ABSTRACT
The reputation of the pharmaceutical industry has been badly tarnished over the past two decades. There has been a surge of public disapproval over unsafe drugs, along with high prices and excessive profits. The industry's woeful image problems have not been helped by Hollywood. In the 2005 movie “The Constant Gardener,” based on a John Le Carré novel, a rapacious multinational pharmaceutical company is conducting clinical trials of a dangerous drug in Kenya. Why Kenya? Human life in this African country is expendable and hefty payoffs keep local officials subdued. This is fiction, of course, but some audiences and movie reviewers believed that the movie accurately reflected the dark side of the pharmaceutical industry. One prominent reviewer praised the movie as a “timely indictment of Big Pharma.” The fact is that many drug trials are conducted in Africa. But this is where certain diseases tend to spread rapidly, so drug companies can get a better understanding of the drug's safety and efficacy when the product is tested there. 1
