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Sunday, July 7, 2013

India’s poor ’duped’ into clinical drug trials

Via Business Recorder :

" Niranjan Lal Pathak couldn't believe his luck initially. When a doctor at a hospital in central India offered the factory watchman free treatment for a heart complaint, he jumped at the chance.

It was five years ago and the family of the 72-year-old says he didn't realise that the Maharaja Yashwantrao Hospital in the city of Indore

"We were told that our uncle will be treated under a special project," his nephew Alok Pathak told

"The doctor said we wouldn't have to spend a penny. There was only one condition placed before us -- that we should not approach local chemists if we ever ran out of his medicines but go

A petition filed by the family in India's Supreme Court alleges that the drug tested on him was Atopaxar, developed by Japan-based pharmaceutical company Eisai and supposed to treat

His family and health rights group Swasthya Adhikaar Manch (Health Rights Platform) say that he would never have enrolled for the trial had he known that an untested drug would be

The family also claims that the side-effects of the drug left Pathak suffering from dementia."

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