• Children Treated as Lab Rats

    http://www.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/poverty-and-development/health-poverty-and-development/51840-children-treated-as-lab-rats.html?itemid=id#977

    General Analysis on Social and Economic Policy

    By K. S. Harikrishnan
    IPS
    Aug 14, 2012

    India’s lax drug regulation laws have attracted global pharmaceutical companies to conduct unethical human drug trials in India. Collaboration between local Indian hospitals, foreign pharmaceutical companies and academic research institutions ensure fast and low cost introduction of a new drug from the lab to market. While the health ministry has tried to obligate financial compensation for trial-related death and injury, stiff opposition from research organizations has undermined the ministry’s effort to legislate the practice. As many doctors prioritize the extra income from the test rather than the ethical treatment of their patients, illiterate and poor people have become victims of unethical clinical trials.

    Four-year-old Deepak Yadav, a mentally disabled boy from Indore city in the Indian state Madhya Pradesh, was being treated for stomach problems at Chacha Nehru Bal Chikitsalaya, a government hospital for children attached to the M. G. M. Medical College.

    But when repeated administration of the anti-ulcer drug Rabeprazole started to exacerbate his condition, his parents stopped treatment and sought help from the Clinical Trial Victims Association (CTVA), which discovered that the boy had been a lab rat for an untested drug.

    “We should have been told an unknown drug was being tested on our innocent child and given the choice to say no,” Deepak’s father Sooraj told IPS.

    #inde #santé #essais-thérapeutiques #laboratoires #médicaments #enfance #développement #asie