Constitutional expert Fali S Nariman and former attorney general Soli S Sorabjee on Thursday told the Supreme Court that it would be judicial overreach if the Supreme Court framed coercive media guidelines on reporting ongoing criminal trials. The ominous warnings from Nariman and Sorabjee came on the concluding day of the over month-long deliberations by a five-judge bench comprising Chief Justice S H Kapadia and Justices D K Jain, S S...

‘Spread of the Bt gene could make brinjal a problematic weed' An independent enquiry has revealed that the cultivation of genetically engineered (GE, also called genetically modified, or GM) Bt brinjal poses risks to the environment and possibly to human health. The occurrence of wild, weedy and also cultivated relatives presents a likelihood that the GE Bt gene will spread to these relatives but, so far, this has largely been overlooked...

The Supreme Court has taken steps to lay down a code for media reporting. This attempt at prior restraint on the media is a dangerous move with precedent from authoritarian polities. In a context where the judiciary has been lax in defending the media from attacks which seek to curb its freedom, such unilateral moves will not remedy bad reporting but rather make conditions worse for the media to play...

India joins global drug discovery league The launch by Ranbaxy last week of Synriam, a new drug to treat malaria, is an important milestone. Having made its name by manufacturing generic (off patent) drugs cheaply, India’s pharmaceutical industry has struggled to achieve original drug discovery since the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations signalled the onset of product patents in India. It began to be realised, in time, that there was...

Ignoring widespread concern over the safety, efficacy and cost of pentavalent vaccines, India’s central health ministry has, this month, approved inclusion of the prophylactic cocktail in the universal immunisation programme in seven of its provinces. Pentavalent vaccine doses, a cocktail of five antigens in a single shot, confers immunity against five paediatric diseases - diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, hepatitis B and haemophilus influenza type b (Hib), with the last one considered particularly...