The Supreme Court today asked the Centre and the Central Council for Research in Homoeopathy to conduct clinical trial of a homoeopathic medicine for treatment of cancer patients.

A bench of justices B S Chauhan and Swatanter Kumar directed that a task force of the Council, to be headed by the Centre's Director General of Health Services, would examine the effectiveness of the homoeopathic medicine, invented by Dr A M Mathur, in cancer treatment.

The court passed the order on a pleawhich claimed that the drug, invented by Dr Mathur,could be an efficacious, cost-effective and safe alternative treatment for cancer patients.