Pfizer, Western Drug Companies pay for using African children for Drug Trial – by Abdulkhadir X

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Pfizer is one of the biggest drug making and drug dealing entities in the world. It makes pharmaceuticals, and chemicals that have uses across the health, manufaacturing and entertainment sectors of the global economy.

Pfizer had developed a very toxic course of chemicals called Trovan, a medication with multiple uses but mainly for fighting menigitis, fever, and viral infections, in the early 1990s.

Pfizer had planned to sell Trovan in the US and Europe after the trials on African children. It found Nigeria a good testing ground because of the weak regulatory structures in the country.

Under the guise of providing drugs for children with tropical fever and /or menigitis, Pfizer began a stealth test of its medication on Nigerian children.

More than hundred children were given the experimental oral antibiotic called Trovan, at different trial dosages, while other hundreds received ceftriaxone, the “gold-standard” treatment of modern medicine. All this was done without the knowledge or consent of the parents of the children.

Many children died from this human drug trials. Pfizer denied and claimed the children died of various diseases.

After much wrangling and armtwisting, scientific tests and debates, Pfizer finally admitted that there could be connections between its experimental drugs and the death of eleven children. Five children reportedly died on Trovan and six on ceftriaxone.

Court actions were filed by the Nigerian government of Kano state, (the region where the human experiments actually took place) against Pfizer.

In 2009 Pfizer reached a tentative out-of-court settlement with the Nigeria’s Kano state government worth $75m.

The families of four of the children each collected cheques for $175,000 from a compensation trust fund, after submitting DNA samples to show that the dead were their offspring.

Many parents of the other deceased children continue to protest about the absence of recognition of the wrong done to them as well as lack of compensation.

As a consequence of the Nigerian trials, Pfizer’s licence to market Trovan was withdrawn in Europe because of concern over liver toxicity.

Abdulkhadir X


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