Wikileaks Cable Sheds Light On Controversial Pfizer Drug Trial In Africa

A State Department cable just released by Wikileaks sheds more light on Pfizer’s controversial trial of a meningitis drug in Nigeria. WNPR’s Harriet Jones reports.

This communication, released by the whistleblowing website Friday morning, originated with the U.S. embassy in Lagos, Nigeria in April 2009. In it, embassy staff claim that drug maker Pfizer hired investigators to uncover corruption links to Nigeria’s former attorney general, as a way of pressuring him to stop a federal case against the drug company. The cable uncovered by Wikileaks quotes a conversation between embassy staff and Pfizer country manager Enrico Liggeri. Staff claim Liggeri said Pfizer passed incriminating information about the attorney general to Nigerian newspapers.

The case related to a 1996 clinical trial of a meningitis drug in which 11 children died, and several others were severely disabled. Pfizer administered the experimental antibiotic Trovan to the children during a meningitis epidemic—Nigerian officials allege that the drug company failed to give parents full information about the nature of the trial and did not seek their informed consent to conduct the trial. Pfizer fought the case until last year, when it reached a $75 million settlement with the federal government in Nigeria. The government had originally been seeking damages of $7 billion.

For WNPR, I'm Harriet Jones.