Pfizer in the dock over human rights violations
Pharmaceuticals
Via the FT - Pfizer case reopened in US - A lawsuit originally filed in New York two years ago on behalf of 30 Nigerian families who suffered after being given an experimental antibiotic has been re-opened by a New York appeals court. The case was dismissed last year on grounds that it would be more appropriately heard in Nigeria but after efforts to try the case in Nigeria were unsuccesful the plaintiffs filed suit again last November in Connecticut.
Elaine Kusel, attorney for the plaintiffs in the New York case said: "We believe US companies that go abroad for the purpose of testing a drug and bringing it back to the US and then submit those results to the FDA should be accountable in America."
Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceuticals company, set up a clinic in 1996 to give Trovan, then an experimental antibiotic, in a trial involving about 200 children during a meningitis epidemic that swept the north of Nigeria. Eleven died and others allegedly suffered brain damage, were partially paralysed or went deaf. Pfizer said the fatalities were of a proportion "lower than published results for other forms of treatment in this epidemic". Yesterday Pfizer said it "believes the claims are without merit and the company acted in accordance with accepted medical and ethical practice concerning clinical trials."
The original New York lawsuit alleges Pfizer did not explain to "the children or their parents the proposed treatment was experimental and that they were free to refuse it and instead choose the safe, effective treatment for bacterial meningitis being offered at the same site, free of charge, by a charitable medical group".
Posted by Paul at October 15, 2003 12:46 AM |