The Madhya Pradesh government has come in for severe criticism by the Supreme Court of India for the alleged illegal clinical trials being conducted at Bhopal Memorial Hospital and Research Centre (BMHRC), set up to provide super-speciality treatment to the Bhopal gas tragedy survivors and also to carry out research on long term effects of methyl-iso-cyanate (MIC).

The apex court bench, headed by Justice RM Lodha, pulled up both the Centre and the Madhya Pradesh government saying, “There has to be some sense of responsibility (on the part of the government). Human beings are being treated as guinea pigs. This is unfortunate.”

The Supreme Court was hearing two PILs filed by a group of doctors and an NGO alleging that illegal and unethical clinical trials were being done on poor persons including juveniles, tribals and dalits who were used as guinea pigs for testing of drugs and vaccines produced by multinational companies.

The Pharmabiz had on July 06, 2010 had reported that BMHRC has become a hot spot for conducting clinical trials on untested drugs by the multinational pharma companies.

Instead of concentrating on MIC-related issues, the hospital has over the years become a hot spot for conducting clinical trials on untested drugs that were primarily designed to help pharma companies. Drugs in the trials included telavancin (patented by US company Theravance), tigecycline (Wyeth), prasugrel, fondaparinux (GlaxoSmithKline) and fixed-dose combination of cefoperazone with sulbactum (Magnex) sold by Pfizer in India, Pharmabiz had reported.