Bhopal gas tragedy victims being used as guinea pigs

Following reports that the Bhopal gas tragedy victims are being used as `guinea pigs’ for testing certain clinically unapproved drugs the Supreme Court on Monday asked the Union and MP governments to file their responses to the allegations.

“There has to be some sense of responsibility,” a bench of justices RM Lodha and Anil Dave remarked while hearing a PIL alleging that due to the unauthorised and unethical trials of certain drugs, a large number of persons across the country, including the victims of the world’s worst industrial holocaust in Bhopal have been killed.

According to the government’s own admission in Parliament last year, eight clinical trials were conducted at the exclusive Bhopal Medical Health Research Centre for the gas victims. Once managed by a trust headed by former Chief Justice of India AM Ahmadi, the Bhopal hospital received Rs77.43 lakh for using its patients as guinea pigs.

According to a lawsuit filed by an NGO Swasthya Adhikar Manch, over 3,300 patients were used for the tests. Approximately 15 government doctors and about 40 private doctors in 10 private hospitals were involved in the operation which the court termed as ‘inhuman’ and ‘unethical’.

Besides 233 mentally ill patients, 1,833 children in the age group of one day to 15 years of age were also subjected to these trials.

The PIL also mentions that in 2008, at least 288 vulnerable patients were killed and a year later the toll reached to 637 and in 2010 the unethical tests proved grave for 597 suffering patients. The PIL says over 2,000 died in the drug trials.

The PIL has sought setting up of an expert committee comprising members of the civil society, especially the All India Drug Action Network, to examine the present legal provisions concerning clinical trials both in India and abroad.