Current Events
India's Poor Now Serve as Guinea Pigs
HUFFINGTON POST
Clinical trials have always been part of the pharmaceutical industry, but what if a large number of those trying out new medicines live below the poverty line, or are even unaware they are participating in tests?
While most top pharmaceutical companies are located in the United States, trial runs for drugs and medicines are often conducted by clinical research organizations abroad. With over a billion residents, India is one of the growing destinations for the multi-million industry, Wired reports.
Clinical research organizations cite the country's enormous population as the main reason for its appeal for clinical tests, but al Jazeera's current affairs show, Fault Lines, wonders if India's growing gap between rich and poor doesn't complicate that P.R. picture.
Zeina Awad reports from Bhopal, where she met countless Indians who claim they participated in clinical trials without consenting to them. Too poor to take the pharmaceutical companies to court, they are left alone to deal with the consequences.
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July 13, 2011
Conversation about this article
1: I.J. Singh (New York, U.S.A.), July 13, 2011, 11:59 AM.
And I would think that in today's world you absolutely may not conduct research on human subjects without informed consent - indicated by a signature that matters were explained and understood. Often there is also some minimal compensation. But then, India is a different world, isn't it?
2: Baldev Singh (Bradford, United Kingdom), July 13, 2011, 3:21 PM.
No education. No money. No hope. But marriage and babies and religion and superstition: Yes! Selfish Hindus and Muslims and arrogant Christians in South Asia have left it an open sewer because most of them have no access to a toilet! We as Sikhs should be educating them about hygiene, spitting, urinating and defecating in public, washing hands, caste and gender based hatred, and violence, before we say anything about human rights violations. If they say that they have the right to get married and have children because their religion and deities tell them, then why do they complain they are victims when they have no money to offer their offspring a decent dignified life, generation after sordid generation!
3: Gurmeet Kaur (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.), July 14, 2011, 9:13 AM.
Baldev Singh ji - Are you saying that the poor and uneducated have no right to the basics in life, like getting married and having children? If so, I am not even going to try to explain on how awful I feel about a fellow Sikh making such a statement. And how discriminatingly you blame Hindu, Muslims and Christians for the poverty and low life standards in South Asia? I know plenty of Sikhs who extort and selfishly build their empires at the cost of the poor. Let's start with the current Chief Minister of Punjab. Remember there are only finite resources on this Earth. Anytime you take more than a fair share for yourself (attribute it to power or corruption or even your own good fortune), there is someone out there whose share who are taking away. Now it is up to you to try to offset it by humbly giving back by sharing ... or continue arrogantly justifying a perceived but non-existent superiority.