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BANGALORE, India, Sunday (Reuters)

A doctor in southern India saved three sick newborn babies using a cloned version of the anti-impotence drug Viagra but now faces ethical questions for publicising the treatment.

Dr P.V. Rajiv treated three "blue babies", suffering a lung problem that starves them of oxygen, with an Indian-made copy of the drug, said A.P.S. Krishnan, vice-president at the Amrita Institute of Medical Science and Research Centre in the port city of Cochin in Kerala state.

"We saved the babies by giving sildenafil citrate, also called Viagra," he said. "They have gone home. They are doing well...Their parents are happy."

However medical colleagues from a non-governmental organisation, Health Action by People, said Rajiv should have consulted an ethics committee before going public in the case.

"I don't doubt his intentions. But when you have an idea it is your duty to bring it before an ethical committee," said NGO spokesman Doctor Raman Kutty, based in Trivandrum, the Kerala state capital.

Krishnan said Dr. P.V. Rajiv first gave the drug orally to a baby suffering pulmonary hypertension, after consulting international journals which reported its use to treat adults in a similar condition.

Blue babies have a condition that contracts vessels carrying oxygen-rich blood to the lungs.

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