This is not a fairy tale …
One upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a nation, ruled by a corrupt government, where government regulation of large, greedy transnational corporations was very weak, and easily avoided.
In this land lived 120 million of people, as smart as you or I, who love their children as much as you or I, but who, because their skin is rich in the substance melanin (which makes their skin darker than mine, and perhaps yours too) some people (usually those with lower amounts of melanin in their skin) have always considered less than human. All of which may have something to do with why a multitude of “alleged” immoral acts and possible crimes against hundreds of their children were committed by a transnational pharmaceutical company by the name of Pfizer:
The Nigerian government is suing the world’s largest drug manufacturer, Pfizer, for allegedly carrying out illegal trials of an anti-meningitis drug that killed or disabled children.
Nigeria is demanding $7bn in damages from the US company for the families of children it says died or suffered serious side effects when the antibiotic Trovan was administered in the northern state of Kano during a meningitis outbreak in 1996.
(cont.)
You see rather than tell these children and their families that they were being given an unproven drug when similar drugs were known to have serious side effects in animals and adult humans, they simply went ahead and gave these children this unproven antibiotic for “research purposes.” There was a cheaper, safer alternative medicine available, but they “allegedly” never told the children selected for the Trovan trial of this fact. These “clinical trials” (as they are called by medical researchers) usually require the informed consent of the people who are being administered such unproven medications. But, according to the complaint filed by the Nigerian government, that isn’t what Pfizer did in this instance:
In court papers filed in Abuja yesterday, the government accuses Pfizer of conducting illegal tests on children.
“The plaintiff contends that the defendant never obtained approval of the relevant regulatory agencies … nor did the defendant seek or receive approval to conduct any clinical trial at any time before their illegal conduct,” it said.
This is the ugly backwater of globalization ,the capitalist, corporatist and internationalist movement dedicated to making the world one big happy free marketplace, in which large corporations are free to roam, unencumbered by excessive government regulations and other such “barriers to free trade.” Someday, it will lead to paradise on earth, if you believe what its many supporters tell us.
In the meantime, though, the process of globalization is clearly leading to instances of exploitation and oppression of poor people in developing countries, such as what occurred in Nigeria regarding Pfizer’s new antibiotic drug Trovan. Trovan, for your information, though approved for adult use by the FDA in 1997 was never approved by for use in children. Subsequently Trovan’s use for all patients was discontinued and its manufacture discontinued by Pfizer in the United States after the FDA issued a health advisory warning in 1999 regarding serious liver damage it caused many patients who took the drug.
[T]here was … clear evidence of liver damage caused by Trovan in animals and in humans before the drug was approved in December 1997. In one pre- approval study in which the drug was used to treat prostatitis, 10% of the men (14 out of 140) given the drug developed evidence of liver toxicity. With eight other drugs in this fluoroquinolone antibiotic family available in the U.S, as well as dozens of other safer and equally or more effective drugs for infections, the removal of Trovan from the market by the FDA would not have deprived doctors or patients of a drug that could possibly be considered indispensable. Instead of banning Trovan in 1999, as was done everywhere else in the world, the FDA chose to “limit” its use in the United States to patients who were either hospitalized or in nursing homes. At the time of our petition in 1999 to ban the drug, there were eight cases of liver failure, including five deaths and three liver transplants. There were, as of December 31, 2004, a total of 58 cases of liver failure, including 29 deaths and nine people requiring liver transplants. This is especially alarming since for the past several years there were a total of only 350,000 prescriptions filled in the U.S.(from April 2002 through Feb 2005). As sales waned following the 1999 market withdrawal in Europe but more and more cases of liver failure and death occurred, Pfizer quietly discontinued making the drug in 2002. However, during the latest year for which U.S. sales data are available, there were still 18,000 prescriptions filled in the U.S (March 2004 through February 2005), long after Pfizer quietly stopped manufacturing the drug.
So, you see, this isn’t just a story about a far away land whose people’s misery we can tut-tut over tea and crumpets while reading the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. It’s a story about our government, and our nation’s corruption by multinational companies, and the misery of people who live here — maybe even someone you once knew. It’s not just the poor children of Nigeria who have been robbed of their health and their lives, it’s also us.
So you can see why this is no fairy tale. Because there’s no way in hell I can fashion a happy ending out of how Big Pharma is treating you, me, and everyone else around the world: as lab rats and profit centers, nothing more. We are in a story like Hansel and Gretel, with a few, rather significant differences. Our Big Bad Witch, after promising us the best treats in the world, has stuffed us in the oven to eat. And, of course, our story, and the story of the children of Nigeria is real.