Currently, the banksters are getting most of the bad press, but over the last four to six weeks, the pharmaceutical companies have had their share, and just as deservedly. The latest came in today's Washington Post The response by Pfizer is a curious one. The children died of meningitis, the very infection their drug was supposed to cure. Something about that logic appears, at the very least, to be quite tortured. That might be because of the backstory:Nice. Pfizer didn't take the standard and required steps for such a trial. It falsified a key document. It even messed with the dosage of the comparison drug, one that might have been less dangerous and more effective than Trovan. What the company did was go to a Third World country where it assumed it wouldn't get busted for such horrendous behavior. I mean, who cares about Nigerian kids?And the time line is certainly interesting. The drug trial in Nigeria took place in 1996, and was clearly designed to be part of the research which would get the company FDA approval for the drug, which it got in 1998, but only for adults. However, the side effects even for adults were so bad that the FDA placed restrictions on its use and Europe banned it completely.Twelve years later, Pfizer finally agreed to settle the criminal case by paying a fine, apparently of $75 million. In the general scheme of things, that's peanuts, and Pfizer knows it. The company is getting off cheaply, so cheaply that it no doubt made the whole escapade worth it.Words fail me.

Labels: PHARMA