-The Times of India   The National Human Rights Commission took cognizance of a TOI report about Clinical Trials of a sexual dysfunction drug conducted by Indore's government doctors on mentally-ill patients in private clinics. The commission issued a notice to the Madhya Pradesh chief secretary asking him to submit a report within four weeks. The NHRC also directed the chief secretary to inform if the doctors followed ICMR guidelines while getting approval...

In an outrageous act bound to dismay the medical ethics community, as many as 233 mentally ill patients in Indore were subjected to Clinical Trials to check the efficacy of various drugs, including 42 patients for Dapoxetine, a drug used to cure premature ejaculation. The trials were conducted at private clinics by doctors of the mental hospital attached to the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College, Indore, between January 2008 and October 2010....

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...

The claim that the Unique Identification project will facilitate the delivery of basic health services is dishonest. AMONG the many reasons cited for India to proceed with the Unique Identification (UID) project – that it will facilitate delivery of basic services, that it will plug leakages in public expenditure, that it will speed up achievement of targets in social sector schemes, and so on – the most specious is perhaps the...

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’...