Medical Council of India is corrupt, says health minister

India’s health minister, Harsh Vardhan, has described the Indian drug regulator, the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), as a “snake pit of vested interests,” and he labelled the Medical Council of India (MCI) a corrupt organisation.

He was responding to questions from the Indian Express after The BMJ published an article by David Berger, a general medicine practitioner who had worked in northern India. In the article Berger chronicled his experiences of working in a corrupt system and said that such corruption was eroding the trust between doctors and patients.1

Berger highlighted the practice of referral payments, in which diagnostic centres pay doctors a commission for each patient referred …