Is it illegal? Or does it just not make any sense to ask someone taking an experimental drug to pay you for it? It's ridiculously hard to get people to participate in a trial even when pharma is paying them (granted though, also under the same ethics umbrella, such payments are not supposed to incentivize a decision to participate, only to remove the disincentives to participation, like having to pay for Ubers to/from the trial site).
Actually the way that we prevent pharma companies from using trials to commit fraud of this type is by tightly (very tightly) controlling the language they use to describe drugs that are still under evaluation. Basically every sentence that a researcher makes to a trial participant needs to pass an ethics review board to make sure it's not overselling the promise or underselling the risk.
Actually the way that we prevent pharma companies from using trials to commit fraud of this type is by tightly (very tightly) controlling the language they use to describe drugs that are still under evaluation. Basically every sentence that a researcher makes to a trial participant needs to pass an ethics review board to make sure it's not overselling the promise or underselling the risk.