Drugs Giant Faces Criminal Charges Over Clinical Trial (Pfizer)

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/05/31/1577/

Drugs Giant Faces Criminal Charges Over Clinical Trial
by Andrew Gumbel

LOS ANGELES - The US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer has been slapped with criminal charges in Nigeria over a notorious clinical trial it conducted on children during a meningitis epidemic a decade ago. Patients became unwitting guinea pigs for a new, untested antibiotic and many of them either died or were left with permanent disabilities.

Pfizer and its representatives will be called to account at hearings due to begin next month in the Nigerian state of Kano, where public anger over the clinical trial - and the assurances of any pharmaceutical company - remains so high that the local population won’t even trust the Nigerian government to immunise their children against polio. 0531 03

The episode, which has already led to one unsuccessful suit in the US courts, was the inspiration for John Le Carre’s novel The Constant Gardener and is frequently held up as an instance of scientific inquiry gone shockingly awry.

The Nigerian authorities say Pfizer researchers selected 200 children and infants from a crowded epidemic camp in Kano in 1996 and gave about half of them an untested antibiotic called Trovan. The lawsuit alleges that the researchers did not obtain consent from the children’s families even though they knew from their own research that Trovan might have life-threatening side effects and was “unfit for human use”.

The suit further contends that the researchers gave the other half a comparison drug made by Pfizer’s competitor Hoffman-La Roche, but deliberately underdosed them to make their own product look better. Pfizer and its doctors “agreed to do an illegal act,” the suit says, “in a manner so rash and negligent as to endanger human life”.

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[azurnoir]

1. My first thought

was is "The Constant Gardener" based on this, hopefully these criminals will be found guilty, but does the US have an extradition treaty with Nigeria?

[babylonsister]

2. Hey! My first thought was that book/movie, too. If it wasn't, it could

have been. As for an extradition treaty, I don't know. Hopefully, someone else will.

[azurnoir]

3. The drug is still in use!!!!!

http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/trovazit_ids.htm

It is mixxed with zithromax and used to treat gonorrhea

[Sapere aude]

4. Be sure to get more of those government mandated injections too !

[youngdem]

5. The perpetrators should be dosed with Trovan and left in the same camp to die

The HUGE costs this is having in Nigeria whereby they no longer trust ANY medicines as a result of this Mengele-esque stunt is awful.