Panel to Draft Policies for Drug Tests on Disabled

The head of Los Angeles County’s Mental Health Department said he plans to convene a committee of patients, advocates and researchers to draw up policies regulating medical tests on severely disabled people in county care.

Another county committee earlier this month lifted a four-year ban on such procedures. But on Tuesday mental health director Marvin Southard called that decision a “baby step,” stressing that policies must be established before any tests can begin, a process that he said could take years.

The goal would be to allow tests only on patients whom the experimental drugs could help, and to protect those patients’ rights.

“It may be possible to come to the consensus that what this should really be about is an individual’s right to participate in something they want to do, rather than a drug company’s right to have a pool of potential guinea pigs,” Southard said.

He also said that if a consensus could not be reached, no tests would go forward.

Some mental health professionals and activists oppose any tests, saying patients deemed incompetent by a court do not have the capacity to give informed consent to drug trials.