Spy Novelist John Le Carre Denounces Pharmaceutical Patent and Testing Laws in New Work
John Le Carre, the "master of spy fiction" best known for his 1963 novel The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, has turned his attention from Cold War intrigue to the "dark agendas" of the world's pharmaceutical manufacturers with his new novel The Constant Gardener. In the novel, a British diplomat stationed in Africa becomes a spy to avenge the murder of his wife, who had been investigating a drug company that used African citizens as "guinea pigs" for a new product with "fatal side effects" (Sullivan, The Age, 3/1). The book comments on the global pharmaceutical trade, with drug industry -- or "Big Pharmer" -- in command, "testing dangerous drugs on the world's poor, corrupting governments and doctors alike and ruthlessly silencing critics in the pursuit of super-profits." Le Carre said that the novel stems from events he witnessed "on the ground" in Africa as well as his discussions with non-governmental organizations, medics and dying patients (Moynihan, Australian Financial Review, 3/1). Le Carre lists
patent protections as especially harmful to citizens of developing nations, adding that "for as long as antiretroviral drugs were protected by patents and priced according to what the American markets would stand, they would not get to the people who desperately need them," particularly HIV-positive individuals in developing nations (The Age, 3/1). "Big Pharmer ... is absolutely out of scale. ... [I]t's kicking governments around, and I don't think it is speaking for anything except money. It's addressing its efforts to the rich Western world and pricing drugs according to what the Western market will stand, while testing its drugs in countries which will never be able to afford them," Le Carre said in an interview with the Australian Financial Review. Le Carre dismisses the claim that he is depicting a "wicked and unreasonable picture" of drug companies, stating that their actions are "far more awful than anything [he's] written about." He added that the pharmaceutical industry has "at all costs" and "by the most ruthless means" prevented poorer countries from manufacturing generic drugs. He cited the impending trial of a lawsuit brought by pharmaceutical manufacturers against a South African generic drug import law as one example of the drug industry "trying to claw back its patents." Le Carre concluded, "It also represents a terrible failure of the world community to crack the whip at these people and to honor national legislation from country to country which says ... if there is a national emergency and people are dying: screw patents, we will make the drugs, we will override patent law and we'll get the drugs to the people, because they're our citizens and they're dying. ... [A]nd if we don't stop it, then we're guilty of genocide by neglect, that's what it amounts to" (Australian Financial Review, 3/1).
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