The third day of the ongoing National Workshop on Clinical Pharmacology, in the department of Pharmacology, PGIMER, Chandigarh, began with the lecture of Dr.Debashish Hota , from the department of Pharmacology, PGIMER. He delivered lecture on Essential Medicine List and rational Therapeutics. He explained the importance of developing list of essential medicine based on the health care needs of the community. He also stressed on the role of rational drug prescribing in improving the health of the individuals.
Dr.Samir Malhotra from the department spoke on Ethics of Clinical Research. He spoke about obligations of the investigators and other persons involved in the clinical investigations. He cited various examples from concepts of philosophy to make the delegates understand the principles of ethical conduct of clinical trials.
Dr Bikash Medhi delivered a lecture on pharmacovigillance ie. Monitoring preventing and reporting adverse reactions. He gave a detailed description of the National Pharmacovigillance Programme of India. He also described the role of physicians in reporting adverse events from common clinics.
Later in the evening Justice K Kannan, Chandigarh spoke on the various legal issues related to clinical trials. He spoke about circumstances when an informed consent can be of suspect during clinical trials. He told that the principle of autonomy in clinical research may not be fully applicable in certain group of populations like children, mentally challenged, certain tribes, prisoners etc and this a major issue during taking informed consent during a clinical trial. He discussed on the issue of compensation for injury and death during a clinical trial. He also discussed topics of misconduct, negligence, and liability in clinical trials. Sr .Advocate Anupam Gupta, Chandigarh added his opinion on the importance of ethical principles in clinical trials and the impact on society by citing examples from history of unethical clinical investigations conducted during World War 2.