MCI member wrongly quotes high court to counter whistleblower

NEW DELHI: Responding to the story on MCI harassing a whistleblower doctor who complained against the Indian Medical Association endorsing commercial products (TOI, August 4), one of the MCI ethics committee members, Dr Ajay Kumar, has written to TOI alleging that he has been defamed.

To buttress this claim he says that the Delhi high court had in its order in November 2010 noted that the MCI's code of medical ethics "appeared to indicate that misconduct is only by an individual medical practitioner and not an association as such". A perusal of the court's order actually shows that it had made no such observation, but had noted that the petitioner had made this submission.

The court was hearing a case filed by one of the IMA officer bearers against the MCI's decision, which found them guilty of professional misconduct for being party to a decision to endorse Pepsi and Dabur products in exchange for money. The court, in its order dated November 29, 2010, did not decided on the petitioners plea that MCI was not competent to take such a decision and granted an interim stay on the action recommended by the MCI — removal of names of the guilty doctors from the Indian Medical Register for six months.

In several hearings since then, the court has continued the interim stay and in the February 14, 2014 hearing said the stay was being made absolute till the disposal of the petition.

In his letter to TOI Dr Kumar also claimed that the November 2010 court order noted that IMC Regulations 2002 does not provide that when an association is held to be guilty, its office bearers can be held guilty. Once again, the order merely noted that this was the submission by the petitioners.

Dr Kumar's letter also claims that in 2008, the endorsement committee of the IMA had recommended accepting the proposal of certain companies made as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme "to fund organization of medical camps and other such activities of the IMA". This proposal was accepted by the Central Council of the IMA.

In return for this, the letter says, these companies were permitted to use slogans coined by the IMA for promoting healthcare such as "Eat oatmeal to stay healthy". "The commercial products of these companies were not at all endorsed by the IMA," claims Dr Kumar.

However, the minutes of IMA meetings, accessed by TOI, belie these claims. They show that a meeting of the endorsement committee held in October 2007 was attended by Dr Kumar, then national president, Dr M Abbas, national president (elect) and Dr S N Misra, secretary general of the IMA.

The committee held a "detailed discussion on the proposal of M/s Via Media on behalf of its client PepsiCo India and Dabur India" for endorsement of Quaker Oats and Tropicana juices of PepsiCo and Odomos cream, gel and lotion of Dabur and decided to endorse the products. In exchange, PepsiCo was to pay Rs 46 lakh per annum for three years (a total of Rs 1.38 crore) and Dabur was to pay Rs 23 lakh per annum for three years (a total of Rs 69 lakh).

The complainant against IMA's endorsement decision pointed out that it was not only unethical, but even illegal as it violated section 39 of the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act and rules which states: "There shall not appear in the label of any package containing food for sale the words "recommended by the medical profession" or any words which imply or suggest that the food is recommended prescribed or approved by medical practitioners or approved for medical use."

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