Editorial

Recently we learnt from the newspapers, how easily one can set up many research establishments and a battalion of research workers for a paltry sum. Of course as this is medical research, we need guinea, pigs also. But that is not a problem.

A dozen foreign companies are successfully making use of this system. The pharma companies are using 40 professors (a professor has his own assistants) and 18 hospitals in a single city alone. The modus operandi is to pay each professor about 50 lakhs of rupees with a share for the hospital. The doctors will be testing the particular medicine developed by the company in their hospitals with trials on the patients who do not know what medicines they are taking and for what purpose.

During this process, in 2010 alone, some 25 patients lost their lives. The families of five victims were paid between 1.5 lakhs to 3 lakhs of rupees.

It is only when the families of the rest of the victims took up the issue, the Director General of Drug Control stepped in to see that the proper compensation was paid to all. But this is only part of the problem.

Just because the professors get a good sum, are they supposed to stop their own research work to work as per the direction of foreign companies? Research is thrown overload for the benefit of companies. The institutions are reduced to testing laboratories. Were the patients who were used as guinea-pigs, told the truth?  

In fact every IIT and research laboratory of public sector companies and'. national research laboratories should only be judged by their research work and publications. While the public sector companies should make money, the function of their research and development laboratories is not " to generate money but to generate knowledge. 

We have the means to be a first rate country in the field of education and research. What we need is the Will to be great.