The True Story of How Multinational Drug Companies Took Liberties with African Lives

The pharmaceutical industry is bracing itself for criticism when the film 'The Constant Gardener' opens next month. But Jeremy Laurance reports that away from the Hollywood script is a true story of how multinational drug companies took liberties with African lives with devastating consequences.

In a dusty schoolyard in Kano, northern Nigeria, a group of children are kicking a football. One of them, a solemn-faced boy called Anas, sits watching quietly. He cannot play because he has pains in his knees that prevent him from running.

Nobody knows what caused Anas' pain but suspicion has fallen on Big Pharma. Six years earlier, Anas was a patient in a trial of a new drug run by one of the world's biggest companies. A known side effect of the drug, called Trovan, was joint pain. The issues raised by Anas' story have become the subject of a major British film.

The multinational pharmaceutical industry is bracing itself for an uncomfortable autumn. Next month, The Constant Gardener, the film based on the novel of the same name by John Le Carré, opens in London.

Directed by Fernando Meirelles, of City of God fame, it is a thriller, a love story and a blistering attack on the drugs industry and the way it carelessly expends the lives of innocent citizens in the Third World in the quest for billion-dollar medicines to sell to the first world.

No Child Left Unhealthy

By John Monahan

The embattled U.S. public school system often is likened to an overburdened farm wagon lugging its diverse crop of students behind the twin horses of government mandates and standardized tests. But despite the system’s ever-increasing challenges, enlightened parents, educators and even private enterprise are working to make public schools healthier, more compassionate places in which to learn.


Connecting mind and body
Lori Burgi is one parent advocate who has made a difference. In fact, she’s the reason why every student in grades one through eight in the Laguna Beach, Calif., school district takes a six- week unit of yoga as part of physical education (PE).
District officials were already receptive to yoga, but it was Burgi—a 10-year practitioner herself—who delivered a program called Yoga Ed. that included a pre-written curriculum teachers could readily incorporate. Still, it took a year-and-a-half to get buy-in from the board of education and various committees.

Don't drink the...Milk?

For those who are not in the know about this health crises.

Monsanto's Hormonal Milk Poses Serious Risks of Breast Cancer, Besides Other Cancers, Warns Professor of Environmental Medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health

June 21, 1998

As reported in a May 9 article in The Lancet, women with a relatively small increase in blood levels of the naturally occurring growth hormone Insulin-like Growth Factor I (IGF-1) are up to seven times more likely to develop premenopausal breast cancer than women with lower levels. Based on those results, the report concluded that the risks of elevated IGF-1 blood levels are among the leading known risk factors for breast cancer, and are exceeded only by a strong family history or unusual mammographic abnormalities. Apart from breast cancer, an accompanying editorial warned that elevated IGF-1 levels are also associated with greater than any known risk factors for other major cancers, particularly colon and prostate.

A word about fats

"Without these fatty acids, the respiratory enzymes cannot function and the person suffocates, even when he is given oxygen-rich air. A deficiency in these highly unsaturated fatty-acids impairs many vital functions. First of all, it decreases the person's supply of available oxygen. We cannot survive without air and food; nor can we survive without these fatty acids. That has been proven long ago."

Clearly, Dr. Budwig understood the connection between diet and health. She recognized that with the advent and popularity of hydrogenated and overprocessed oils came an increase in the rates of several serious illnesses. She realized that the way foods are now processed eliminates virtually all of the essential fatty acids. So, Dr. Budwig decided to focus her career on finding the dietary solution or cure to the list of diseases that affect so many people in the world.

H.R. 3156

Below is a letter I recieved from the creators (mother and daughter) of the product Herbal Fiberblend (a product which I have been using for years and swear buy). The company I buy and sell this product through is called AIM.

Dear AIM Members,

Being members of the National Health Organization, we are kept up to date on bills that our Senators and Congressmen try to pass regarding natural supplements. We have just received this form letter from Clinton Miller regarding H.R. 3156. This will take away the freedom we have to choose natural supplements. This puts them under the scrutiny of the FDA. If you are aware of what is happening in Canada and in some European Countries, they have banned sales of certain herbs and over time can eliminate purchase without a prescription. Sorry I cannot document this, but several months ago I heard in one of those European countries the cost of the herb Echinacea, now only available by prescription, was $143.00! The cost in the US now is under $20.00. Do we want the government to put the herbs under FDA scrutiny and allow them to charge exorbitant prices for them?

In Canada, AIM is unable to sell Renewed Balance and Herbal Fiberblend cannot be sold as it is in the US. Several of the herbs are banned.. Drug companies are not happy when we use herbs to heal the body. They cannot control and regulate them and for now there is no profit in herbs, but if we allow our government to take over, there will be a profit for them.

Please make copies of the above letter and get it to as many people as you can. If you will take responsibility to put your congressman’s name on the letter and send it in, you can help to keep our herbs and supplements a choice we can afford.

Love and Blessings,

Teresa Schumacher

Toni Lund




Here is a copy of the letter they recommend to send:

Please Kill H.R. 3156



The Honorable ________________________

___________________2005

United States House of Representatives

Washington, D.C. 20515

The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) is under attack again! For more than a decade DSHEA has protected millions of consumers of dietary supplements from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

DSHEA protects consumer ACCESS to dietary supplements. DSHEA does not let the FDA ban herbs and amino acids, vitamins and minerals, for just any reason!

DSHEA says that "the United States shall bear the burden of proof on each element to show that a dietary supplement is adulterated"...", which is when a product "...presents a significant or unreasonable risk if illness or injury..".

H.R. 3156 calls for deleting the language in DSHEA that states that the United States shall bear the burden of proof on each element and attempts to dismantle DSHEA’s high threshold of proof of harm.

H.R. 3156 treats dietary supplements as risky drugs instead of nutrient foods that are generally regarded as safe and applies a flawed risk-benefit analysis.

H.R.3156 attempts to allow the FDA to ban products even when there is "even a relatively small risk..."!

Don’t let the FDA declare that an herb or amino acid presents an unreasonable risk to the public without the need to prove significant risk of illness or injury.

This is an attempt at blocking access to dietary supplements. It is an attempt at dismantling the heart of DSHEA! This is Big Pharma trying to shift the burden of proof of harm of foods and nutrients from the U.S. government, (where it should be) to the manufacturer and the citizens.

Congress unanimously enacted DSHEA following years of Hearing and Debate. It was strongly opposed by FDA, the American Medical Association (AMA) and Big Pharma. Please don’t let H.R. 3156 dismantle DSHEA.

Please vote against H.R. 3156 and do all in your power to kill it!

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