US Reportedly Experimenting on Nepali Soldiers

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January 9, 2006

US Reportedly Experimenting on Nepali Soldiers

The US Government is reportedly using Nepali soldiers for experiments for

finding a vaccine for Hepatitis. The vaccine is expected to protect the US

soldiers while serving abroad. Hepatitis E is reported to account for half

the hepatitis cases in lesser developed nations. In 1995, the US Armed

Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences (AFRIMS), the Thai-based

branch of Walter Army Institute of Research, set up a unit in Katmandu

to conduct clinical trials.

McNair- of AFRIMS was the principal US investigator and

Mrigendra Shrestha his counterpart in Nepal. Lt Col Kuschner was the

trial's project director from the Walter Army Institute of Research.

The vaccine, patented by Californian company Genelabs and licensed by

GlaxoKline, is to hit the market in 2007. In February 2000, the

research unit announced a trial would be held with 8,000 volunteers from

Lalitpur District adjoining Katmandu, with 3,000 of them being administered

the vaccine or placebo.

However, the plan was scuttled as the then deputy mayor, Ramesh Chitrakar,

and other members of the local government body objected, saying the mayor

had not consulted them. They also expressed misgivings as to whether the

volunteers knew what they were walking into. Chitrakar is reported to have

alleged that the researchers offered him and other dissenters watches and

luxury goods to go along with the plan. However, the Nepali media and NGOs

also took up the issue and the ensuing furor made the researchers abandon

the idea of civilian volunteers.

Undeterred, the researchers then struck a deal with the Royal Nepalese Army

(RNA) that 2,000 soldiers would " volunteer " to be the human guinea pigs.

Author s says in The American Journal of Bioethics: " Noting the

millions of dollars, military training, and arms that the (US) State

Department and Military have been giving to the RNA to help them put down

the Maoist rebellion, it seems plausible that the resultant military and

economic dependence of the host institution/population (RNA) upon the

research sponsor (the U.S. Military) threatened the voluntary nature of the

institutional and individual participation in the trial. "

Though the trial ended in 2003, it is not known who the volunteer soldiers

are and what their present medical condition is. Last week, Glaxo released

information at a scientific meeting, saying the vaccine was successful, but

kept silent about making it available in Nepal. Now epidemiologists at

Yale's School of Medicine and other activists have raised the issue afresh,

expressing the fear that the trial might have been unethical.

" The poorest of the poor were used as subjects, " a Yale project staff said

on condition of anonymity. " There's no plan for getting the vaccine to the

(Nepali) population, despite clearly pitching the trial as an attempt to

address this disease for Nepalis. It appears that the vaccine will be

developed as a traveler’s vaccine at best. "

The fear seems plausible since in the 1980s, the same Walter Army

Institute of Research sponsored the development of a typhoid vaccine in

Nepal. However, though typhoid is endemic in Nepal, one of the poorest

countries in the world, the vaccine is not widely used.

Edited IANS

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