Indian women don't believe in donating blood. According to the first ever data bank on gender distribution of blood donors, India has among the lowest number of female blood donors in the world. Compiled by the World Health Organisation, the data bank says that of the 4.6 million donations in 2008, only 6% donations were by women. The rest 94% were male donors. There were only 13 countries including India among the...

Fifty-five days after three top executives of his company were sent to jail in the 2G spectrum scam, Anil Ambani, chairman of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group ( ADAG), paid them a visit at the Tihar jail complex on Wednesday. The move comes on a day when Anil Ambani's role has come under fresh scrutiny, with the CBI informing that the joint parliamentary committee it is still examining ADAG's role in...

After a government report confirmed major ethical violations in trials of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccines on Indian schoolgirls, senior doctors are calling for transparency in clinical trials conducted under private-public partnerships. The report is yet to be placed in the public domain, but its contents were revealed early May by senior doctors who assisted in its preparation, sparking outrage among public health advocates and women’s rights groups. HPV is an umbrella...

‘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...

He killed himself in his college library, unable to bear the insults and taunts. The suicide note recovered from his coat pocket charged his Head of the Department (HOD) with deliberately failing him and threatening to fail him over and over. Seven months later, a three-member group of senior professors re-evaluated his answer sheet and found that he had in fact passed the test. Medical student Jaspreet Singh, a Dalit by...