Episode 3 - Questions The Pharma Regulator Wouldn’t Answer (with Dr. Alan Black)

In this episode of Broken Custodians, Molly and Ben Kingsley from UsForThem speak to former pharmaceutical industry insider Dr Alan Black.They begin with a recent case in which Moderna was found to have allowed inappropriate payments to be offered to children to join a medical trial, and use it as a starting point to explore broader questions about ethics and accountability in the pharmaceutical industry.Molly, Ben and Alan discuss how the pharmaceutical industry is regulated in the UK, and why self-regulation is failing the public. They also examine the role of government-backed public health messaging, the rarely-discussed concept of conditional marketing authorisations and its significance during the pandemic, and the warnings raised by the government’s ethics committee before it was sidelined and then shut down.More broadly, this episode asks what the findings against Moderna reveal about public trust and the relationship between government and the pharmaceutical industry.Broken Custodians follows paper trails, interrogates official claims and asks what went wrong, who benefited, and what it would take to do better.Hosts: Molly Kingsley, Ben Kingsley Senior Producer: Francesca Gilardi Quadrio CurzioVideo Editor & Audio Producer: Andrija Klaric