allAfrica.com: Nigeria: Who Wants Pfizer to Be Guilty? (Page 1 of 1)

The biggest pharmaceutical company in the world stands accused of killing 11 Nigerian children and injuring 189 more. There is no dispute that in 1996 there was a tragic outbreak of a horrible form of meningitis in the northern state of Kano.

The charge, repeated this May by Nigerian federal and state authorities, is that Pfizer, a worldwide firm of immense prestige, used some of the suffering young victims as research guinea pigs. The firm, it is alleged, broke all the rules of ethical conduct to rush its doctors and a controversial new and unapproved antibiotic, Trovan, into a rural and crisis-torn area to try the product in a way which was forbidden under international rules.

Little might have been known of the story had not The Washington Post, the leading US newspaper, been told about it, and made it big international news. That was in December 2000 and ever since then articles and TV films have highlighted the case.

Their story also alerted the Kano and national legal authorities, who say they were as duped as the subjects of the trial. The U.S. magazine BusinessWeek quoted government prosecutor Babatunde Irukera as saying: "What the government did was to give Pfizer the benefit of the doubt, and obviously naively trusted Pfizer."

If the courts find Pfizer guilty, we can expect the firm to be made to pay enormous punitive damages. Most people will be inclined to cheer that a corporate Goliath has been slain by an African David. We will see.

Pfizer insists that in nearly every aspect, the case against it is plain wrong and can be proved wrong. They say there is good evidence that its drug, which is administered orally, was even more effective than an existing drug from another firm, one which involves painful injections.

It is important that sensible people realise what good news it will be if Pfizer are right. You would think it was obvious. Why wouldn't people celebrate a major international firm's being proven to have behaved ethically and even honourably and not to have killed or hurt - or help to kill or hurt - the innocent? This, you would think, is especially true when the firm is one of the leaders in a race to bring science to bear on human suffering, and one which does so using the sensibly regulated free market, itself one of the triumphs of democracy and freedom.

But that is not how the world works. In developing countries, there is a powerful impulse to see the corporations as a neo- imperialist western force which can be blamed, often as a cover for failings on the part of local politics. They can also be seen as lucrative targets.

But the problem is much wider than that. Many people in Europe and North America really love the idea that corporations are crooks. Worse than crooks, really: they are a kind of evil force which tramples on our dignity whilst seducing us with a constant flow of products and services which we are condemned to consume. It is believed that there is a sinister side to their works. If anyone gets in their way, it is alleged, they will bribe, coerce and - in extreme cases - threaten or even kill their opponents.

There are lots of books which reinforce bits of this sort of argument, and countless TV documentaries try to tell this sort of story. One of the most famous, The Insider, starring Al Pacino, described how Big Tobacco in the U.S. pressured a man who dared to blow the whistle on a cigarette firm, and the film hinted - with no evidence - that they threatened him with violence.

Naturally, Big Pharma is an attractive candidate for this sort of attention.

There has been a slew of campaigns arguing that pharmaceutical firms have found all kinds of means to persuade regulators that their new products are safe and to get doctors to prescribe them. And some of it has been true. Partly because they spend so much on developing new drugs, pharmaceutical firms go to great lengths to get them protected by patents, and to defend and milk their patents. In the rich countries of Europe and north America, the pharmaceutical giants face an impressive array of regulators, whistleblowers, academics, campaigners and journalists all bent on taming the corporate giants. Of course, these watchdogs mostly have medicine cabinets full of the firms' products.

The point here is that if Pfizer has misbehaved itself in Nigeria, the story fits favourite worldwide myths. It is widely supposed that western multinationals are up to no good in the "Third World". That's to say, the western shareholders and customers of these firms are inclined to believing that their managers enjoy exploiting the poor in the tropics and sub-tropics because you can get away with more in such places. In the case of pharmaceuticals, there was a persistent charge that the firms ought to be giving away their drugs, and especially the anti-retroviral drugs which can fight HIV/Aids, in markets where the suffering was greatest and the chance of profit least.

And then there were rumblings that Big Pharma was using poor Africans as guinea pigs for drugs which were aimed at the rich western market. It was possible to do so because the authorities and doctors in African countries would more willingly produce the necessary patients and then sign on the dotted line that everything had been done according to the so-called Helsinki rules which are supposed to govern such things. Actually, Pfizer insists the 1996 trial proved Trovan was especially useful in the African context, and that only an African trial such as offered by the Kano outbreak could have demonstrated the fact.

Never mind all that. Here was a tale which suited the myth-makers. In 2001, the veteran British thriller writer John le Carre_ produced a bestseller, The Constant Gardener, which fictionalised just the sort of behaviour alleged in Kano. Indeed, le Carre_ wrote: "I came to realize that, by comparison with reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard." Oddly, you might think, neither he nor the makers of a 2005 international hit movie of the same name offered any evidence to support this tale of outrageous conspiracy, mayhem and murder.

Let's get back to the real world. It is possible that Pfizer did everything that the prosecution alleges. It is possible that everyone lied their heads off and was complicit in an illegal and immoral drugs trial. The medical authorities in Nigeria may have conspired with Pfizer's employees and stooges to pull off the multinational's scheme. It is possible because anything is possible. It is also likely that Pfizer did not rush to the outbreak solely because it believed its drug could help the victims. It is very likely that Pfizer also believed that this was an entirely valid and safe trial and that it operated in good faith. It may yet be widely accepted that undertaking it helped children suffer less.

All that can get thrashed out in open court. But we need to remember this. Big firms are not on the whole wicked or even especially devious. We need them and we need to remember that they are not aliens, villains or even strangers. They are seldom heroic philanthropists and we are fools if we expect them to be. So as Pfizer's behaviour comes under magnifying glass, let's remember to be fair as well as vigorous in our scrutiny.

Nadabo wrote from Bauchi

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