Dying for Drugs
Every year, many new drugs come to market which offer hope to the sick
and dying. They also bring billions of pounds into the coffers of the
pharmaceutical industry, making Big Pharma the most profitable and powerful
business on earth. Two years in the making, this film investigates just
how far drug companies are prepared to go to get their drugs approved;
what they will do to make sure they get the prices they want and what
happens when profits are put before people.
One of the first steps in bringing a new drug to market is to test it
on humans. Increasingly, these tests are taking place in the Third World,
far from the scrutiny of European or US authorities. We travel to Africa
to hear powerful evidence of how the world’s biggest drug company experimented
on children without their parents’ knowledge or consent. Following the
trials, the company has failed to produce a single consent form from
more than 200 children that were treated. One father says, ‘They didn’t
explain anything, they just said they wanted to help the children. They
didn’t say anything about the medicine.’ So far one hundred sets of
parents have stated they were not asked for consent. This is particularly
disturbing given the side effects associated with the drug and the fact
that the US Government later refused to licence it.
But it is not just in the Third World that ethics of drug testing are
being called into question. In Canada, we meet a world expert in the
blood disease thalassemia who was removed from the programme she ran
at Toronto University and legally gagged from discussing her findings
after she raised doubts about a drug she was testing. Although later
reinstated, the experience made Dr Nancy Olivieri realise that hers
was not an isolated incident. ‘I got possibly hundreds of letters from
people who had been in similar situations’, she says. ‘They had been
permanently fired or they’d lost the whole programme of medicine and
had to move to another state or another country. They had been followed
by private investigators looking into every single aspect of their personal
and professional lives. They had been destroyed.’ More worryingly, as
the drug was rushed to market, is the prospect that, as Dr Olivieri
says, ‘There are many many children in Europe right now who because
of that licensing are taking what I believe is a drug that is neither
adequately effective in most patients, or safe.’
The problems don’t stop when a drug reaches the market. In South Korea,
one leukaemia patients who risked his life testing a new drug, is now
furious that he has been forced to sell his home to fund the treatment.
As Health Economist James Love puts it, "The products are priced according
to what its worth to someone to get access to the drug. If it saves
your life - it’s certainly worth everything you have." But many simply
don’t have enough money to pay for their drugs. When Yung started testing
the new drug he had been given six months to live. Fourteen months later,
Yung is still alive, but only able to afford the drug for another few
months - something that he can’t bring himself to admit to his wife.
Big Pharma generally defends high prices for new drugs by saying that
they have to cover the costs of researching and developing drugs, but
in fact most new drugs launched are just slight variations of existing
medicines, so-called me-toos. As Nathan Ford of Medecins Sans Frontiers
points out, ‘At the moment we are getting more and more drugs of less
and less use. Me-too drugs, the tenth headache pill, the fifteenth viagra
- there are currently eight drugs in development at the moment for erectile
dysfunction. Do we need eight more drugs for erectile dysfunction? I
don’t think we do! Meanwhile diseases like malaria and tuberculosis
- that kill six million people every year - are neglected.’
Finally, we got to Honduras, where we witness the brutal reality that
is the consequence of Big Pharma’s pricing policies. We meet an AIDS
activist who is being forced to break the law by illegally smuggling
legal drugs across borders to try to save lives with cheaper generic
medicines bought in neighbouring Guatemala. One of the people who would
benefit from cheaper drugs is 12-year-old Jairo whose mother died from
AIDS several years ago and who is now being looked after by his aunt,
uncle and grandmother. But without drugs that are priced within the
reach of ordinary people, the future of Jairo, and countless others,
looks very bleak indeed.
