Drug test dummies
The vaccine of a major Brisith pharmaceutical, GlaxoSmithKline, is being investigated for a possile link to the deaths of 14 children in Argentina. The Synflorix vaccine is supposed to fight pneumonia. GSK says the vaccine is not to blame for their deaths.
Read the article on CNN here.
While this is purely speculative, I would wager a pretty penny that Synflorix is to blame for the death of those kids. Call me a conspiracy theorist who saw The Constant Gardener one too many times, but I believe that pharmaceutical corporations use less developed countries as their guinea pigs. From their perspective human life is a commodity, not a right. A human life costs less money in Argentina than in the U.K., because they can more easily buy their way out of trouble.
It sends me into a sickened, remorseful rage: that we have so devalued human life that it becomes ok for us intentionally expose children to mortally dangerous substances. Such a thought is terrifying on its own, but to do so for the purpose of making money is wholly depressing.
What do you think? Do pharmaceuticals test potentially harmful drugs in developing nations because it’s easier to avoid a criminal or civil suit? Ethically, does the end justify the means in this case, or is it wrong to knowingly expose people (children) to harmful substances for the sake of developing a drug (and getting richer)?
“GlaxoSmithKline is touting new, late-stage data that demonstrates how its experimental pediatric vaccine Synflorix effectively protects children from pneumococcal disease. Glaxo filed Synflorix for review by the EMEA at the beginning of the year. The new data illustrates its protection against 10 strains of streptococcus pneumoniae, which includes bacteria that causes meningitis, pneumonia and ear infections. If Glaxo prevails in its quest for regulatory approval, Synflorix will go up against Wyeth’s Prevnar, which targets seven of the 10 strains.
“The data presented today are extremely encouraging and represent a major step forward to a pneumococcal conjugate vaccine formulation, specifically designed to address the global epidemiology of pneumococcal disease in both developed and developing countries,” says Jean Stéphenne, president of GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals “
ConcernedAmerican, how much does Glaxo pay you for your PR work?
Reread the post (or read it; I’m not even sure you did that), and you’ll see that I wasn’t questioning the medical efficacy of the vaccine.
I question the ethics of testing drugs on impoverished people in developing nations. Such people have less access to justice should companies like Glaxo commit an abuse. Even if they did, in such countries whose political climates are less stable than in the U.S. or U.K., pharmaceutical corporations have the resources to buy their way out of legal trouble if need be.
ConcernedAmerican, please respond to the questions posed in the post:
Do pharmaceuticals test potentially harmful drugs in developing nations because it’s easier to avoid a criminal or civil suit? Ethically, does the end justify the means in this case, or is it wrong to knowingly expose people (children) to harmful substances for the sake of developing a drug (and getting richer)?
Also, next time you copy and paste talking points from a document, make sure that the quotation marks are in the correct place. Otherwise, it will seem like a PR personnel hastily copy and pasted quotes from a released statement. Hopefully you’re not so asinine.
Sorry to spoil your conspiracy theory, but that’s 14 infants who died out of 19,000 infants (or more by now) who received the vaccine.
Also note that this is a multinational trial that is being conducted in not just three Latin American countries (inc Argentina) but also several other countries in the world (which I would guess include at least one European country and USA).
Drug companies have an obligation to conduct trials in different countries to ensure that drug efficacy is not affected by ethnic and cultural differences. Most countries do not allow approval for medicines that have not been tested in an ethnograph similar to their own.
If this really was the Constant Gardner these deaths would have been covered up, not plastered on CNN.