But the US Food and Drug Administration found that only 2.4 per cent of new drugs in 1980 represented important therapeutic gain over products already on the market. And Britain s Department of Health and Social Security concluded in the 1970s that most drug research was directed toward commercial returns rather than therapeutic need . Around 70,000 pilgrims a day come to Varanasi, the Hindu sacred city, for a cleansing dip. A bottle of water from Mother Ganga can be found in millions of Indian homes. Pilgrims and migrant workers regularly defecate along the river banks.
Herders use the river as a bath for their buffaloes and cows.
All the city s sewage is dumped into the Ganges untreated. It used to be pumped on to farms, but the pumps broke down five years ago. Downstream at Patna, two huge sewage treatment plants are broken and unrepaired. Infant mortality in villages around Varanasi is 44 per cent greater than the national average, according to Dr. D.K. Aggarwal of Benares Hindu University. But the local belief in the river's magical purity did have a basis in fact - so long as contamination is kept below a certain point, it seems that the waters do naturally purify themselves.