How much do drug companies really care about saving lives when they will do this (see article below) knowing already that the drug is not just dangerous but deadly????  I say we boycott Pfizer and all the other drug companies that would be so inhumane to any human being or animal as well.  Sadly the FDA will slap them with some tiny little law suit that is peanuts... what has happened to our protections?  ~~Lucretia

 

 

Drugs Giant Faces Criminal Charges Over Clinical Trial

http://bammm.org/Drugs_Criminal_Clinical.htm

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.

"....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".

    Once the trial was over, the suit continues, Pfizer left the area, removed all medical records and "obliterated any evidence" of the trial. A Nigerian government report, which appears to have spurred the criminal charges, previously found that Pfizer never told the children or their parents they were participating in a trial and did not inform them that alternative treatments were available - most obviously chloramphenicol, a relatively cheap antibiotic usually recommended for bacterial meningitis.

    The government report found that of the 11 children who died, five were taking Trovan and six were taking low doses of the comparison drug, ceftriaxone. An unknown number suffered deafness, blindness, paralysis and other disabilities. 

and "...Trovan has never been approved for use on US children. It was cleared for adults in 1997, but its use was restricted two years later following reports of liver damage and death. It is banned throughout Europe. "

See full article: http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/060107HA.shtml