GMW: The poor pay with their lives/DOW REJECTS PROPOSAL TO CLEAN BHOPAL

[Guest guest]

GMW: The poor pay with their lives/DOW REJECTS PROPOSAL TO

CLEAN BHOPAL

" GM WATCH " <info

Fri, 13 May 2005 10:18:58 +0100

 

 

GM WATCH daily

http://www.gmwatch.org

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1.DOW REJECTS PROPOSAL TO CLEAN BHOPAL USING FIRST-QUARTER PROFITS

2.The poor pay with their lives

 

As Pharma-Planta and other biotechs head for the Third World countries

with weak biosafety systems in which to test their hazardous products,

they proceed along a well-trodden path of " out-sourcing " risk to the

poor.

http://www.gmwatch.org/print-archive2.asp?arcid=4553

 

EXCERPTS:

 

" We made an incredible $1.35 billion this quarter, " said " Jude

Finisterra, " aka Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men. " But for most of us,

that'll

just mean a new set of golf clubs. Let's do something useful instead -

like finally cleaning up the Bhopal plant site, or funding the new clinic

there. " Dow Chairman Bill Stavropolous responded to " Finisterra's "

suggestion with a curt dismissal. (item 1)

 

The bulk of the companies testing their drugs on India’s poor will be

the MNC pharmaceutical giants. But Indian companies working on

genetically modified drugs producing pharmaceutical molecules will also

participate.

 

....Illegal clinical trials conducted in India have resulted in deaths

and the matter came to light when it was raised by NGOs before the

Supreme Court. In the dock are the Bangalore-based biotechnology company

Biocon and the Hyderabad-based Shantha Biotech. Biocon conducted illegal

human trials of its genetically modified insulin, without taking

permission from the government’s Genetic Engineering Approval Committee

(GEAC), a fact that the government had to admit before the Supreme Court.

Shantha similarly conducted illegal trials on a drug called

Streptokinase. GEAC was quick to whitewash these breaches of law in

which poor

people lost their lives. (item 2)

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1.DOW REJECTS PROPOSAL TO CLEAN BHOPAL USING FIRST-QUARTER PROFITS

May 12, 2005

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

The same man who appeared on BBC World TV last December as a Dow

representative to announce that Dow would finally clean up Bhopal [1]

showed

up today at Dow's Annual General Meeting (AGM) to suggest the same

thing to Dow's board of directors and shareholders.

 

" We made an incredible $1.35 billion this quarter, " said " Jude

Finisterra, " aka Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men [2]. " But for most of us,

that'll just mean a new set of golf clubs. Let's do something useful

instead

- like finally cleaning up the Bhopal plant site, or funding the new

clinic there [3]. " Dow Chairman Bill Stavropolous responded to

" Finisterra's " suggestion with a curt dismissal [4].

 

The Yes Men joined other shareholder groups in Midland, including

Amnesty International, which condemns Dow's lack of response to the

Bhopal

crisis as a human rights issue [5].

 

BANKERS EMBRACE " GOLDEN SKELETON " MASCOT

 

Two weeks ago at a London banking conference to which they had

accidentally been invited, two " Dow representatives " described a new Dow

computer program that puts a precise financial value on human life.

 

The 70 bankers in attendance enthusiastically applauded the lecture,

which described various industrial crimes, including IBM's sale of

technology to the Nazis for use in identifying Jews, as " golden

skeletons in

the closet " --i.e. lucrative and therefore acceptable.

 

Several of the bankers then posed for photos with " Dow Acceptable Risk "

mascot " Gilda, the Golden Skeleton, " and signed up for licenses for the

" Acceptable Risk Calculator, " which helps businesses determine the

exact point where human casualties will start to cut into profit, and

suggests the best regions on earth to locate ventures with

potentially very high death tolls.

 

See http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/dow/acceptablerisk.shtml for video

and photos of the event, and http://dowethics.com/risk/ to try out the

" Acceptable Risk Calculator " for yourself.

 

STATE DEPARTMENT FINDS FAKE DOW WEBSITE USEFUL

 

Dow may not appreciate the DowEthics.com website--but the US State

Department finds it quite useful, and refers requests for information

about

Bhopal to various of its pages: see

http://www.dowethics.com/statedeptfoi/ for an example.

 

CONTACT: dowmedia

 

NOTES TO EDITORS:

 

[1] See http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/dow/bhopal2004.shtml

 

[2] Yes Men Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno had been given one Dow

" proxy " each by actual shareholders, giving them the right to attend the

annual meeting and address the Dow board.

 

[3] Two weeks ago, the Sambhavna Trust Clinic of Bhopal opened a new

wing to serve the victims whose numbers continue to grow due to

groundwater contamination from the uncleaned plant site. See

http://www.bhopal.org/ for information on how you can contribute.

 

[4] See http://theyesmen.org/hijinks/dow/2005agm.shtml for complete

statements and responses, including Yes Man Mike Bonanno's feverish,

red-eared tirade in a neck brace.

 

[5] See http://www.amnestyusa.org/business/dow_letters.html. See also

http://www.proxyinformation.com/dow/summary.htm and

http://www.TRWNews.net/

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2.The poor pay with their lives

SUMAN SAHAI

Financial Express, Friday, April 22, 2005

http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=88618

 

India is getting set to become a major center for clinical trials of

all manner of drugs. The Indian poor do not know it but they are in the

process of being transformed into a stable of guinea pigs on which a

variety of drugs, many of them dangerous, will be tested. The bulk of the

companies testing their drugs on India’s poor will be the MNC

pharmaceutical giants. But Indian companies working on genetically

modified

drugs producing pharmaceutical molecules will also participate.

 

Clinical trials are a significant cost in pharmaceutical research. Some

estimate that in western countries, nearly half the cost of putting a

drug on the market is incurred on conducting clinical trials. Given that

the pharma industry claims it costs them about $1 billion to put a new

drug on the market, the costs of clinical trials could be estimated to

be in the vicinity of $400 to 500 million per drug.

 

Because of the high cost of drug-testing and the fact that volunteers

in western countries are much more conscious of the dangers inherent in

such trials and are, therefore, unwilling to participate, pharma

companies are increasingly conducting their trials in poor countries like

India. These trials are both legal and illegal. In any case many poor and

ignorant people are being exploited by such companies who pay them a

remuneration and do not inform them either about the drugs that are being

tested on them or what the likely dangers could be. Conducting clinical

trials on India’s poor is condoned by a system that sees this as a

high growth area.

 

There are projections that revenues generated from clinical trials

globally could touch something like $30 billion in another five to ten

years and many feel that because it offers cheap testing, India should

tap

into this. Many industry reps in India are of the view that despite the

risks, India should embrace the outsourced clinical trials to earn

money. This view is not difficult to understand from the industry’s

perspective. The industry earns money from drug sales after clinical

trials

are done and the poor guinea pigs pay the price, sometimes even with

their lives.

 

The explanation that the practice of such clinical trials will

introduce world class standards in India wears thin since if ‘world

class’

standards were implemented, the costs of testing would not be as low as

they are. At present, drug trials in India are conducted with scant

regard to ethical practices. Clinical trials are usually conducted by

doctors in large hospitals which earn a fat fee from such trials.

There is

no informed consent taken from patients, (prior informed consent is a

‘world class’ practice), who have no clue about the drug that is

being tested on them, they are not informed of the benefits and risks of

such a trial, nor is there any insurance cover if something goes wrong.

 

Illegal clinical trials conducted in India have resulted in deaths and

the matter came to light when it was raised by NGOs before the Supreme

Court. In the dock are the Bangalore-based biotechnology company Biocon

and the Hyderabad-based Shantha Biotech. Biocon conducted illegal human

trials of its genetically modified insulin, without taking permission

from the government’s Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), a

fact that the government had to admit before the Supreme Court. Shantha

similarly conducted illegal trials on a drug called Streptokinase. GEAC

was quick to whitewash these breaches of law in which poor people lost

their lives.

 

The other problem is with government regulations and their

implementation. Early this year the government enacted new rules

diluting the

provisions for clinical trials. In the former set-up, drug trials in

India

could only be conducted by foreign companies if they had done

preliminary tests elsewhere. This was to protect Indians from being

used as

hapless test entities. Now foreign companies are allowed to conduct

trials

simultaneously, opening the gates to all manner of unverifiable tests.

Along with the relaxed rules, the less-than-stringent implementation by

the regulatory authorities is likely to lead to further reckless

exploitation of the poor and illiterate as test victims in a situation

from

which the pharmaceutical industry stands to make huge amounts of money.

 

<p><i>The writer is president, Genecampaign</i><p></td

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