Research vital to halt decades of deformity

Methyl isocyanate is a chemical in search of immortality.

Not content with killing 6,000 people outright and thousands later, it is deforming the next generation. Men and women who were children when the chemical leaked out of the Union Carbide pesticide factory in 1984 are now marrying and conceiving. Conception to birth is a period of mortal dread in the slums around the plant. Babies with terrible abnormalities are being born.

It was obvious that women who were pregnant at the time would give birth to children with defects. That much was obvious to anyone who saw the agonies of the victims as they fled the pestilential vapours that turned Bhopal into a gas chamber. Still-births and spontaneous abortions became common occurrences. Doctors treating the women a decade later spoke of 'an epidemic of gynaecological diseases'.

Concerns about the effect on women's reproductive systems were raised early on when survivors reported strange things happening to their menstrual cycles. Teenagers who visited the Sambhavna Trust (which runs a free clinic for the victims) either complained of having three periods a month or were not menstruating at all despite being 17 or 18.

But researchers working with the victims are dismayed to find a high incidence of abnormalities even now. Their evidence is anecdotal, based on the cases they see. Conclusive proof is not possible since they lack funding. What they see are newborns with cleft palate, paediatric cancer, polydactyly (extra fingers or toes), syndactyly (fingers or toes joined), babies with three eyes and hydrocephalus (water on the brain).

Dr N. Ganesh, senior research officer at Jawahalal Nehru Cancer Hospital and Research Centre, has a photo album in his office. The pictures of the malformations make you flinch. 'Bhopal is in agony,' says Dr Ganesh. 'One patient of mine has had three Downs Syndrome children. The fourth was also a Downs baby but she spontaneously aborted. This gas has just ruined the lives of so many people.'