On the 16th of March 1998, at the final
hearing of the writ petition filed by the All India
Democratic Women’s Association and the faculty of
the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health of the
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, the Drug
Controller of India gave a written commitment to the
Supreme Court that the use of the drug Quinacrine for
female sterilization is being banned in India. Further,
that the Government by notification in the official
Gazette "prohibits the manufacture, sale or
distribution" of Quinacrine in pellet form. Penalty
for violation will include "imprisonment for a term
which shall be not less than five years but which may
extend to a term of life... and with fine which shall be
not less than ten thousand rupees".
The three member bench of the Supreme Court headed by
Justice A.S. Anand had earlier issued notices to the Drug
Controller of India, the distributor of the drug in
India, Dr. J.K. Jain, and one of the users of the method,
CHIP Trust of Bangalore which had set itself the
objective of performing 25,000 sterilisations over a two
year period. The appeal of Dr. Jain and CHIP Trust for a
review of the decision on the ban was not accepted by the
Court.
The positive intervention of the Supreme Court in the
matter of the illegal sterilization of women with
quinacrine has been hailed as a significant victory for
the women’s movement. Indeed the ban in India will
provide a fillip to the international movement against
the misuse of the drug, sponsored by two US based NGOs,
in nineteen Third World countries. These so-called trials
have been carried out in spite of the World Health
Organizations’ categorical statement calling for
cessation of human trials pending further toxicology
tests in laboratories since the initial tests revealed
possibilities of carcinogenicity.
The Quinacrine "trials" among primarily poor
women in Third World countries have raised major
controversies over the issues of the safety and efficacy
of the method, and above all, their ethical and
scientific dubiousness. In 1992 the Indian Council of
Medical Research prematurely terminated its trial due to
the extremely high failure rate and unacceptably high
rates of complications. The Government of India stated in
Parliament, in response to a question by Professor Ashoka
Mitra, that "approval for clinical trials of
Quinacrine Pellets had not been granted to any
investigator" and further that "no drug
manufacturer has been granted license to manufacture
Quinacrine and the drug is not imported".
Yet that women reportedly running into thousands were
being sterilized by this method by NGOs and doctors in
the private sector in a number of cities had evoked
strong protests from women’s groups and health
activists. That no action was being initiated against the
distributor of the drug and the doctors unlawfully
utilizing this method and indeed that the Government
claimed in Parliament not to be aware of the Quinacrine
sterilisations being performed in the country compelled
the AIDWA and the public health faculty of JNU to file
the public interest litigation in the Supreme Court.
The Court however did not answer the petitioner’s
prayer for follow-up and compensation for the victims of
this method of sterilization in India nor for the
punishment of the doctors involved. The Court’s
intervention is therefore only the first step, although a
significant one, in the struggle of health activists and
women’s groups to strengthen public institutions for
the conduct, monitoring and regulation of public health
research even as they are held accountable to the people.
This need is particularly acute in the context of the
undermining of public health systems with the reckless
incorporation of the Indian economy in the global market.
Justice Anand’s observation that "Indian women
cannot be guinea pigs" could not have been more
poignant or pointed.
The success in obtaining the ban on Quinacrine
sterilization was made possible by the broad based nature
of the movement with a wide range of women’s groups
and health activists coming together in the
demonstrations organized in various cities in the country
starting off in Calcutta in front of Dr. Biral
Mullick’s clinic, in front of the clinic run by J.K.
Jain in New Delhi, and subsequently in Bangalore at the
offices of the CHIP Trust. The demonstrations, widely
reported in the press and evoking strong editorial
comment in the major national dailies were followed by a
serious of memoranda to the Ministry of Health and the
Drug Controller. The documentary on the Quinacrine
sterilization in New Delhi made by the students at the
Mass Communication Department of Jamia Milia Islamia
entitled "The Yellow Haze" was widely shown
among health groups and women’s groups and in
campuses. Above all, the excellent report prepared by
Saheli entitled the "Sordid Story of Quinacrine
Sterilisations", also widely distributed, built up
public opinion.
The ban obtained on Quinacrine sterilisations is only a
beginning. There is much more to be done for the women
subjected to quinacrine sterilisations. There is also a
need for a sustained campaign to question the whole range
of reproductive technologies being unleashed on the Third
World as part of West’s continuing obsession with
population growth in these countries accompanied by the
neo-colonial agenda of structural adjustment programmes
that further impoverish the vast masses of these nations.
Dr. Mohan Rao is an Associate Professor and
Chairperson Centre of Social Medicine and Community
Health, School of Social Science, Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi.
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