-Live Mint The first in a two-part series examining the opaque world of clinical trials in India  A hospital in Indore has been able to get away with unethical medical trials in which 32 people have died over five years, according to the state government. This despite several investigations, a state government ban and Supreme Court strictures—a classic example of the lawless nature of the clinical trial business in India.   Lata Mehra, who...

-The Indian Express The government’s proposal to price-control certain drugs will create more problems than it will solve From clothes to cars, prices of consumer products the world over are determined taking into account input costs, margins and competition, popularly called the cost-based pricing system. Departing from this sound, fair, tried and tested principle of commerce, the government’s new drug pricing policy, approved by the Group of Ministers headed by Sharad Pawar,...

-Mainstream Weekly Intense and motivated propaganda, powerful national and international diplomatic pressure, verging on pure and simple arms-twisting of the kind the Third World has been facing for decades by means of the active role of the econo-mic hit-men in the policy establishments, huge cash-back lobbying, both in India and abroad, blunt attempts to bamboozle the persons holding key positions in India’s policy establishment through a combination of hissing and kissing...

-Live Mint He is at the head of a march to Delhi for a new policy that promises every poor family a small patch of land Morena (Madhya Pradesh): One hot Friday in October, a 64-year-old man named P.V. Rajagopal is marching at the head of a procession of around 50,000 people on the highway from Gwalior to Delhi.   Rajagopal is slight and heavily sunburnt, and has walked tens of thousands of kilometres...

-Deccan Herald The Supreme Court on Monday expressed concern over the lives of people who, without their knowledge, were subjected to drug clinical trials by pharma companies and sought details of the number of such trials and the deaths and adverse reactions caused by them over the last seven years. “We are concerned with the lives of those who become subjects of clinical trials unknowingly and helplessly,” ta bench of Justices R...