Author John le Carré enraged by "dark underside" of pharmaceuticals

"The pharmas whether they know it or not, are engaged in the systematic corruption of the medical profession, country by country."
--John le Carré author of The Constant Gardener

John le Carré's latest novel, The Constant Gardener, deals with the death of Tessa Quayle, the wife of a British diplomat stationed in Nairobi. She died when she was about to expose the corrupt use of Africans as test subjects by a pharmaceutical giant.

When John le Carré cast about for a story to illustrate the current state of unbridled capitalism which wrecks millions of square miles of rain forest every year; destroys the livelihood of native communities around the globe, leaving people homeless, malnourished; where protesters are hanged and shot; where cities have become disease-ridden, polluted sprawls; where tobacco industry's products cause cancer in communities already riddled with AIDS, malaria, unbelievable poverty and where Shell pollutes with impunity resulting in mind-boggling human tragedy, he found that the pharmaceutical industry offered him the most persuasive example. "It had everything; the hopes and dreams we have of it; its vast partly realized potential for good; and its pitch-dark underside, sustained by corporate cant, hypocrisy, corruption and greed."

And it's not only the obvious apparent things that they have to account for, such as dumping of out of date medicines; the overpricing; the patent rights; the suppression of contra-indication and side effects; the US government supported suppression of generic drugs he continues. "No, its bigger than all that -- and, in the long run worse. The pharmas whether they know it or not, are engaged in the systematic corruption of the medical profession, country by country." He continues, "the subject of The Constant Gardener -- is the dilemma of decent people struggling against the ever swelling tide of heedless corporate greed, and our own complacency in letting the corporations get away with it -- even at governmental level, helping them to do so in the joint names of profit and full employment."