When the Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk wanted to test whether the main ingredient in Ozempic, its wildly popular weight-loss and diabetes drug, could also treat liver disease, it first needed approval from an ethics panel to ensure the safety of trial volunteers in the United States. Such panels, called institutional review boards, have the power to reject drug trials or order modifications if participants face unreasonable risks. They are supposed to be independent watchdogs — counterweights to Big Pharma and overzealous researchers. Yet Novo didn’t have to venture far to hire an ethics panel for its liver-disease trial in May 2024: It chose WCG Clinical, a review board partly owned by its own corporate parent, The New York Times found.
Read the full article: How Private Equity Oversees the Ethics of Drug Research //
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/04/health/drug-trials-ethics-ozempic.html