When most people think of drug research, they imagine tightly regulated activity in world-class medical centers. The reality is very different. To cut costs and maximize profits, many drug-testing companies aggressively target people in desperate circumstances, including homeless men and women with severe mental illnesses.

According to federal guidelines, oversight bodies are supposed to protect “economically disadvantaged” and “mentally disabled” people from being exploited. But as a bioethics professor who’s spent years investigating the realities of pharmaceutical testing, I’ve seen for myself that drug-testing companies are taking advantage of poor, vulnerable people while the FDA does nothing to stop them.

Many drugs for mental illnesses have potentially dangerous side effects, like experimental anxiety drugs, antidepressants and antipsychotics. Even a small dose of some antipsychotics can cause some subjects to experience a sudden drop in blood pressure and pass out. Many people say that antipsychotics make them feel miserable, which is no surprise: side effects can include tremors, extreme restlessness, tics, and even a writhing, twitching motion of the mouth and tongue that can be permanent. Clinical trials of an experimental antipsychotic called sertindole were associated with 13 sudden, unexplained deaths.

Drug-testing companies persuade homeless, mentally ill people to test experimental drugs by offering them a paycheck. In Philadelphia, I spoke to a homeless man with schizophrenia who said he had been paid to take part in over twenty antipsychotic studies. A chaplain at a homeless shelter told me: “These guys have no job, no home, and a habit. You have people at their lowest state, and they’ll say yes to anything.”

Sign my petition and tell the FDA to prevent drug-testing companies from running experimental drug trials on the homeless and severely mentally ill.