Via BBC News
Drug companies are facing mounting pressure to investigate reports that new medicines are being tested on some of the poorest people in India without their knowledge.
“We were surprised,” Nitu Sodey recalls about taking her mother-in-law Chandrakala Bai to Maharaja Yeshwantrao Hospital in Indore in May 2009.
“We are low-caste people and normally when we go to the hospital we are given a five-rupee voucher, but the doctor said he would give us a foreign drug costing 125,000 rupees (£1,400).”
The pair had gone to the hospital, located in the biggest city in Madhya Pradesh, an impoverished province in central India, because Mrs Bai was experiencing chest pains.
Their status as Dalits – the bottom of the Hindu caste system, once known as untouchables – meant that they were both accustomed to going to the back of the queue when they arrived and waiting many hours before seeing a doctor.
But this time it was different and they were seen immediately. Continue Reading……
This evil comes as no surprise. Pharmaceutical companies have been exploiting and using the world’s poor as unsuspecting human guinea pigs for DECADES (particularly in Asia and Africa) and they will continue to do so.
Categories: News
This is happening in Africa and Latin America aswell. It is also quite a common practice for women to be sterilised without their consent also.
This makes me sick
I don’t know what upset me the most people having medications tested on them without their knowledge or people still being seen as low caste/ untouchable and referring themselves as such ( interestingly they are all dark skin?!)
@Nubiahbella I’m sick about both facts and what alot of people don’t realise is, you can go to India and see black people who have been there for 1000s of years who still look African.
Cosign Chico Rei 1000%
They are called SIddis and they live in the poorest, most run down parts of India.
Correction, “Siddis”.
tuskegee…. springs to mind!!!