-DNA   The outgoing chief information commissioner (CIC), of Maharashtra Vijay Kuvalekar, opined that the judicious usage of the Right to Information (RTI), Act 2005, has proved potent in solving many problems of the common man. Kuvalekar, was speaking to the Media Persons, on the eve of his retirement on Monday in Pune. “In my five-year tenure, I have come across many cases, where RTI has been successful in solving the problems of...

1,727 persons have died during drug trials between 2007 and 2010, says public interest petition The Supreme Court of India has issued notices to the Centre and the Madhya Pradesh government in connection with clinical drug trials being conducted across India. This follows a public interest petition filed by an Indore based non-profit, seeking the court's intervention to put a stop to unethical clinical trials. Reports of unethical trials conducted on...

-PTI Faced with strong objections from the Home Ministry, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has decided to do a complete review on the procedure and processes of collecting biometric data of 60 crore resident Indians and address all security concerns. Home Minister P Chidambaram today said UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani conveyed that he would spend the next two months doing a complete review and it would resume biometric capture only...

Here is a fundamental question to friends and supporters of Salman Rushdie: Is the right to speech and expression absolute, without any restrictions, in any democratic society? The right to freedom of expression is recognised as a human right under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 19 goes on to say that the exercise of this right carries “special duties and responsibilities” and may “therefore be...

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...