AIR: AMERICA'S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS Presents an Expose of Corrupt Profiteering and Grievous Disregard for Human Test Subjects in the Pharmaceutical Industry When a Bitter Pill Premieres September 8 on PBS.

NEW YORK -- New Series From Thirteen/WNET New York Chronicles The Magazine Investigation That Uncovered Lax Drug Testing Safeguards And The Government's Failure At Industry Oversight

Every prescription medicine a person takes is tested on humans before it's approved by the Food and Drug Administration for sale and use. But if you assumed those tests are always done smartly, safely and ethically under the watchful eye of expert regulators, you would be very, very wrong.

Perhaps even dead wrong.

That's what a team of investigative reporters from Bloomberg Markets magazine discovered in a yearlong investigation culminating in a devastating, award-winning report called "Big Pharma's Shameful Secret," chronicled when AIR: AMERICA'S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS presents A Bitter Pill, premiering Friday, September 8 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings). Award-winning broadcast journalist Sylvia Chase narrates.

Bloomberg Markets, which covers business and finances and is published monthly by Bloomberg News, shared with readers the closely-held secret that "across the U.S., the centers that do the testing - and the regulators who watch them - allow scores of people to be injured or killed."

Approximately 3.7 million people in the U.S. have enrolled in drug tests sponsored by the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. Each test requires stringent scientific and ethical standards. But the nation's biggest drug companies now farm out much of their clinical trials to for-profit centers whose practices are monitored by other for-profit companies, all of them paid by "Big Pharma." This conflict of interest, as the magazine reports, has led to egregious incidents.

A Bitter Pill vividly brings the magazine's explosive findings to life through interviews with victims and their families. Equally disturbing is the story of volunteers who enroll in more than one clinical trial at a time, in clear violation of both scientific and ethical protocol. A Bitter Pill also includes an interview with an Argentine immigrant who says he received more than $13,000 for participating in three clinical trials during the same period at two Miami testing companies, one of which was SFBC, at the time North America's largest for-profit clinical trials company. When the Bloomberg report was published, SFBC threatened this man with deportation if he did not recant his statements to the magazine.

Bloomberg Markets' investigation into the seamy underside of clinical drug trials won a coveted Investigative Reporters and Editors Certificate and a George Polk Award for Health Reporting. It led to a congressional investigation into human testing and to the resignation of some top executives at SFBC.

Upcoming AIR episodes will feature a National Public Radio report on the abuse of immigrant detainees held by the Department of Homeland Security at jails in the United States, and an investigation into safety breaches and coverups within the oil transportation industry in the Pacific Northwest.

Funders for AIR: AMERICA'S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS include Bernard and Irene Schwartz, Park Foundation, The Popplestone Foundation, The Jacob Burns Foundation, The Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation, Tracy and Eric Semler, and Scripps Howard Foundation.

AIR: AMERICA'S INVESTIGATIVE REPORTS is a production of Thirteen/WNET New York in association with the Center for Investigative Reporting. Stephen Segaller, director of news and public affairs programming at Thirteen, is executive-in-charge of AIR. Tom Casciato is executive producer; Scott Davis is senior producer.