At last some payouts for the first few victims out of the hundreds of Pfizer's Nigeria drug-trial victims

Read about it here. Why would Pfizer have chosen Africa for its drug trials, do you think? - I think we can make an educated guess. The legalities are easier. Possible victims would find it harder to seek compensation, even if they have managed to stay alive...

You could read John le Carré's novel The Constant Gardener or watch the excellent film of it, to learn rather more of the dark facts of African drug-trials. You may also find this blogpost of mine interesting. Sobering facts like these need to be borne in mind when new drugs are eagerly sought or welcomed. They come at a heavy cost, and it is not our cost.

Medical staff using dirty needles are infecting millions of Africans with HIV

The Telegraph reported that “One in five HIV sufferers in Africa was infected by medical staff using dirty needles and clinical equipment.” That is nearly five million new cases annually because of bad, crucially unhygienic practice. The research appears in a publication backed by the Royal Society of Medicine.

“Africans are subject to a much higher proportion of injections and blood tests than patients in the West, according to a 1999 study for the World Health Organisation.

That research found that a wide range of common symptoms such as colds, ear infections, fatigue and tonsillitis were treated with injections rather than oral medication.

The study concluded that at least 50 per cent of these were unsafe, with needles being used repeatedly on one patient after another, without sterilisation.“

I hope you are as horrified as I am. – It seems clear to me that Western medicine needs to get the hell out of Africa, where it is directly responsible for appalling suffering, disease and death on an unimaginable scale.

In my opinion, philanthropy as it is too often practised by Big Business – i.e. unloading a load of pharmaceutical drugs, sometimes drugs that contain live microbes – to be injected into Africa’s adults and children in less than hygienic circumstances, seems like the work of the devil incarnate!

The Constant Gardener, a book by John le Carré, has the harm done by Big Pharma to African citizens as its fictional theme, but although the detail in the book is fictitious, the reality of the harm done by pharmaceutical junk in Africa is actually worse. If you haven’t read the book or seen the film/DVD, I recommend you do so and have your eyes opened.

I watched the film, The Constant Gardener, on ITV last night.

I watched the film, The Constant Gardener, on ITV last night. The acting was consummate and the story compelling. Based on the novel by John le Carré, this political thriller starred Ralph Fiennes as a British diplomat, and Rachel Weisz as his young wife, passionately and actively concerned about the poverty in Kenya, where her husband was posted. She was murdered, and her gentle, grieving, sensitive husband sought to tease out why and by whom. This led him into the typically corrupt world of a powerful pharmaceutical company and disturbing truths about drug testing in countries where lives are cheap and where the profit motive dominates. A story for our time, indeed.