|
|
|||||
|
|
|||||
|
|
|
October 2011
Young human guinea pigs 23 October 2011 VULNERABLE children as young as 13 are being used as human guinea pigs by firms testing drugs for use in the UK, a People investigation reveals. Poor families in India put kids up for drug trials carried out for major international companies in return for free medicines. But 1,725 people including children have died in the past four years after taking part in tests in India – and their families have received pittances in compensation or none at all.
Shehla Masood had a secret. She was about to break her silence, scuppering plans for a US$4.7 billion diamond mine, exposing a nest of corruption and rocking the political establishment to its core. Then she was murdered. It may sound like the plot of a prime-time TV drama, but this is a scenario India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) is faced with as it searches for clues to explain how Masood, an anti-corruption activist, met her death. Masood had devoted herself to using freedom of information requests to uncover the misuse of hundreds of thousands of dollars of state funds and wrongdoing at the highest levels: many in India think that murder is considerably more plausible than the original police assertion that she had shot herself in the throat. No weapon was found at the scene.
|
|
||
|
Copyright ©2011 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
|||||
