Outsourcing risks: Neither informed nor consenting
By Sonia Shah.
Since fewer than 1% of Indians have health insurance, most people pay upfront for care and a personal relationship with a physician is highly prized. The balance of power between doctor and patient is therefore different from the way it is in the West. Farhad Kapadia, a clinical investigator at Hinduja Hospital in Mumbai, says that only those who "have absolutely no choice" agree to forsake the judgment of their physician for a protocol randomly selected by a computer which would leave them ignorant about what is being administered to them. So those who take part in clinical trials are the poorest, living in a different world from socially powerful doctors.
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]