Constant Gardener?
Nigeria accuses Pfizer
I haven’t yet seen this in the American press: Nigeria prosecuting Pfizer for operating a la mode The Constant Gardener.
From the German magazine Der Spiegel:
USING AFRICANS AS GUINEA PIGS
Nigeria Takes On Pfizer over ‘Killer Drug’
By Hauke Goos
The Nigerian government is taking on Pfizer, the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company. It accuses the company of using a meningitis epidemic to test an unapproved drug on Nigerian children. Eleven children who participated in the tests died and others were left with disabilities. … END QUOTE
The case is rooted in 1996. Perhaps in part inspired Le Carre’s novel? Which was published in 2001.
It seems art, in any case, imitated life.
Meanwhile, as Democratic candidates debate how many tens of millions of Americans should live without health care, the scientific so-called community heralds progress in the immortalization project: the cloning of primate embryos, and the production of stem cells from skin (rather than embryos).
Most news reports and commentators seem to be presuming that the latter innovation removes all/most ethical roadblocks to stem cell work.
If so, according to the technoprophets who briefly came out of the closet at the turn of the millennium — including some of the scientist businessmen running the primary biotech companies involved — the grandchildren of the very rich may perhaps needn’t die unless they want to. Brave new world that hath such creatures in’t.
