Flouted Ethics, Postcolonial Wounds, and Cyclical Trauma: A Study of Human (2022)

The 2022 web series Human, set in Bhopal, India, portrays a fictional account of the unethical drug trials conducted by Vayu Pharmaceuticals and Manthan Hospitals, exploiting socio-economically marginalized communities previously scarred by the 1984 Union Carbide disaster. Using the health humanities and postcolonial frameworks, this paper aims to analyse the series’ critique of clinical trial ethics, with a focus on the protagonist, Dr. Gauri Nath’s trauma-driven complicity and ambition. This paper argues that Human examines the intricate intersections between systemic injustices, negligent regulation, legacies of postcolonialism, and personal trauma in sustaining pharmaceutical malpractice and neocolonial capitalist exploitation by using the lens of medical ethics, postcoloniality, trauma studies, and foregrounding it in the contemporary Indian clinical trial scene.