This is creepy and seems to confirm some of the worst accusations against Big Pharma. In this case a financial settlement appears to be generous to Pfizer. For those who wonder why Big Pharma and big business from the west are so disliked and distrusted in Africa and the developing world, this case provides a single but hardly exceptional case study. If people in Europe or the US discovered they were human guinea pigs the consequences may have been different.
Pfizer has reached a broad agreement to pay millions of dollars to Nigeria's Kano state to settle a criminal case alleging that the drug company illegally tested an experimental drug on gravely ill children during a 1996 meningitis epidemic.
The details remain private, but sources close to the negotiations said the total payments -- including those to the children, their families, the government and the government's attorneys -- would be about $75 million under the current settlement terms. Other details, including how the money will be distributed, are to be worked out within weeks.
Nigerian authorities say Pfizer's infamous trial of the antibiotic Trovan killed 11 children and disabled scores more. The world's largest drug company says the deaths and injuries were the result of meningitis.
