Two days after The Sunday Express reported how the country’s first-ever AIDS vaccine trial went for a full year although it was known — within a fortnight of the trial starting — that it had failed in Europe, the Indian Council of Medical Research, one of the three institutions involved, has sought a written explanation from the National AIDS Research Institute, Pune.

This is the institute where the trial was conducted on 30 healthy volunteers.

In a related development, Jayanthi Natarajan, the country director in India of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), the sponsor of the trial, has resigned. A former MP and Congress spokesperson, she took charge of IAVI in May 2006, more than a year after the trial had started in February 2005.

When contacted, she told The Indian Express today: “I am not dealing with this, the trial started when I was not there. I am resigning.” Calling it a “serious issue,” Sujit K. Bhattacharya, acting Director General of ICMR, told The Indian Express that he had sought an “urgent report” from Dr Ramesh Paranjape, NARI director. “You cannot conduct clinical trials merely for academic reasons,” said Bhattacharya adding that NARI is a publicly funded institute and it is wrong that they took money from foreign donors to conduct a clinical trial.

The Pune trial conducted on 30 healthy volunteers continued for a whole year although it was known within the first fortnight that the same vaccine had failed in tests in Germany and Belgium — with exactly the same conclusions.

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