LONDON: A UK opposition Labour Party member of Parliament and shadow minister for women and equalities has called for a statutory inquiry into medical research dating back to the 1960s that led to Indian-origin women being given chapatis containing radioactive isotopes to combat iron deficiency. Taiwo Owatemi, who is the MP for Coventry in the West Midlands region of England, said in a post on X recently that she is “deeply concerned” for the women and families impacted by the study.
Around 21 Indian-origin women identified through a general practitioner in the city were given the bread containing Iron-59, an iron isotope, as part of a research trial in 1969 into iron deficiency in the city’s South Asian population. “My foremost concern is for the women and the families of those who were experimented on in this study,” said Owatemi.
“I will be calling for a debate after Parliament returns in September, followed by a full statutory inquiry into how this was allowed to happen, and why the recommendation of the MRC (Medical Research Council) report to identify the women was never followed up so that lessons are learnt,” she said.
An MRC spokesperson said an independent inquiry, commissioned following a documentary on Channel 4 in 1995, had examined questions raised.