The first testing of a drug to be approved in Canada, or in the USA by the FDA, or for the EU's drug agency, requires giving the drug at various doses to healthy persons. If there are bad side effects or even dangerous consequences, then these factors must be known or clinical trials on sick persons might cause great harm. While drug companies will publically make it sound like the first testing is done by healthy humans who volunteer to contribute to science, the reality about stage 1, safety, drug testing is not that way at all.
You can learn more about this issue by listening to this recent radio broadcast from The Current show on CBC Radio. "The human ‘guinea pigs’ testing drugs for a living"
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/audio/9.6518056
The reality in both the United States and Canada is that people are paid to do clinical trials and most of those persons are people who come from the lower income levels of our society and who are struggling to pay their rent, buy food, clothing, and transportation. Those from our society, who are desperate for income to survive.
Furthermore, these human guinea pigs, are often people who do this many times for many drugs. If they complain about side effects they are removed from the safety trial and will not get the full pay for their efforts. So, these "volunteers" learn to NOT report if they have side effects. They endure them. Of course, this means that drug companies get safety test data that LOOKS like there are no side effects. Can you imagine the problems with this process?
This is the situation in 2024 in the United States and Canada. Patients, physicians, bioscientists, and medical students need to be aware of this and do something about it.
