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NEW DELHI, INDIA, December 24, 2002: Recently removed from the Cabinet after a public disagreement with former Health Minister C. P. Thakur over the use of animals in medical research, Maneka Gandhi has now been relieved as chairperson of the government committee for control and supervision of experimentation on animals. “Her activism had caused problems for medical research. The establishment has taken a view that she’s taken it too far,” sources in the Ministry of Environment and Forests acknowledged. Gandhi’s committee was raiding research institutions and seizing lab animals being abused. Institutes at the receiving end of Miss Gandhi’s activism included Delhi’s National Institute of Immunology, AIIMS and the Bio-Tech Research Institute in Hyderabad. However, it was her stand on the antidote for snake venom which precipitated Miss Gandhi’s removal. The antidote is prepared from the blood of horses and its production had been halted after her committee objected. Horses are injected with nonlethal doses of venom and then develop antibodies to the venom. They are bled — as often as weekly — and the antivenom derived from their blood. Horses had died in the process. The antidote now is imported.

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