SC notice to Centre over clinical trial, post-vaccination data
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, August 9
The Supreme Court on Monday asked the Centre to respond in four weeks to a petition seeking disclosure of clinical trial and post-vaccination data of Covid vaccines.
Petitioner Dr Jacob Puliyel, former member of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, alleged people were being coerced to get vaccinated by imposing it as a condition for accessing essential services.
“Coercing people to take the vaccines on pain of losing their jobs or access to essential services, which has begun to happen in many parts of the country, is a violation of the fundamental rights of people, especially in a situation where emergency approvals have been given to vaccines without full and adequate testing and without any transparency of the trial data and post vaccination data,” the petitioner submitted.
Initially, the Bench was a bit hesitant in entertaining the petition. Referring to the problem of “vaccine hesitancy”, a Bench led by Justices L Nageswara Rao asked petitioner’s counsel Prashant Bhushan if entertaining the petition would create doubt in the minds of citizens over vaccines.
“Once we entertain this petition it should not send a signal that we do not trust the efficacy of these vaccines,” the Bench said.
Maintaining that it was an anti-vaccine petition and his client was not seeking to stop Covid vaccination, Bhushan emphasised the need to have complete transparency and said disclosure of data would clear all doubts.
