Making a living as guinea pig in India: clinical trials by drug companies!   Ahmedabad: according to a recent report, more than 70% the women of Ward 56 of Amraiwadi area of the city make ends meet either by donating blood for money or by volunteering to be guinea pigs for pharmaceutical companies.  Among the medicines for which clinical trials are conducted on women volunteers from the area are drugs for treatment of comatose patients. If they recover from the artificially induced coma, they can hope to earn as much as Rs1 lakh. If something goes wrong and a volunteer does not come... 

Clinical trials by multinationals in India: our poor and ignorant become guinea pigs!   It increasingly appears that western pharmaceutical companies have taken hold of India for over the past five years as a testing ground for drugs – making use of the large population of the poor and loose legal regulations that massively cut on the research costs for products to be sold in the West. Ever since restrictions on drug trials were relaxed in 2005, the clinical trial industry in India has involved more than 150,000 people in above 1,600 clinical trials, conducted for British, American... 

Another clinical trial on women without informed consent: in Andhra by Axis Clinicals Hyderabad: according to a report in the local press, The Drug Controller General of India has decided to suspend clinical trials on an anti-cancer drug conducted by the company Axis Clinicals in Hyderabad. The trail was being carried out by Axis Clinicals at its bio-equivalence study centre in Serlingampally, Miyapur, in which poor women were administered the drug allegedly without consent. The trial was investigated by the drug controller on June 20 and 21ans it was found that norms under Schedule Y of...