Teddles
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Oct 27, 2005
- Messages
- 293
Tonight's Cutting Edge reveals how poor and illiterate patients in India are being used to test new drugs for the West and some are unaware they are even taking part in these clinical trials. Lying immobile on a bed in Kerala, Devassy Kutty has been used in a human experiment. He was one of the first people to be injected with a drug that had not even been properly tested on animals, and he thought he was receiving an anaesthetic. The scientists involved have received an international award for their work but the patient still does not know what happened to him. In another case, Gujarat, a psychiatric patient, explains how he was once given some drugs for free and how they made his hands and feet go numb. He does not know that the free drugs were part of a drug trial by a Western pharmaceutical company. This documentary uncovers how the pharmaceutical companies recruit so quickly in India and why some Indian patients are willing to take the risk. Through this investigation carried out by journalist Paul Kenyon, this documentary uncovers the disturbing truth behind India's boom in clinical trials.
