Re: Coercion, and Unethical Practice in HIV research by ICMR

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

In response to the letter titled `Unethical Practice in HIV research by ICMR',

the statement made by DMSC is false, untruth and baseless. It has not been

investigated properly, probably due to some reason not understood by Dr. Sarkar.

NICED team went to Darjeeling District to survey among IDUs, Sex workers in the

district as a part of Estimation of HIV load in West Bengal. Though informed

long back to DMSC about Siliguri survey at their brothel, but they seem not be

interested in this survey, reason of which is not clear. Two police men, who

assisted us a lot by providing information about IDUs in Siliguri, came to

brothel to talk with pimps about IDUs and to reveal further information. DMSC,

Siliguri part took the advantage of it in falsifying the fact. The police has

not talked or misbehaved with any of the DMSC staff. They requested the

DMSCstaff to help Dr. Sarkar in this study and thereby helping in HIV load

estimation in West Bengal, which is really necessary to understand the impact of

HIV intervention.

NICED offers all testing at free of cost to DMSC whenever requested. The reason

of fabricating the fact is probably due the fact that do not like to unreveal

the fact what is happening in them (impact of intervention) and somehow they

want to stop this survey by making false complain against the survey team.

The team challenges DMSC to verify their statement by calling those two

policemen and all other DMSC staff who were present at the time of survey in

presence of an independent authority. I wish they shoud they should accept this

challenge.

Thanking you.

Regards,

NICED Team

" Dr. Kamalesh Sarkar "

E-mail: <kamal412496@...>

[Guest guest]

Dear All,

We would like to make the following comments on Dr. Kamalesh Sarkar

and NICED team's remarkably facile response to our original posting

" Unethical Practice in HIV research by ICMR " .

Firstly, Dr. Sarkar and NICED team has avoided commenting on their

behaviour and things that they did in their zeal to collect blood

samples – both at Cossipore and at Siliguri. That does mean that our

reporting was truthful and that NICED team's activities were

witnessed by a large number of people.

Secondly, as it comes out in his rejoinder, using police as a

support for HIV surveillance and sample collection is nothing new to

ICMR and Dr. Sarkar and their field teams. (Refer to his own

admission that he used police to talk to pimps and so identify IDUs

for blood sample collection for the survey!) It does not bear

retelling the way a section of police in our country act with

marginalised and poor communities – particularly IDUs and sex

workers – and the threat of violence, oppression and coercion they

bring with their uniforms.

Institutionalisation of police personnel as research officers may be

a unique feature of the research conducted by Dr. Sarkar, but we

differ with this approach. We believe all sensible research

institutions and individuals and HIV/AIDS activists throughout the

world would agree with our viewpoint.

We also believe that any use of threat / coercion either overt or

covert, as part of HIV/AIDS prevention / research is detrimental and

against basic human rights; is a wrong approach, and in the end

utterly defeats its goal and objectives.

Thirdly, we would like to bring to the forefront an inherent

contradiction in Dr. Sarkar's diatribe. He mentions that NICED

(Calcutta) does HIV testing free of cost for DMSC whenever we need

it. And in the next sentence he charges DMSC with refusing to help

in the survey because DMSC (we quote Dr. Sarkar) " do not like to

unreveal (sic) the fact what is happening in them (impact of

intervention) and somehow they want to stop this survey (sic)… "

We leave readers of the list-serve to decide for themselves: an

organisation doesn't want to reveal the HIV prevalence among its

client population to a research body, but sends ALL its blood

samples (collected through voluntary confidential counselling and

testing facilities) for HIV testing to the same research body's

laboratory!

The question here is not what DMSC wants to reveal or conceal – as

we go to press, we are preparing to participate in the nation-wide

NACO-sponsored Sentinel Surveillance for HIV/AIDS prevalence

beginning on 1 July – but the how and with what ethic, what attitude

and what way a research is or isn't conducted. And on this issue, we

stand by our comment that Dr. Sarkar and the NICED team behaved in

an unethical fashion whilst conducting their research.

Fourthly, Dr. Sarkar makes no mention of the way the WBSAPCS and its

Project Director Mr. Suresh Kumar acted on receiving the news of

coercive practice.

The WBSAPCS has stopped the survey until such time when the issues

raised are settled.

Lastly, we want to mention that DMSC has always received support

from the Microbiology/Virology department of NICED. Why other

departments, notably the field research and epidemiology departments

of NICED therefore continue to use ethically untenable ways to

conduct research remains a mystery that needs to be addressed and

resolved quickly.

In Solidarity,

Swapna Gayen Secretary

Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee

12/5 Nilmoni Mitra Street

Kolkata 700006 (INDIA)

Email: sonagachi@..., ship@...