Saturday, November 19, 2011

Irresponsible drug trial kill thousands in India

Indian Girls Become the Guinea Pigs for Western Cos
By SiliconIndia, Friday, 18 November 2011, 03:21 Hrs 

Bangalore: In what could be seen as a new form of colonialism, India becomes the newtesting ground for drugs for
American, British and European pharmaceutical firms and according to a report
on the 'Independent', between 2007 and 2010, at least 1,730 people died in India while, or after,
participating in such trials.

In an apparent show of the Western mode of
exploitation, these multinational companies have been making the most of India's huge population and loose
regulations in this regard over the last five years by which they manage to
drastically cut short their expenses on
research for these lucrative products which are to be sold in the West.

Ever since the
restrictions on drug trials were relaxed in India, the industry has grown to a
point where more than 150,000 people are
involved in at least 1,600 clinical trials for the Western firms like Pfizer,
AstraZeneca and Merck. Although no official data is available on the size
of this exploitative industry, it is estimated to be worth as much as 189
million pounds. While the many on whom the trials were done, may have been only
eligible for the studies as they were ill, the following complications, even
resulting in death, are often not properly investigated.

While it is said that the crucial trials were carried out following appropriate
guidelines, the report says the lack of oversight have
resulted in a situation where poor and often illiterate individuals, picked
from the tribal areas or city slums are used for the critical trials without
obtaining proper informed consent which means they have apparently agreed to
the trials without fully understanding what they are signing up for. At the shadow of
this inhuman practice of drug trials on humans, a new industry has been spawned
making significant profits by providing participants for these studies.

An investigation by "The Independent" in the Indian states of Madhya
Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, as well as in Delhi and in London shows that hundreds of Indian tribal girls were
recruited without proper parental consent for an immunization study sponsored
by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, shockingly just on the node of the
government hostels warden. Several girls have reportedly killed and the
controversial study was stopped by the federal authorities. The investigation
also found the use by drug companies of survivors of the Bhopal tragedy, world's worst poisonous gas disaster, as guinea pigs in at least 11
trials without proper informed consent.In another
shocking finding, many cases of drug
trials were reported at a government hospital in Indore of which 81 cases of adverse effects
were reported.

Indiais just one of those
many developing countries being
exploited for its large, ignorant and illiterate tribals by the Western
pharmaceutical giants who spent over 40 billion pounds last year on research
and development. It's said that over 120,000 trials are taking
place in 178 countries and the companies can reportedly reduce up to 60 percent
of their spending on research through outsourcing the works to these third
world countries. The article also reveals that a quarter of all clinical data
submitted to European drug regulators for approval are obtained from trials in
low- and middle-income countries.

No comments: