PATIENTS TURN GUINEA PIGS

A public hospital in Ahmedabad is under a cloud for illegal clinical trials on unwitting patients, with corrupt doctors in cahoots with pharma firms

- By Jumana Shah

WHEN A PATIENT AT Ahmedabad's Vadilal Sarabhai Hospital (VSH) approached Congress corporator Rajshri Kesari over a missing Rs 3,000-payment' for participating in a clinical trial-neither could have imagined the scale of what lay beneath.

It turned out that between 2021 and 2024, over 500 patients may have been unwittingly turned into guinea pigs. Misled into thinking they were receiving routine treatment, they were allegedly subjected to unauthorised clinical drug trials in at least nine departments of the nearly century-old hospital, with the errant doctors in cahoots with 52 pharmaceutical companies.

TRIALS AND ERRORS

Some Rs 17-20 crore is said to have changed hands, as patients got enrolled in trials for drugs related to diabetes, arthritis, skin conditions, even a rare genetic disorder.