This move has been made too late, as at least in Andhra Pradesh, all vials have already been administered. In fact, when it was brought up the matter of the death of the first girl before the concerned authorities, it simply fell on deaf ears. This is in direct contrast to experiences in other countries, where entire batches of the vaccine were withdrawn from circulation when deaths and hospitalization were reported following vaccination. It should be pointed here out that there may be problems with specific batches of the vaccine as, according to press reports, Merck has been issued warning by the Food and Drugs Administration in the US, for not observing good manufacturing practices.
Also, the agencies involved in conducting the clinical study have been found actively falsifying the benefits of the vaccine, as well as minimizing all the problems associated with it. These are in addition to the issue of protocol violations.
The written material used by PATH categorically states that there are no side-effects of the vaccine other than irritation at the injection site and fever and that it has been safely administered to millions of girls without complaints in developed countries.
Good insights!
ReplyDeleteActually many of these drug trials are bound to a protocol & monitoring by an Ethics Committee but these Multinational Companies have another sophisticated bureaucracy to counter anything which goes against their main objective- To launch a new drug in the market. The patients get free medicine and the God-clad doctor cannot be questioned. It is true that there will be always a risk involved if we want to progress in Medical Sciences and all researches work on assumptions which can be wrong sometimes. But the Calculated Risk is not always available for the poor patient and to make the matter worse he/she is not seen by the doctors/scientists as a social being but just a Subject. Most of the time it is very difficult to recognize the main drive behind the hard work being done in the laboratories of our hospitals, is it a passion to serve humanity or win a new Research credit? There is a very thin line between these two but it changes the rules & values of the game. I am not writing my impression but this is my experience during my job as a Social Worker in AIIMS, New Delhi. We are biting more than we can chew in these Research studies. There are few exceptionally well Doctors & Research Scholars but a handful only. Let a high profile person die of these drug trials then we can see some changes in the way government responds, but this will never be the case because there was always a difference between the Grand and the Ginny-pig, the tradition continues.