Indifference
I was watching a documentary about the off shoring of medicine testing to India. This means that the new drugs produced by the big time pharmaceutical companies are brought down to India and tested upon the locals here.
Why?
Well the reason being given that India with its huge population has a wide range of diseases and innumerable different and strange disorders which is favorable for testing the drugs and this scenario is rarely found anywhere else.
Are the patients aware?
Obviously the patients who are tested with these drugs are illiterate, poor, ignorant, innocent folks who don’t really understand what has been written on their medical papers, when they are asked for their thumb marks. These folks treat their doctors like God, so they don’t really understand or question when the doctors stop their regular medicines and after a while prescribe them new ones.
Risky Business?
Well yes!! Before the patients are put on the new drugs, they have to be detoxicated of the old ones they were taking so as to actually observe the results and changes in the body due to the newer drugs.
The regular medicines which the patients were taking were the proven and tested drugs of which the doctors are sure of the results. When these are stopped for some amount of time, the patients are taking no medicines for their illness!! And the newer ones they take are something which even the doctors are not 100% sure of!!
Doctor’s Stand?
The doctors say that they do first inform the patients as to what is going to be done and also that they are not sure of the positive results of the new prescription.
I guess the ignorance, poverty and the keen faith on their doctors make them agree to whatever they suggest. Sometimes they don’t even fully understand what their doctors are saying and just give in to them.
The whole thing seemed even stranger on watching a foreigner take up this cause and chase the doctors, the companies, the patients affected, taking their views and making this documentary and last of all I was watching it in the UK! Are we Indians even affected by such issues? Just because poverty, ignorance is something we see everyday do we treat it as normal? Do we even care about things other than our own comfort? I guess over the years we have become exceedingly indifferent.
Why?
Well the reason being given that India with its huge population has a wide range of diseases and innumerable different and strange disorders which is favorable for testing the drugs and this scenario is rarely found anywhere else.
Are the patients aware?
Obviously the patients who are tested with these drugs are illiterate, poor, ignorant, innocent folks who don’t really understand what has been written on their medical papers, when they are asked for their thumb marks. These folks treat their doctors like God, so they don’t really understand or question when the doctors stop their regular medicines and after a while prescribe them new ones.
Risky Business?
Well yes!! Before the patients are put on the new drugs, they have to be detoxicated of the old ones they were taking so as to actually observe the results and changes in the body due to the newer drugs.
The regular medicines which the patients were taking were the proven and tested drugs of which the doctors are sure of the results. When these are stopped for some amount of time, the patients are taking no medicines for their illness!! And the newer ones they take are something which even the doctors are not 100% sure of!!
Doctor’s Stand?
The doctors say that they do first inform the patients as to what is going to be done and also that they are not sure of the positive results of the new prescription.
I guess the ignorance, poverty and the keen faith on their doctors make them agree to whatever they suggest. Sometimes they don’t even fully understand what their doctors are saying and just give in to them.
The whole thing seemed even stranger on watching a foreigner take up this cause and chase the doctors, the companies, the patients affected, taking their views and making this documentary and last of all I was watching it in the UK! Are we Indians even affected by such issues? Just because poverty, ignorance is something we see everyday do we treat it as normal? Do we even care about things other than our own comfort? I guess over the years we have become exceedingly indifferent.
posted by Vinca123 at 1:32 PM
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