Supreme Court asks Centre to respond on clinical trial of vaccines

NEW DELHI: Supreme Court today asked the Centre to file its response giving details like process of taking consent of persons on whom clinical trial of cervical cancer prevention vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix, have been carried out.

A bench of justices Dipak Misra and Prafulla C Pant asked the Centre to also indicate who would be liable to pay compensation to the persons if the clinical trial of the vaccination caused adverse impact.

Besides the Centre, the bench also asked governments of Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, where clinical trials of the vaccines have taken place, to file their responses within four weeks about issues including the number of affected persons.

The bench asked the Centre to keep in view the 81st report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on clinical trial of vaccines while filing its response.

During the hearing, the counsel for Gujarat said seven deaths were reported from the state and moreover, these did not happen due to the clinical trials but were rather caused by reasons including snake bites.

The court, however, did not concur with the submission. Earlier, the court had asked the Centre to place before it the records regarding the licenses given to cervical cancer prevention vaccines, Gardasil and Cervarix.

It had directed the Centre to place before it the report of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Health and Family Welfare which has dealt with the issue of drugs relating to Human Papilloma Virus ( HPV) vaccine.

The court had allowed to make Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as respondents in the matter as some villages in these states were chosen for administering the vaccine as an experiment and reports had allegedly suggested that girls suffered side effects of Gardasil and Cervarix, manufactured by pharmaceuticals major Merck Sharpe and Dohme respectively.

The bench said it had to examine whether proper protocol and procedure was followed for introduction of these vaccines because it has been alleged that deaths have also been caused due to the situation.