Author: Ozren Podnar |
India - a victim of pharmaceutical terror? |
|
The lack of regulatory oversight in India provides pharmaceutical industry with cheap and unscrupulous testing of new and potentially dangerous drugs on humans.
As a country with the world's second largest population, India has become the focus of pharmaceutical terror, according to NaturalNews.
Companies, mostly from the West, abuse the extremely poor Indians and subject them to immoral clinical trials.
Over 1,500 Indians died during clinical trials in the period between 2010 and 2012.
The number of those whose health is damaged by experimental drugs is much higher.
Finally, the Indian Supreme Court intervened by ordering the Ministry of Health to clarify its approval for 162 new clinical trials that are planned to be conducted in their country.
Targeted by pharmaceutical companies
Since in this vast country with an incredibly corrupt and outdated judicial and administrative system there are no strict regulations for the conduct of clinical trials, India is a logical target for pharmaceutical companies.
Thanks to loose control, large companies generally manage to obtain a license from the relevant ministries to test new chemicals (New Chemical Entities, NCE).
Those trials are carried out on poor people in rural areas who have no one to complain to if something goes wrong.
"Testing new drugs has sparked controversy in India because of high mortality in recent years," writes the Chemistry World journal.
"According to the Ministry of Health, in the period between 2010 and 2011, 1542 deaths during clinical trials were reported."
Several human rights organizations stood up against this practice and filed a petition last February before the Supreme Court explaining the problem.
After a recent hearing, the court ordered the relevant ministry to present scientific arguments for the approval of these tests.
The Ministry has until early November to meet the court's demands.
Poor people turned into guinea pigs
"Clinical trials of new chemicals are carried out without proper protocol and companies take advantage of poor people," said Amulya Nidhi, coordinator of the Health Right Forum, a nonprofit organization that advocates stopping the immoral tests.
According to this organization, more and more tests are carried with inadequate supervision, placing India’s public health in great danger.
The trend is certain to continue if the government does not prevent pharmaceutical companies that prey on the poor and mostly uneducated citizens, while making themselves fabulously rich.
Chino Srinivasan, from a nonprofit organization called Low Cost Standard Therapeutics stressed that the testing of new chemicals is not in accordance with the local social and political structure.
"Insufficient system of control enables immoral pharmaceutical companies to abuse the system," says Srinivasan.
Savings at the cost of other people’s lives
Editor of the Indian edition of Monthly Index of Medical Specialties, CM Gulhati, stated that the testing of new chemicals in India does not help the state, "but only enables the drug manufacturers to cut costs and avoid paying benefits."
In America it is different, because the researchers there have to pay compensations to volunteers who participate.
Driven by compensations, 20 million U.S. citizens annually participate in clinical trials of drugs in universities, hospitals and pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies.
Many turn up alone at the tests, while surveys show that 44 percent of participants enrolled for two to five tests on average.
While in the U.S. volunteers are expensive; in India they are cheap, as is the labor force.
The Health Right Forum hopes that the Supreme Court will make a correct decision and prevent further forays of pharmaceutical companies in India.
"We are concerned with the interest of the people, while we do not care whether drug manufacturers will have to sustain increased cost of production as a result of increased control," concluded Amulya Nidhi.
Liked the article?
Share it with your friends!
