According to the Washington Post:

Officials in Nigeria have brought criminal charges against the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer for the company’s alleged role in the deaths of children who received an unapproved drug during a meningitis epidemic. 

The government alleges that Pfizer researchers selected 200 children and infants from crowds at a makeshift epidemic camp in Kano, and gave about half the group an untested antibiotic called Trovan.  Researchers gave the other children what the lawsuit describes as a “dangerously low dose” of a comparison drug made by Hoffmann-La Roche.

Nigerian officials allege that Pfizer’s actions resulted in the deaths of an unspecified number of children, and left others deaf, paralyzed, blind, or brain-damaged.  Further, the lawsuit contends that the researchers did not obtain consent from the childrens’ families, and that the researchers knew Trovan to be an experimental drug with life-threatening side effects that made the drug “unfit for human use.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has never approved Trovan for use in treating American children.  In 1997, it was cleared for use in adults, however, it has been associated with reports of liver damage and deaths, leading the FDA to restrict its use in 1999.  Although it remains available in the U.S., European regulators have banned Trovan.

I wonder how do these people sleep at nite after harming innocent children?  I bet the lobbyists in Congress for Pfizer never bring this topic up…but would they allow Pfizer to inject their own children like those in Nigeria?       

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 2:32 am and is filed under Mesothelioma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.