E-drug: An important new novel
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I have reviewed John le Carre's new novel for the BMJ.
BUKO was an important source of background information
for him, and he has made very good use of what he learnt
from BUKO and others. In an article in the Sunday Telegraph
of 17 Dec le Carre explains how he is enraged by the
behaviour of the multinational pharmaceutical companies.
He has given his fee for the article to BUKO, and explains why.
The text of my BMJ review follows.
Andrew Herxheimer
9 Park Crescent, London N3 2NL UK
Phone : +44 20 8346 5470
Fax : +44 20 8346 0407
e-mail: andrew_herxheimer@compuserve.com
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The Constant Gardener
John le Carr�
Hodder & Stoughton, pp 508
Pbk �16.99, ISBN 0340 73338 1
Rating ****
John le Carr� (David Cornwell) is famous for his brilliant espionage
novels. Now it seems to him that the vacuum left by the cold war is
being filled by the greed of multinational corporations. That makes
him despair, and led to his new novel - a story about power, lying,
corruption, and social responsibility.
It begins with the brutal and unexplained murder in rural Kenya of
Tessa Quayle, a radical young lawyer and aid worker married to
Justin, a diplomat in the British High Commission in Nairobi. Two
Scotland Yard detectives sent to investigate, find that she had,
without telling her husband, sent the High Commission documents with
compelling evidence that 'Dypraxa', an important new ant-tuberculosis
drug, was being unethically tested on Africans. The High Commission
and the Foreign Office sweep the problem under the carpet. the
detectives are taken off the job.
Meanwhile, Justin returns to England and secretly pursues the
investigation by himself. He assumes a false identity and visits key
people with whom Tessa had been in touch - in Germany, Canada, Sudan.
He is followed, threatened and beaten up by mysterious pursuers but
gradually pieces together what has been going on.
Cornwell, who helpfully acknowledges his sources in a postscript, is
subtle in his handling of the many issues about drugs in poor
countries. Dypraxa was discovered by two scientists in the former
East Germany and spotted by a messianic wheeler-dealer who used
flattery and bribes to have it 'fully tested' and registered in
Germany, Poland and Russia. Karel Vita Hudson (KVH), a major
multinational drug company based in Vancouver and Basel, buys the
molecule, and sells the rights to distribute the drug throughout
Africa to Three Bees, a British conglomerate and the biggest company
in Kenya. KVH plan to test Dypraxa in Africa for two or three years,
by which time TB will have become a huge problem in the West. By
then Three Bees
are likely to be in financial trouble, and KVH expects to buy it out
cheaply. Dodgy trials in Kenya reveal serious toxicity - liver failure,
optic nerve damage, bleeding - but Three Bees 'lose' the records, and
witnesses are silenced. KVH funds trials in Canada, but when the
investigator finds similar effects and tries to publish the data the
company vilifies and sacks her.
The story unfolds admirably, and its main characters are convincing
and interesting. It is not an anti-industry novel but a splendid
thriller that nonetheless deserves to be taken seriously.
Andrew Herxheimer, London
consultant, Health Action International
former editor, Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin
UK
andrew Herxheimer <Andrew_Herxheimer@compuserve.com>
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