Pfizer: WikiLeaks claims “preposterous”
pharmafile | December 10, 2010 | News story | Research and Development | Nigeria, Pfizer, Trovan, WikiLeaks, ceftriaxone, clinical trial safety, industry reputation
Pfizer has dimissed as “preposterous” the claims it hired investigators to uncover evidence of corruption by a top government official in order to have a clinical trial lawsuit dropped.
The company was sued after a 1996 meningitis trial in which 11 children died during the testing of its new antibiotic Trovan against the standard treatment ceftriaxone.
US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks purport to show Pfizer’s country manager Enrico Liggeri was aware of a smear campaign against Nigeria’s attorney general, Micheal Aondoakaa to “expose him and put pressure on him to drop the federal cases”.
“He [Liggeri] said Pfizer’s investigators were passing this information to local media,” the cables from April last year say, noting “a series of damaging articles detailing Aondoakaa’s “alleged” corruption ties were published in February and March”.
The allegations were contained in cables released by the whistle-blowing site Wikileaks and published in the Guardian newspaper.
Pfizer denies any wrongdoing or liability in connection with the 1996 trial and said it had not seen any documents from the US embassy in Nigeria regarding government cases, and the allegation it hired investigators was “simply preposterous”.
The trial, which was undertaken during an epidemic of the disease, involved 200 children in Kano, north Nigeria, and lead to the deaths of five children in the Trovan arm of the study and six from the ceftriaxone arm.
It was later claimed Pfizer did not have appropriate parental consent given the experimental nature of the drug, and questions were raised over the documentation of the trial.
Pfizer was subsequently sued by the Nigerian state and last year paid a $75 million settlement to the Kano state government.
The author of the cables commented that Pfizer’s image in Nigeria has been “damaged” due to this ongoing case, adding “Pfizer’s management considers Nigeria a major growth market for its products and having this case behind it will help in efforts to rebuild its image here”.
Trovan was subsequently licensed in Europe for treatment in adults, but later withdrawn due to safety concerns over its hepatotoxicity.
Ben Adams
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