Hospital turns Bhopal victims into guinea pigs
Bhopal: Some Bhopal gas leak victims who survived the tragedy were used by Bhopal Memorial Hospitaland Research Centre (BMHRC) for four years to carry out drug trails. The number of such people who were subjected to drug trials is 151.
Ramadhar Shrivastva is one such gas victim. In 2007 when he had chest pain, he was referred to BMHRC, the multi-specialty hospital set up for gas victims from the money given as compensation by Union Carbide. The BMHRC records state that Shrivastava gave his consent for the clinical trial of a cardiological drug -Prasogrel, which Shrivastava denies. However, he says that he was given one particular medicine repeatedly over a period of time. "They use to give me one medicine and even use to take away its bottle. They never told me anything about the research that they were doing on me," says Shrivastava.
BMHRC carried out these clinical trials on 151 patents in four departments over a period of four years. Tests were conducted on 86 patients in the cardiology department, while 54 tests were carried out on patients in the gastroenterology department. The anesthesia department carried out tests on six patients and the pulmonary medicine department, five patients.
These tests were stopped on August 25, 2008 after the director of the hospital issued a circular which says, that following a telephonic communication from the secretary of the Bhopal Memorial Hospital Trust, the trials were to be stopped with immediate effect.
The hospital now says all procedures were followed for the drug trial with permission from the Drugs Controller General of India and that the trials were being conducted in 47 other institutes as well. But nowhere do BMHRC's records state that the trials would be conducted on gas victims.
"We did not conduct this trial on gas victims. This is again a misnomer. Incidentally we treat both gas victims and non gas victims" says S K Trivedi, professor and head of department, Cardiology in BMHRC.
Over the years BMHRC has been turning down even those requests made under the Right to Information Act. However, now that the issue of drug trials on victims has come out in the open, it maintains that all procedures were followed and that it did not differentiate between gas victims and non-gas victims when it came to conducting drug trials on them.
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