Is Africa the Dumping Ground for Pharmaceutical Company Experimental Drugs?
Question by Sally S: Is Africa the dumping ground for Pharmaceutical company experimental drugs?
This report reinforces my long held view that Africa is the dumping ground for Drug company’s experimental drugs.
What do you think?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6768799.stm
Anger at deadly Nigerian drug trials
By Senan Murray
BBC News website, Kano
In school, Anas Mohammadu’s mates call him “horror” and make fun of him.
When the 14-year-old goes to bed at night, he dreams of becoming a soldier.
Anas survived the treatment, but was permanently damaged His father, Muhammadu Mustapha, knows his son’s dream is unlikely to come true. “It’s only a pipedream. You don’t become a soldier with weak and wobbly legs and a permanently drooling mouth,” he says bitterly. “He tires too quickly. The other day, he was trying to draw water from a well and the small bucket almost pulled him into the well.”
But Anas is lucky to be alive.
Deformities
Many other children who were used in the controversial 1996 drug trial by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer died.
The Americans and some local Nigerian doctors gave Anas this evil drug Anas’s father
Anas, then only three years old, was the first child to be given the experimental antibiotic Trovan at the Infectious Diseases Hospital, Kano, during the drug trial.
Pfizer tested the then unregistered drug in Nigeria’s north-western Kano State during an outbreak of meningitis which had affected thousands of children.
Officials in Kano say more than 50 children died in the experiment, while many others developed mental and physical deformities.
But Pfizer says only 11 of the 200 children used in the drug trial died.
“From our records, the fatalities were only 11, but the survival rate was 94 per cent,” Pfizer spokesman in New York, Bryant Haskins, told the BBC News website.
Following pressure from rights groups and families affected by the trial, the Nigerian government set up an expert medical panel to review the drug trial.
The experiment was “an illegal trial of an unregistered drug”, the Nigerian panel concluded, and a “clear case of exploitation of the ignorant”.
‘Verbal consent’
Pfizer denies any wrongdoing and reiterates its position that its trial of Trovan was conducted in accordance with Nigerian regulations.
Hajara survived the trials but cannot now hear or speak
“These allegations against Pfizer, which are not new, are highly inflammatory and not based on all the facts,” Mr Haskins, recently told Reuters news agency.
He also said the trial had helped save lives.
The company has previously said that “verbal consent” had been obtained from the parents of the children concerned and that the exercise was “sound from medical, scientific, regulatory and ethical standpoints”.
But Mr Mustapha is still burning with anger.
“My son was ill and we took him to the hospital like any other family would. Then the Americans and some local Nigerian doctors injected Anas with this evil drug.”
Another man, Hassan Sani, says his daughter Hajara, 14, was also given the drug.
He says the pill made his daughter deaf and unable to speak, and he wants the doctors involved to be treated as criminals.
We did not suspect that our children were being used for an experiment
Hajara’s father
“The American doctors took advantage of our illiteracy and cheated us and our children. We thought they were helping us,” Mr Sani says.
“We did not suspect that our children were being used for an experiment. They have cheated us and our children. All I can say is that God will judge them according to their evil deeds.
“Where there is a crime, there must be punishment.”
‘Charges’
After more than a decade of silence, the Nigerian government has decided to sue Pfizer, seeking $ 7bn (£3.5bn) in damages for the families of children who allegedly died or suffered side-effects in the experiment.
Kano State government has also filed separate charges against Pfizer.
But Mr Sani says compensation will not be enough.
“In addition to the compensation, they should be killed like the children they have killed,” he says.
The Pfizer experiment was cited by many as a reason for the mass rejection of polio vaccinations in many parts of northern Nigeria in recent years.
Some local Islamic preachers said there was a western plot to sterilise Muslim women.
After several tests were carried out to proving the vaccine’s safety, the programme has now been resumed.
Whether the families ever receive compensation, it will never be enough to bring back Anas’s lost dreams of becoming a soldier.
Rockford, It’s evidently clear that you didn’t bother to read the article,did you.
Firstly, the drug trial was with an experimental antibiotic called Troven and was used on children with maningitis. Since you obviously approve of and believe it’s some sort of noble gesture for African’s to submit them selves as guinea pigs for experimental drug trials, may I suggest to you to also submit yourself for the next experimental drug trial. MMMM just as I thaught, your pathetic silence is deafening….
Cesar A, you are quite right, I guess I did answer my own question, however, I wasn’t seeking my opinion. I was seeking yours.
Best answer:
Answer by Radzewicz
Yes, and Albert Schweitzer and Jonas Salk are the original instigators.
We should never try to cure diseases in third world countries because these people don’t really want to live. If they really wanted to live they would have done their own drug research in the first place. Saving them is meddling in other peoples lifestyles and we have no business doing it.
I recommend that you never use pharmecutical drugs again in your life, both as a form of protest but also to preserve your own mental health. After all, you can find everything that you really need in the forest.
Answer by energeticthinker
It is quite possible that the pharmaceuticals are treating these people as guinea pigs.
However, it is important to ask are these people, as a whole, better off for having had the free medicine, or are they worse off.
grumbli
Also, what alternatives did they have? Were they better or worse than the one the partook of?
This reminds me of the concern about the use of DDT in Africa. It is true that DDT causes health problems. However, these health problems are far less devastating than the malarial infections that it prevents. DDT is cheap & effective, and saves more lives than it kills.
In chastizing any group of people (corporation or otherwise), it is important to compare their bad that they have done to the good that they have done.
We do not live in a perfect world…we sometimes have to swallow bitter pills to increase our overall odds.
I wish you well…and empathize with your concern about the abuses of corporations.
🙂
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