Misinformation Campaign about Clinical Drug Trials_How and why it started and assumed such prominence ?

How and why it started and assumed such prominence ? [I am myself puzzled and intrigued]. One Dr. Anand Rai (shamefully our own student) with a criminal background, having political ambitions,3 joined hands with some people in politics and media (always eager to have ‘good stories’) to project his image as a ‘whistle blower’ and ‘social activist’. He planned the whole affair very meticulously and launched the campaign in July 2010 with a blitzkrieg in local Hindi daily ‘Patrika’ and local TV channels. He complained against us to (a) Economic Offence Wing of M.P. Police, Bhopal (b) Medical Council of India and its M.P. Branch (c) Lokayukta (d) Human Right Commission, National and state chapter. (e) Income Tax Department (f) Enforcement Directorate. He and his coterie managed to raise the issue repeatedly in Madhya Pradesh Vidhansabha through question-answer sessions and calling attention motion. Right to Information Act was misused to hilt to harass us and extract information which is legally exempted form disclosure. Inexplicably, surprisingly and sadly the national and international media took cognizance of the noise and echoched or recycled the misinformation without verification and without giving our version4, 5. The saying by infamous propaganda minister Herr Goeblles in third Riech of Hiter’s Nazi Germany has become true – ‘repeating a lie hundred times can make it appear true’. It is a sad commentary on the nature of media that it picks up, magnifies and sensationalizes false hood or trivial facts because cynicism sells more. Western media always laps up any negative news from India and developing countries and there is no dearth of ‘progressive intellectuals’ in our country who gleefully feed them and get rewarded amply. I have learnt this bitter truth at a heavy personal cost though I derived some solace by realizing that this is a universal phenomenon applicable even to internationally reputed new papers – for example Asahi Shimbun (Tokyo, Japan)6. Another scandalous and horrendous attribute of media is that once they raise a issue or take a position rightly or wrongly they are loath to correct themselves in face of contrary evidence Many investigating agencies (EOW Police, DCGI) have been seized with the matter and did not find any thing unlawful. But it is probable in their nature that, while they (obligingly) exonerate the accused from utterly false and untenable charges, they consider it their duty and right to point out a few minor administrative, procedural and technical flaws, without which, it seems, they think, they have not earned their raison-de-etre. The subsequent overkill is done by media which will cry hoarse over the trivial and bury the main news.