From correspondents in Delhi, India, 10:03 PM IST

People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Thursday dispatched letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss demanding that records be maintained of clinical trials conducted on animals and the number of deaths due to such tests.

"In wake of the death of 49 children undergoing clinical trials at AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences), we have appealed to both the prime minister and the health minister to keep records of the number of animals dying due to clinical trials," said PETA campaign coordinator Dharmesh Solanki.

Solanki said the NGO had taken recourse to the Right to Information Act to seek from the health ministry details of clinical trials conducted on animals "but they said they don't keep such records.

"If so many human beings are dying in drug trails, imagine how many animals must be losing their lives. We should adopt modern technology and new findings of science before blindly going for animal trials," Solanki told IANS.

According to PETA, the US Food and Drug Administration has found that only eight percent of drugs that pass animal tests make it to the marketplace.

'This fact substantiates PETA's position that reliance on the results of animal tests can be dangerously misleading,' it said, adding that humans who enrolled for such clinical trials are made to believe that drugs that they are signing up for are safe but "this is not always true".

(Staff Writer, © IANS)