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Criminal Charges Against
Pfizer for Illegal Human Experimentation in Africa
Posted in News Reports by Don Jaide on July 26,
2007.
http://www.africaresource.com/rasta/news-reports/criminal-charges-against-pfizer-for-illegal-human-experimentation-in-africa/
Pfizer faces criminal charges over drug test fiasco
THE Federal Government yesterday filed fresh charges against
Pfizer International Incorporated (PII), accusing seven of the
company’s top officials of fraud and criminal breach of trust of
its controversial drug test, popularly known as Trovan Clinical
Trials, it carried out on Nigerian citizens in Kano in 1996,
which had fatal results.
The charges were filed at a Federal High Court in Abuja against
Pfizer and its top employees namely Isa Dutse, Scott Hopkins,
Debra Williams, Mike Dunne, Samuel Ohuabunwa, Robert Buhl and
William Steere. They are accused of alleged complicity in the
drug trial, which resulted in the death of over 200 meningitis
patients.
In 1996, Steere was the Chief Executive Officer of PII;
Ohuanbunwa, Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian subsidiary;
Dutse was a medical doctor and Principal Investigator while
Hopkins, Dunne and Williams were medical doctors employed by the
organisation.
Last week, the government withdrew a civil action it had
instituted on June 4, 2007 against Pfizer, wherein it asked the
court to order the company to pay seven billion dollars as
compensation to the victims of the Trovan Test.
Government’s lawyer, Babatunde Irukera, explained that the
withdrawal of the civil suit against the firm was to enable it
formally file a criminal charge against it and its officials who
allegedly breached the nation’s health laws by testing the
efficacy of allegedly unregistered drugs on citizens in Kano
State.
When the new case made out by the Federal Government was called
up yesterday, Pfizer had no legal representation. Irukera,
however, urged the court to grant a long adjournment to avail
him time to tighten his case against the accused persons.
The trial Judge, Justice Anwuri Chikere obliged him and
adjourned the matter till October 29, 2007.
Outside the courtroom, the government counsel told reporters
that the trial would only go on when the accused persons had
been arrested.
“We have filed a criminal charge against them and it follows
that they would be arrested, arraigned and tried”.
According to government, the accused persons sometime in April
1996 possessed and administered Trovafloxacin, which is
“dangerous to human health and life” when they knew that it was
untested and unregistered by the country’s regulatory agency
NAFDAC.
For possessing the drug, the accused persons allegedly offended
section 516 of the Criminal Code Act. And, for administering it
without being duly registered to do so under the Medical and
Dental Practitioners (MDP) Act, they breached section 17 of the
MDP Act Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (LFN) 1990.
Similarly, they were charged with “knowingly importing into
Nigeria an untested and unregistered drug, an offence under the
National Drug Formulary and Essential Drugs List Act.
The Pfizer executives were also accused of conducting a clinical
trial without obtaining valid due certificate and thereby
committed an offence contrary to section 5 (1) (a) and
punishable under section 6 of the Food, Drug and Related
Products (Registration etc) Act.
They were also charged with forging letters purporting to be
approvals to carry out the clinical trial contrary to section
468 of the Criminal Code.
The companies and their executives were accused of bribing Dr.
Isa Dutse of the Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital with $20,000.00 to
procure a forged and backdated letter of approval for the
clinical trial.
In the civil suit, which was dropped last week and refiled, the
government prayed the court to, among others, compel Pfizer to
make the following payments: $500 million being the total sum
expended by it in providing treatment, compensation and support
for the victims of the drug test and their families; $450
million being the total sum it incurred in its public
enlightenment efforts to erase the societal misgivings and
prejudices that arose out of the Kano Trovan Test conducted by
the 1st Defendant (Pfizer) and $1 billion being the cost of the
government’s sponsored health programmes and initiatives, which
have failed, following the societal misgivings and prejudices
arising from the Kano Trovan Test.
From Lemmy Ughegbe,
Nigerian Guardian Newspapers, Abuja
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