Questionable drug trials on mentally challenged persons by doctors in Indore emphasise the need for strict enforcement of medical ethics. IN what appears to be a page out of Robin Cook's medical thriller, government and private doctors in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, reportedly carried out clinical trials of various medicines on some 233 patients who had gone to them seeking psychiatric treatment. As in Cook's famous book Coma, in which a medical...

-Daily Bhaskar   The malnourished children in tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh were subjected to drug trials by doctors at their clinics in defiance of set norms. Documents accessed by DNA reveal that 20 malnourished children who suffered tuberculosis were tested for Bonnisan – an ayurvedic drug manufactured by Indian pharmaceutical company – at Nainpur in Mandla district. All the patients were in infancy or early childhood. Their age ranged from 8 months...

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has posted an advertisement inviting, by December 31, research proposals on long-term effects of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas on Bhopal’s residents. However, while it is yet to conduct this research 27 years after the Bhopal gas tragedy caused by MIC that left hundreds dead, data shows that the “gas patients” have been routinely used for clinical trials for new drugs at the Bhopal Memorial...

Infant deaths resulting from a recent clinical trial in India have led to a media outcry. But few have considered how explosive these revelations actually are, or the problematic use and application of the Right to Information Act. When India’s Right to Information Act came into force in 2005, the legislation’s text acknowledged the conflict that could arise from revealing certain information, pointing out that there was a need to ‘harmonise’...

‘Project proposal carried out as research on human participants' Nature and objectives of these projects makes it evident that they are in fact clinical trials ‘They have administered an intervention which is not part of a prescribed prevention' The final report of the committee appointed by the Centre to enquire into alleged irregularities in the conduct of studies using Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine has found enough evidence to suggest that there were...