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On the entire continent of Africa, a mere 23% of the populace has received "full vaccination" with covid-19 drugs. This can be attributed to insufficient vaccination coverage and widespread reluctance towards vaccines, stemming from concerns about their safety and efficacy. However, considering the continent's past encounters with Western medical practices, it is understandable that some individuals might harbor doubts about the vaccine's safety and effectiveness.
Vaccinations play a critical role in tackling epidemics; however, a growing number of people worldwide opt out of vaccinations for various reasons, which have only recently been scrutinized by researchers, policymakers, and the general public. One such reason is a general distrust of governments and health institutions responsible for administering vaccines. This distrust has been linked to previous negative experiences with government institutions, such as discrimination in healthcare and unethical medical trials.
The 1996 Pfizer clinical trial in Nigeria during an outbreak of bacterial meningitis is a notable event in the history of medical research. It raised significant ethical concerns and sparking debates about the responsibilities of pharmaceutical companies when conducting research in developing countries. The trial aimed to test the efficacy and safety of a new antibiotic, Trovan (trovafloxacin), in treating meningitis in children. However, the trial became mired in controversies, leading to legal actions and settlements.
Meningitis, a highly contagious infection affecting the brain lining, is particularly harmful to children. In 1996, Nigeria faced a severe meningitis epidemic, resulting in 109,580 cases and 11,717 fatalities. Northern Nigeria, where Kano state has a 99% Muslim population, was heavily affected. During this time, Doctors Without Borders provided treatment to children using chloramphenicol, an antibiotic endorsed by the World Health Organization (WHO) for meningitis treatment.
Concurrently, Pfizer, a U.S. pharmaceutical company, was developing a new antibiotic called Trovan. Although tested on adults, the drug had not been tested on children. It had shown severe side effects, including liver issues and cartilage abnormalities. Pfizer used the meningitis outbreak as an opportunity to test Trovan's effectiveness in pediatric settings. The company set up a testing site next to Doctors Without Borders, selecting 200 children aged between 3 months and 18 years for the trial. Sadly, 11 of the participating children died, and others developed disabilities such as paralysis and liver failure.
In December 2000, The Washington Post published a series of articles accusing Pfizer of
causing the deaths and disabilities of several children due to unethical experimental trials without obtaining informed consent. Parents claimed they were not informed about the trial's experimental nature, believing they received the standard treatment Doctors Without Borders provided.
The articles ignited protests in Muslim-majority regions of northern Nigeria in 2001. The protesters, led by Muslim religious leaders, accused Pfizer and other "Western" institutions of targeting and attempting to kill Muslims through vaccines. Pfizer denied any wrongdoing, attributing the deaths to meningitis rather than their drug. An investigation commissioned by the Nigerian government found Pfizer responsible for the children's deaths and guilty of conducting trials without informed consent. Several lawsuits followed, resulting in an out-of-court settlement of around $75 million to Kano state and $175,000 to four affected families in 2009.
This incident fueled distrust among Muslims towards vaccination initiatives led by Western organizations like the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI), which includes the WHO and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The situation escalated in 2003 when Muslim leaders in Nigeria boycotted GPEI-led polio vaccination campaigns in five northern states, citing the Pfizer drug trials as their reason. The boycott lasted over a year, ending only after government officials collaborated with local religious leaders to prove the vaccine's safety. The boycott increased polio prevalence by 30%, delaying global eradication efforts by over a decade. Nigeria was declared polio-free in 2000. The Pfizer trials continue to create tension among Nigerian Muslims. The tragic deaths of Muslim children are referenced whenever mass vaccination campaigns are proposed in the country.
Like other pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer has faced numerous allegations of ethical violations over the years. Some of these include:
Illegal marketing practices and off-label promotion: In 2009, Pfizer agreed to pay a $2.3 billion settlement to resolve criminal and civil liability for unlawful marketing practices, including off-label promotion of its drugs Bextra, Geodon, Zyvox, and Lyrica. Off-label promotion refers to marketing a drug for uses not approved by regulatory authorities. This practice can lead to the improper prescription and administration of medications, potentially harming patients.
Price-fixing: In 2016, Pfizer was fined over £84 million by the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority for drastically increasing the price of an anti-epilepsy drug, phenytoin sodium, by up to 2,600%. The price hike led to a significant financial burden on the National Health Service (NHS) and potentially limited patient access to this essential medication.
Manipulation of scientific research: Experts reviewing thousands of Pfizer documents for a lawsuit claim that the company manipulated the publication of scientific studies to promote its epilepsy drug Neurontin for off-label uses while suppressing research that contradicted those applications. The tactics reportedly involved delaying the release of unfavorable studies, spinning negative data positively, and combining negative findings with positive research to offset the results.
Failure to disclose safety risks: Pfizer has faced criticism for allegedly failing to disclose safety risks associated with its products. For example, the company faced numerous lawsuits over its smoking cessation drug Chantix (varenicline), which was linked to an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior. Critics argued that Pfizer did not adequately warn patients and healthcare providers about these risks.
Pharmaceutical companies, driven by the pursuit of continuous revenue, perform experiments on uninformed patients in nations with limited independent supervision. The narrative of Pfizer's actions in Nigeria demonstrates how financial interests can supersede the value of human life. It extensively reveals the consequences of violating health regulations for the benefit of a select few. In the context of an ongoing need for innovative medications, it is crucial to remember the lessons learned from Pfizer's activities in Nigeria and for governments worldwide to apply them as a guide for future actions.
When examining Pfizer, it is crucial to recognize its primary objective as a profit-generating entity for Wall Street, with a focus on drug sales. The company's track record of transgressions and offenses raises questions about its integrity and commitment to ethical medical practices. For organizations like Pfizer, injuries, and fatalities may be viewed as an unavoidable consequence of rapidly introducing inadequately tested products to the market. Some may argue that a warning should be attached to the Pfizer logo and question whether it is wise to entrust such a company with the responsibility of vaccinating a significant portion of the global population using an experimental vaccine.
What do you think?
For more:
Africa Is Starkly Unvaccinated - Africa is starkly unvaccinated, and starkly unvanquished by COVID. Let's study that victory with utmost diligence.
Where Profits and Lives Hang in Balance - Pfizer used Nigeria's meningitis epidemic to conduct experiments on children with what Pfizer believed was a promising new antibiotic--a drug not yet approved in the United States.
Pfizer’s Scandal in Nigeria – How An Experimental Vaccine Killed 11 Children in 1996
What do Pfizer’s 1996 drug trials in Nigeria teach us about vaccine hesitancy? - Recent evidence links the distrust to negative past experiences with government institutions.
Clayton is the founder and publisher of the social and political commentary newsletter Think Things Through and the host of the Think Things Through Podcast.
'Vaccine hesitancy', for my purposes, strikes me as a double-edged euphemism, just another self-defining accusation disguised as a personality disorder, along the lines of 'paranoid' or the more recent all-purpose banishment device of 'narcissist.'
I was never 'hesitant' to seek any of these various experimental semi-placebos marketed as 'covid vaccines.' Hesitation on my part never had anything to do with it. The very notion was never even something I regarded as on the table for consideration. It became obvious to me as soon as the very 'viral' nature of an alleged disease outbreak could be better described as a complex of unfounded rumors having 'gone viral' on social media, that nobody even discussing the topic could be trusted to be speaking about it in factual terms.
The immediate partisanizing and factionalizing effects taking shape with every mention of the subject from its opening weeks made it plain to me that any source I might consult on the matter was already firmly entrenched in the most reckless abuses of the scientific process, whereby an established conclusion is the sole basis for the assembling of selective 'evidence' to support it.
And there were so many such hastily-established conclusions, each one of them held out as so unquestionable as to amount to partisan doctrines, even dogmatic articles of faith, every one of them contradicting every other one, that it was plain to me that taking vitamin D and zinc and not letting folks sneeze in my face (and avoiding doctors like the plague that they are) was my best practice for not becoming infected by a disease which to this day I remain unconvinced had ever even existed.
Or to clarify, that whatever it was that (allegedly) was making enough people sick in a very short time span as to raise the interest of a few press outlets looking for a story on a slow news day, that the principal threat now facing anyone lay in how every bit of the self-regenerating hysteria to follow and expand into a worldwide panic attack was being propelled by handheld supercomputers with gossip-portals installed in them, and in how rapidly it became politically incorrect and socially costly to call it what it so plainly was: total bullshit.
To entrust my well-being to a caste of body-mechanics promoting themselves as a priesthood, who could allow themselves to be directed in their professional determinations by a god-damn social-media craze, was never something I felt the least bit 'hesitant' about.
It was out of the question all along.