYING) (SOBS) ANDAVOLU: His family relocated six times within the country, but the gang kept pursuing hi.
Eventually, he journeyed to the US, and was picked up and detained by immigration authorities.
(MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) Do you have the deportation form? (MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) ANDAVOLU: Did they explain to you what this form meant? That this meant that you were waiving your right to a credible fear interview to start the process of applying for asylum? (MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) ANDAVOLU: Are you living in fear? (MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) (INDISTINCT CHATTER) ANDAVOLU: In October, hundreds of Hondurans, citing persistent violence and a government unwilling to help, began marching together towards the United States.
Within days, their numbers ballooned into the thousands.
So, we're with the caravan of migrants.
There are people for as far as the eye can see.
Despite what the Trump administration's trying to do to clamp down, to deter people from coming from Central America, people are still coming in the thousands, and it seems like they're finding solidarity and strength in their numbers.
This mass exodus ignited a political firestorm right before the US midterm elections, calling into question the very future of asylum in the United State.
NEWSMAN: The drama unfolding south of the border tonight.
Thousands of migrants marching north.
NEWSWOMAN: That caravan growing to a mile long as it heads straight for our border More than 5,000 troops are being sent to the US southern border.
TRUMP: You're gonna find MS-13.
You're gonna find Middle Eastern.
You're gonna find everything.
JOHN KASICH: It could easily have been all of us.
That we're in the caravan, that we're marching north, trying to save our families.
ANDAVOLU: If you're able to get to the United States, how do you plan on preventing yourself from being deported? (SPEAKING SPANISH) (WOMEN SPEAKING SPANISH) (MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) ANDAVOLU: If I'm not a citizen of the United States and I come into this country unauthorized, why do I have access to due process? TABADDOR: We've made a commitment that if somebody comes to our borders and says, "I have a fear of going back home.
I'm seeking asylum," that they should be afforded due process.
There is no restriction about being a United States citizen.
That is what both our commitment to the international community requires, and that is what the Constitution of the United States provides for each individual.
Close to $400 billion is spent on prescription drugs in the United States every year.
But before those drugs can go to market, they must be tested for safety and efficacy.
Now, testing begins with laboratory animals before moving on to human beings, who are often paid to take part in FDA clinical trials.
The practice has created a subculture of people who travel around the country, making a living by participating in these trials.
So, we sent Vikram Gandhi to meet some of the lab animals and human beings who test our medications.
(MONITOR BEEPING) (BEEPING CONTINUES) What exactly are you doing? What is this surgery? We have a prototype artificial cornea, made out of synthetic material.
We're trying to see if it might work in rabbits.
GANDHI: This rabbit is one of many participating in a trial of synthetic cornea implants, at a Johns Hopkins University research facility in Maryland.
GANDHI: How would this translate into humans? Directly.
I've had three corneal transplants.
- Wow.
- All of my transplants came from cadavers.
This is a plastic cornea.
You can put this in a wrapper, just like you do a suture.
You just open it up and you do the surgery.
- I know, I know.
- (CAGE RATTLES) GANDHI: Robert Adams is the director of Research Animal Resources.
He oversees the care of the research animals, which are used for medical testing.
So, this is a pretty typical animal room.
It holds somewhere between seven and 900 cages.
GANDHI: This is like an apartment complex.
Yeah.
It's like a condo.
Probably most of them in this room are genetically modified.
And so, what does that mean? Well, they've either put a gene or taken a gene out.
She's checking her mice to see if they are transgenic.
We're looking for the Marfan mutation that was inserted into the mouse.
So, she's gonna take a small piece of their tail, and that's gonna be analyzed to see if the gene is there.
And so what I'm gonna do with these mice, if they have the Marfan trait, is treat them with a specific drug.
We have fish.
We have frogs, bats, owls, rabbits, guinea pigs, multiple species of monkey, pigs, dogs, cats No sheep right now.
We have rats in here.
You wanna see rats? Sure.
ADAMS: A mouse is good as far as genetics go, - all that stuff.
- Yeah.
But if you wanna do surgery on them, they're only this big.
So, you can do more things with a rat than you can with a mouse.
You can use a hundred rather than two monkeys.
Monkeys are extremely expensive.
These were about $7,000.
- GANDHI: Would you sell me a monkey - ADAMS: No.
We have some of our monkeys on treatments every day, and the one thing we found, that when they're tired of everything else, they'll still eat the Starbursts.
There he goes.
ADAMS: Okay, we'll go look at the pig.
You see that area on his side? - GANDHI: Yeah.
- So, that's the knee from another pig.
- GANDHI: So that is a knee? - Yep.
That knee is no different than transplanting a kidney - Right.
- or a heart or a lung, - but you can see it.
- Right.
So, it's far easier to know there's something going on by looking at that.
GANDHI: When it comes to development of medicines in the United States and around the world, why is this center and other centers like this important to that process? ADAMS: Well, in the United States, most biomedical research is done at institutions like this.
Pharmaceutical companies, you know, they talk about how many billions of dollars it costs to produce a drug, to develop a drug.
So they're not While they do basic research, a lot of the basic research is done here.
And then, if it looks like it's gonna work out, then it'll go up to the higher level to a pharmaceutical company.
GANDHI: Once the safety and efficacy of a new drug is determined through animal research, the pre-clinical phase ends, and the drug moves on to FDA clinical trials.
In order to gain FDA approval, pharmaceutical companies need to make it through multiple phases of clinical trials to find out how the drug affects human beings.
For much of the 20th century, medical experiments were conducted on prisoners.
Holmesburg Prison in Pennsylvania was one such facility, where inmates were the subjects of testing.
Author Allen Hornblum took us on a tour of the now shuttered prison.
HORNBLUM: This is H block, and H block was the block that was taken over by the doctors at the University of Pennsylvania, who used it to develop all sorts of ointments and chemicals and things.
GANDHI: So, this is really I mean, it's a prison, but in some ways, this is a laboratory.
HORNBLUM: This county prison became an adjunct of the University of Pennsylvania's medical school.
You had two, three dozen different experiments for different private and public sector operations, including the US Army.
By 1974, news about the experiments here become so negative, so problematic, that the city leaders shut it down.
That was replicated at similar facilities around the country.
GANDHI: But a growing pharmaceutical industry still needed to test new drugs on humans subjects.
So, for the first phase of clinical testing, they now hire clinical research organizations, or CROs, which do the work of finding participants and running the tests.
The biggest CRO is Covance, Inc.
, which has over 80 facilities around the world.
We went to Evansville, Indian, to meet some clinical trial participants.
(CHATTER, LAUGHTER) Every study, you'll hear about that study where they cut off your toe, and sew it back, and you get, like, lots of money.
That's not real.
It's just one of those urban myth things.
GANDHI: I'm at the Corner Pocket in Evansville, Indiana.
This is a hangout for human guinea pigs.
- Are you a career lab rat? - STEWART: Absolutely.
This is my main gig.
So far this year, I made 21,000.
I've done 30-plus studies.
I mean, I used to not even look at studies below $4,000.
- Wow, okay.
- Some drugs are more profitable than others.
I don't have a whole lot of other career options.
I'm a lawyer, but I don't practice.
- You're a lawyer? - (CHUCKLES) Yeah.
- Wow, what happened? - I I I have some competency issues.
You're not the guy with the 10-hour Viagra erection, right? - No, that wasn't me.
- That wasn't you? Thank, thank God.
(LAUGHS) (LAUGHTER) I was doing a study in Nebraska, probably last September.
The side effects I was feeling was like a tingling sensation, in my hands, and my eyebrows.
But it got better.
Do you feel that doing all these drugs for so many years has affected you physically or mentally? I compare it to my college days, when you go to a party and somebody hands you some pills.
We've been in many studies together.
GANDHI: Robert, a career lab rat, moved to Evansville because of the numerous clinical trials taking place there.
He uses the town as his home base for traveling the country in search of his next gig.
I'm a freaking guinea pig, lab rat and I love it.
- You know what I mean? - How many years have you been doing this now? Seven.
- Seven years? - Seven years.
When the mortgage crisis hit, I lost my income.
I went homeless.
Someone said, "Hey, you can do a clinical trial.
You can take an experimental drug, "and you can make yourself two grand, three grand, within a week.
" Ching! I've taken everything from Alzheimer's, cancer drugs, HIV cocktails.
I literally ran with it.
I went from Massachusetts to Seattle, Seattle to Miami, Florida, Miami over to Wisconsin, you know? I would run anywhere and chase the money.
GANDHI: Robert took me along to a study he's doing in Knoxville, Tennessee, 300 miles from Evansville.
So, this study that you're going to right now, how much does it pay, what is required of you to do it? The study pays $4,100.
The requirements are that I am a healthy, drug-free individual.
GANDHI: Eligibility or requirements vary from trial to trial.
Subjects in this clinical trial must pass blood and urine tests to ensure that they're healthy, and that they haven't done another study within 30 days.
Does it affect you mentally being in the hospital for so long, - and not really working, you know? - I'm working.
And you know what, I'm using my body to help science today, okay? I don't have to wait to get into a car accident and die to donate my organs.
(CHUCKLES) I get to watch the results and make money from it.
Great.
GANDHI: The next morning, Robert checked in to the UT Medical Center for a 14-day trial of a cholesterol medication.
At any given time, there are multiple studies underway.
GANDHI: So, this is basically what the job is.
You come in here - (MONITOR BEEPING) - you dose, they come and take your readings.
Every few hours, their vitals are taken, their blood's taken, they have timed meals, and they just observe what's going on in your body after you take your medicine.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER) (BEEPING CONTINUES) WILLIAM SMITH: How's this going so far? Did the medicine this morning make you sleepy at all? I haven't felt anything so far.
No Me, I'm fine.
Good.
That's, that's the right answer.
(LAUGHING) GANDHI: Dr.
William Smith oversees the clinical trials at UT Knoxville, and sees value in using career lab rats for longer term studies, since they can handle the rigors of testing over many weeks.
Not all professional subjects are the same, but we, we try to use them in a very limited niche with a very long stay study, where it's really helpful to have people that you know can tolerate being in a study unit for two or three weeks, or even longer.
At this point at least, we can find no deleterious effects of having done - so many studies.
- Wow.
GANDHI: After having their blood taken and their vitals checked, the only other responsibility is to eat, which is how they often can catch up with other lab rats.
PAUL VIDAMO: What study is it for you? - BIAFORE: Me? Oh - Yes, sir.
- Probably, like, 70.
- 70? BIAFORE: Where'd you travel from, or do you live here? I live in Florida.
You do studies in Miami area? No, I stay on the other end.
I stay in Daytona.
How's the Orlando clinic? If you've been to Covance in Daytona, it's about the same.
(PHONE RINGING) VIDAMO: Which one of you is just another lab rat? BIAFORE: That's J-A-L-R.
I never met you, but it's nice to meet you.
- Yeah, pleasure.
- VIDAMO: I've heard of you.
GANDHI: Robert's roommate, Paul, founded a website that lab rat's use to track down studies.
He's a bit of a celebrity in the world of clinical trials.
GANDHI: So, wow, what's going on here? This is All right, this is gonna be a fur suit I'm gonna have made.
It's like a full-body fur suit.
GANDHI: So, you wanna actually dress up like a rat? CLOUGH: Right, it's to, uh, advertise my website.
- Do you like the environment here? - Yeah, I do.
It's a very structured environment, and you can't leave, so it's a completely separate world when you're in here.
It's actually quite difficult to imagine staying in a room like this for two weeks straight.
This was just something I put together.
Veins, needles, and blood draws, drawing.
Satan falling.
God's calling.
GANDHI: These guys can't even leave the facility.
Yes, they can consume social media, or watch television, but they're pretty much trapped.
I see a vision, dog.
Too many drugs, pharmaceutical thugs.
GANDHI: A lot of these guys have done up to 50, 60, even 100 clinical trials.
Yeah, I take drugs to make money to pay bills, ain't that funny? It's not, but it's reality.
I died already.
Another lab rat casualty.
(MONITOR BEEPING) GANDHI: Some of the lab rats say this lifestyle is not sustainable.
CLOUGH: I'm to the point now where I'm looking at other options.
I mean, it's not a means to an end.
People who think they're gonna make a living - indefinitely, it's just not gonna be possible.
- Yeah.
A lot of people age out.
I'm kinda nearing my end game.
It's because I'm just having a lot more problems as far as my blood draws.
I have a lot of scar tissue on my arm.
GANDHI: How many times do you think you've gotten your blood drawn? CLOUGH: At least 5,000 times.
GANDHI: 5,000 times? CLOUGH: Yes, but if you need $5,000, there's very few places you can get it legally - Yeah.
- in two weeks.
GANDHI: While clinical trials have given professional lab rats a quick way to make a buck, there's no quick way to make a drug.
The lab rats take part only in phase one of testing, which is followed by at least two additional phases which take several years.
Even after all this testing, there's always some uncertainty about how drugs will perform once they're made available to millions of people in the open market.
NEWSMAN: Major news today about the world's largest drugmaker Pfizer.
NEWSMAN 2: The arthritis pain medicine Bextra was touted to doctors.
.
NEWSMAN 3: Merck marketed Vioxx as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis for three years.
Evidence showed the drug doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke.
GANDHI: How effective are clinical trials and pre-clinical trials to understanding the safety and efficacy of a medication? They tend to be very good at testing the efficacy of what a pill does.
They're not as good on tracking safety because they typically are just too small.
The drug has a capability of causing a problem.
They test it in very few people, don't see the problem, and now they're gonna go and give it to millions of people.
When you start to take a drug from that really small population and give it to a really big one, you're gonna start to see problems.
Once a drug is marketed, that's when the drug is gonna go from this really small population of people who are being tested on for one week, two weeks, three weeks, six weeks, to many millions of people who may have to take that drug for the rest of their lives.
So, all the first users are actually the real guinea pigs? That's how I feel about it.
The real clinical trial begins once it's marketed to the general population.
(HELICOPTER FLYING) (MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) KRISHNA ANDAVOLU: People are still coming in the thousands, and it seems like they're finding solidarity and strength in their numbers.
SMITH: And then, the bizarre world of human lab rats.
VIKRAM GANDHI: You're not the guy with the 10-hour Viagra erection, right? - No, that wasn't me.
- That wasn't you? Thank God.
(LAUGHS) I'm a freaking guinea pig, lab rat, and I love it.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING) (CROWD SHOUTING) They're saying that right now, it's time for change.
(SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY) In response to the large caravan of Central American migrants attempting to reach the United States, the Trump administration has taken extraordinary steps to fortify the border.
TRUMP: My administration is finalizing a plan to end the rampant abuse of our asylum system.
SMITH: Citing widespread abuse and fraud, the administration began cracking down on the nation's asylum system last year, narrowing legal pathways for people fleeing Central America.
Krishna Andavolu traveled to Central America and the US southern border to see how these new policy changes might impact the fate of these thousands of asylum seekers.
(BOAT MOTORS REVVING) (MAN OVER RADIO) So, where's the river from here? - I'll show you.
- Okay.
(BIRDS CHIRPING) MEDINA: Right here is a known area where they will raft people across.
They'll dock their raft, get five, six people at a time, and tell them to wait up here until the entire group is ready.
(INSECTS CHIRRING) (SPEAKING QUIETLY): Right here, if you look straight, there's a raft.
It's a green and yellow raft.
(MEDINA WHISTLES) (WHISPERING) (MEDINA SPEAKING SPANISH) (ANDAVOLU SPEAKS SPANISH) (ANDAVOLU SPEAKS SPANISH) ANDAVOLU: Wilder.
And what was the situation like in Honduras? (TANIA SPEAKS SPANISH) ANDAVOLU: Families like Wilder and Tania are crossing into the United States at record numbers, even as overall border arrests have fallen for decades, posing a unique challenge for Border Patrol officers.
MANUEL PADILLA, JR.
: Right now, the majority of the apprehensions that we make along the southwest border are primarily Central Americans.
They turn themselves in.
They're not trying to get away from us.
- Why do they do that? - They will always claim that they were escaping gang violence.
- What do you see coming up here? - I think this is people turning themselves in, looks like.
(PADILLA SPEAKING SPANISH) Asylum is there for a reason.
There's people that really need asylum, that qualify for asylum.
To say that all qualify for asylum, I would say that's not true.
JEFF SESSIONS: The system is being gamed.
It has become an easy ticket to illegal entry into the United States.
ANDAVOLU: Deciding which migrants deserve asylum falls on courts run by the Department of Justice.
We spoke to immigration judge Ashley Tabaddor about the state of asylum today.
Asylum allows people to ask for protection from certain types of severe harm that they're experiencing in their country.
The person has to demonstrate they have what's called a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, nationality, religion, political opinion, or this catch-all phrase of membership in a particular social group.
And they have to show that this fear of severe harm for these reasons is either being done by the government or the government is unable or unwilling, to provide them with protection.
The vast majority of the cases that we do see from Central America who are seeking asylum are fleeing gang-related violence or domestic violence.
The United States will no longer grant asylum to victims of domestic abuse or gang violence in most cases.
SESSIONS: Asylum was never meant to alleviate all problems, even all serious problems, that people face every day, all over the world.
ANDAVOLU: The attorney general's June decision overturned immigration court precedent, limiting the legal pathway to asylum.
This reversal followed other measures designed to address a staggering backlog of more than 760,000 pending immigration cases.
ANDAVOLU: Are immigration courts being politicized? Well, we believe that the immigration court system has traditionally been used, that is, unfortunately, as an extension of the executive branch's law enforcement policies.
So, it certainly predates this administration, but more recently, it's just become much more pronounced and much more problematic.
- Hmm.
- There may indeed be a real (CHUCKLES) reason for people who are rushing in, and who are seeking asylum or protection, and the backlog is because the court has been mismanaged and not provided the resource, in addition to that mismanagement.
So, this idea of this correlation of, "Oh well, we have more backlog and we have more people, therefore it means people are abusing it," it's a logical fallacy.
ANDAVOLU: But the court backlog has real consequences.
Asylum seekers must wait months or even years for a final decision.
For some, this is good news.
They can live and work in the US as their case winds through the system.
But for others, the prolonged legal process is reason enough to abandon their claim and be deported.
So this is the San Pedro Sula airport.
It's where migrants who are being deported from the United States back to Honduras land.
And San Pedro Sula is one of the most dangerous cities on the planet.
- (GUNSHOTS) - (SHOUTING) It has a very high murder rat, and the gangs MS-13 and the 18th Street gang both have heavy presences her.
So while some migrants in the United States who are claiming asylum are kind of stuck in limbo, awaiting their immigration court proceedings, those who are denied asylum oftentimes have to come back to cities like this, where they are forced to face the very perils that they were fleeing from in the first place.
We met a small business owner who, after being deported from the US this year, is now living in hiding.
He told us why he left Honduras in the first place.
(MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) (MAN CRYING) (SOBS) ANDAVOLU: His family relocated six times within the country, but the gang kept pursuing hi.
Eventually, he journeyed to the US, and was picked up and detained by immigration authorities.
(MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) Do you have the deportation form? (MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) ANDAVOLU: Did they explain to you what this form meant? That this meant that you were waiving your right to a credible fear interview to start the process of applying for asylum? (MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) ANDAVOLU: Are you living in fear? (MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) (INDISTINCT CHATTER) ANDAVOLU: In October, hundreds of Hondurans, citing persistent violence and a government unwilling to help, began marching together towards the United States.
Within days, their numbers ballooned into the thousands.
So, we're with the caravan of migrants.
There are people for as far as the eye can see.
Despite what the Trump administration's trying to do to clamp down, to deter people from coming from Central America, people are still coming in the thousands, and it seems like they're finding solidarity and strength in their numbers.
This mass exodus ignited a political firestorm right before the US midterm elections, calling into question the very future of asylum in the United State.
NEWSMAN: The drama unfolding south of the border tonight.
Thousands of migrants marching north.
NEWSWOMAN: That caravan growing to a mile long as it heads straight for our border More than 5,000 troops are being sent to the US southern border.
TRUMP: You're gonna find MS-13.
You're gonna find Middle Eastern.
You're gonna find everything.
JOHN KASICH: It could easily have been all of us.
That we're in the caravan, that we're marching north, trying to save our families.
ANDAVOLU: If you're able to get to the United States, how do you plan on preventing yourself from being deported? (SPEAKING SPANISH) (WOMEN SPEAKING SPANISH) (MAN SPEAKING SPANISH) ANDAVOLU: If I'm not a citizen of the United States and I come into this country unauthorized, why do I have access to due process? TABADDOR: We've made a commitment that if somebody comes to our borders and says, "I have a fear of going back home.
I'm seeking asylum," that they should be afforded due process.
There is no restriction about being a United States citizen.
That is what both our commitment to the international community requires, and that is what the Constitution of the United States provides for each individual.
Close to $400 billion is spent on prescription drugs in the United States every year.
But before those drugs can go to market, they must be tested for safety and efficacy.
Now, testing begins with laboratory animals before moving on to human beings, who are often paid to take part in FDA clinical trials.
The practice has created a subculture of people who travel around the country, making a living by participating in these trials.
So, we sent Vikram Gandhi to meet some of the lab animals and human beings who test our medications.
(MONITOR BEEPING) (BEEPING CONTINUES) What exactly are you doing? What is this surgery? We have a prototype artificial cornea, made out of synthetic material.
We're trying to see if it might work in rabbits.
GANDHI: This rabbit is one of many participating in a trial of synthetic cornea implants, at a Johns Hopkins University research facility in Maryland.
GANDHI: How would this translate into humans? Directly.
I've had three corneal transplants.
- Wow.
- All of my transplants came from cadavers.
This is a plastic cornea.
You can put this in a wrapper, just like you do a suture.
You just open it up and you do the surgery.
- I know, I know.
- (CAGE RATTLES) GANDHI: Robert Adams is the director of Research Animal Resources.
He oversees the care of the research animals, which are used for medical testing.
So, this is a pretty typical animal room.
It holds somewhere between seven and 900 cages.
GANDHI: This is like an apartment complex.
Yeah.
It's like a condo.
Probably most of them in this room are genetically modified.
And so, what does that mean? Well, they've either put a gene or taken a gene out.
She's checking her mice to see if they are transgenic.
We're looking for the Marfan mutation that was inserted into the mouse.
So, she's gonna take a small piece of their tail, and that's gonna be analyzed to see if the gene is there.
And so what I'm gonna do with these mice, if they have the Marfan trait, is treat them with a specific drug.
We have fish.
We have frogs, bats, owls, rabbits, guinea pigs, multiple species of monkey, pigs, dogs, cats No sheep right now.
We have rats in here.
You wanna see rats? Sure.
ADAMS: A mouse is good as far as genetics go, - all that stuff.
- Yeah.
But if you wanna do surgery on them, they're only this big.
So, you can do more things with a rat than you can with a mouse.
You can use a hundred rather than two monkeys.
Monkeys are extremely expensive.
These were about $7,000.
- GANDHI: Would you sell me a monkey - ADAMS: No.
We have some of our monkeys on treatments every day, and the one thing we found, that when they're tired of everything else, they'll still eat the Starbursts.
There he goes.
ADAMS: Okay, we'll go look at the pig.
You see that area on his side? - GANDHI: Yeah.
- So, that's the knee from another pig.
- GANDHI: So that is a knee? - Yep.
That knee is no different than transplanting a kidney - Right.
- or a heart or a lung, - but you can see it.
- Right.
So, it's far easier to know there's something going on by looking at that.
GANDHI: When it comes to development of medicines in the United States and around the world, why is this center and other centers like this important to that process? ADAMS: Well, in the United States, most biomedical research is done at institutions like this.
Pharmaceutical companies, you know, they talk about how many billions of dollars it costs to produce a drug, to develop a drug.
So they're not While they do basic research, a lot of the basic research is done here.
And then, if it looks like it's gonna work out, then it'll go up to the higher level to a pharmaceutical company.
GANDHI: Once the safety and efficacy of a new drug is determined through animal research, the pre-clinical phase ends, and the drug moves on to FDA clinical trials.
In order to gain FDA approval, pharmaceutical companies need to make it through multiple phases of clinical trials to find out how the drug affects human beings.
For much of the 20th century, medical experiments were conducted on prisoners.
Holmesburg Prison in Pennsylvania was one such facility, where inmates were the subjects of testing.
Author Allen Hornblum took us on a tour of the now shuttered prison.
HORNBLUM: This is H block, and H block was the block that was taken over by the doctors at the University of Pennsylvania, who used it to develop all sorts of ointments and chemicals and things.
GANDHI: So, this is really I mean, it's a prison, but in some ways, this is a laboratory.
HORNBLUM: This county prison became an adjunct of the University of Pennsylvania's medical school.
You had two, three dozen different experiments for different private and public sector operations, including the US Army.
By 1974, news about the experiments here become so negative, so problematic, that the city leaders shut it down.
That was replicated at similar facilities around the country.
GANDHI: But a growing pharmaceutical industry still needed to test new drugs on humans subjects.
So, for the first phase of clinical testing, they now hire clinical research organizations, or CROs, which do the work of finding participants and running the tests.
The biggest CRO is Covance, Inc.
, which has over 80 facilities around the world.
We went to Evansville, Indian, to meet some clinical trial participants.
(CHATTER, LAUGHTER) Every study, you'll hear about that study where they cut off your toe, and sew it back, and you get, like, lots of money.
That's not real.
It's just one of those urban myth things.
GANDHI: I'm at the Corner Pocket in Evansville, Indiana.
This is a hangout for human guinea pigs.
- Are you a career lab rat? - STEWART: Absolutely.
This is my main gig.
So far this year, I made 21,000.
I've done 30-plus studies.
I mean, I used to not even look at studies below $4,000.
- Wow, okay.
- Some drugs are more profitable than others.
I don't have a whole lot of other career options.
I'm a lawyer, but I don't practice.
- You're a lawyer? - (CHUCKLES) Yeah.
- Wow, what happened? - I I I have some competency issues.
You're not the guy with the 10-hour Viagra erection, right? - No, that wasn't me.
- That wasn't you? Thank, thank God.
(LAUGHS) (LAUGHTER) I was doing a study in Nebraska, probably last September.
The side effects I was feeling was like a tingling sensation, in my hands, and my eyebrows.
But it got better.
Do you feel that doing all these drugs for so many years has affected you physically or mentally? I compare it to my college days, when you go to a party and somebody hands you some pills.
We've been in many studies together.
GANDHI: Robert, a career lab rat, moved to Evansville because of the numerous clinical trials taking place there.
He uses the town as his home base for traveling the country in search of his next gig.
I'm a freaking guinea pig, lab rat and I love it.
- You know what I mean? - How many years have you been doing this now? Seven.
- Seven years? - Seven years.
When the mortgage crisis hit, I lost my income.
I went homeless.
Someone said, "Hey, you can do a clinical trial.
You can take an experimental drug, "and you can make yourself two grand, three grand, within a week.
" Ching! I've taken everything from Alzheimer's, cancer drugs, HIV cocktails.
I literally ran with it.
I went from Massachusetts to Seattle, Seattle to Miami, Florida, Miami over to Wisconsin, you know? I would run anywhere and chase the money.
GANDHI: Robert took me along to a study he's doing in Knoxville, Tennessee, 300 miles from Evansville.
So, this study that you're going to right now, how much does it pay, what is required of you to do it? The study pays $4,100.
The requirements are that I am a healthy, drug-free individual.
GANDHI: Eligibility or requirements vary from trial to trial.
Subjects in this clinical trial must pass blood and urine tests to ensure that they're healthy, and that they haven't done another study within 30 days.
Does it affect you mentally being in the hospital for so long, - and not really working, you know? - I'm working.
And you know what, I'm using my body to help science today, okay? I don't have to wait to get into a car accident and die to donate my organs.
(CHUCKLES) I get to watch the results and make money from it.
Great.
GANDHI: The next morning, Robert checked in to the UT Medical Center for a 14-day trial of a cholesterol medication.
At any given time, there are multiple studies underway.
GANDHI: So, this is basically what the job is.
You come in here - (MONITOR BEEPING) - you dose, they come and take your readings.
Every few hours, their vitals are taken, their blood's taken, they have timed meals, and they just observe what's going on in your body after you take your medicine.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER) (BEEPING CONTINUES) WILLIAM SMITH: How's this going so far? Did the medicine this morning make you sleepy at all? I haven't felt anything so far.
No Me, I'm fine.
Good.
That's, that's the right answer.
(LAUGHING) GANDHI: Dr.
William Smith oversees the clinical trials at UT Knoxville, and sees value in using career lab rats for longer term studies, since they can handle the rigors of testing over many weeks.
Not all professional subjects are the same, but we, we try to use them in a very limited niche with a very long stay study, where it's really helpful to have people that you know can tolerate being in a study unit for two or three weeks, or even longer.
At this point at least, we can find no deleterious effects of having done - so many studies.
- Wow.
GANDHI: After having their blood taken and their vitals checked, the only other responsibility is to eat, which is how they often can catch up with other lab rats.
PAUL VIDAMO: What study is it for you? - BIAFORE: Me? Oh - Yes, sir.
- Probably, like, 70.
- 70? BIAFORE: Where'd you travel from, or do you live here? I live in Florida.
You do studies in Miami area? No, I stay on the other end.
I stay in Daytona.
How's the Orlando clinic? If you've been to Covance in Daytona, it's about the same.
(PHONE RINGING) VIDAMO: Which one of you is just another lab rat? BIAFORE: That's J-A-L-R.
I never met you, but it's nice to meet you.
- Yeah, pleasure.
- VIDAMO: I've heard of you.
GANDHI: Robert's roommate, Paul, founded a website that lab rat's use to track down studies.
He's a bit of a celebrity in the world of clinical trials.
GANDHI: So, wow, what's going on here? This is All right, this is gonna be a fur suit I'm gonna have made.
It's like a full-body fur suit.
GANDHI: So, you wanna actually dress up like a rat? CLOUGH: Right, it's to, uh, advertise my website.
- Do you like the environment here? - Yeah, I do.
It's a very structured environment, and you can't leave, so it's a completely separate world when you're in here.
It's actually quite difficult to imagine staying in a room like this for two weeks straight.
This was just something I put together.
Veins, needles, and blood draws, drawing.
Satan falling.
God's calling.
GANDHI: These guys can't even leave the facility.
Yes, they can consume social media, or watch television, but they're pretty much trapped.
I see a vision, dog.
Too many drugs, pharmaceutical thugs.
GANDHI: A lot of these guys have done up to 50, 60, even 100 clinical trials.
Yeah, I take drugs to make money to pay bills, ain't that funny? It's not, but it's reality.
I died already.
Another lab rat casualty.
(MONITOR BEEPING) GANDHI: Some of the lab rats say this lifestyle is not sustainable.
CLOUGH: I'm to the point now where I'm looking at other options.
I mean, it's not a means to an end.
People who think they're gonna make a living - indefinitely, it's just not gonna be possible.
- Yeah.
A lot of people age out.
I'm kinda nearing my end game.
It's because I'm just having a lot more problems as far as my blood draws.
I have a lot of scar tissue on my arm.
GANDHI: How many times do you think you've gotten your blood drawn? CLOUGH: At least 5,000 times.
GANDHI: 5,000 times? CLOUGH: Yes, but if you need $5,000, there's very few places you can get it legally - Yeah.
- in two weeks.
GANDHI: While clinical trials have given professional lab rats a quick way to make a buck, there's no quick way to make a drug.
The lab rats take part only in phase one of testing, which is followed by at least two additional phases which take several years.
Even after all this testing, there's always some uncertainty about how drugs will perform once they're made available to millions of people in the open market.
NEWSMAN: Major news today about the world's largest drugmaker Pfizer.
NEWSMAN 2: The arthritis pain medicine Bextra was touted to doctors.
.
NEWSMAN 3: Merck marketed Vioxx as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis for three years.
Evidence showed the drug doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke.
GANDHI: How effective are clinical trials and pre-clinical trials to understanding the safety and efficacy of a medication? They tend to be very good at testing the efficacy of what a pill does.
They're not as good on tracking safety because they typically are just too small.
The drug has a capability of causing a problem.
They test it in very few people, don't see the problem, and now they're gonna go and give it to millions of people.
When you start to take a drug from that really small population and give it to a really big one, you're gonna start to see problems.
Once a drug is marketed, that's when the drug is gonna go from this really small population of people who are being tested on for one week, two weeks, three weeks, six weeks, to many millions of people who may have to take that drug for the rest of their lives.
So, all the first users are actually the real guinea pigs? That's how I feel about it.
The real clinical trial begins once it's marketed to the general population.