Medical experimentation in Africa

African countries have been sites for clinical trials by large pharmaceutical companies, raising human rights concerns.^[1] Incidents of unethical experimentation, clinical trials lacking properly informed consent, and forced medical procedures have been claimed and prosecuted.

Specific incidents by date

Meningitis testing in Nigeria: 1990s

The Pfizer drug

In a project headed by Aubrey Levin during the 1970s to 1980s, the South African Defence Force forced lesbian and gay military personnel to undergo "sex-change" operations. This was part of a secret program to purge homosexuality in the army.^{[citation needed]} It included psychological coercion, chemical castration, electric shock, and other unethical medical experiments. An estimated 900 forced sexual reassignment operations may have been performed between 1971 and 1989 at military hospitals.^{[citation needed]} Most of the victims were males, young 16 to 24-year-old white men who were drafted into the army during the South African Border War. Women were also subject to the experimentation.^{[citation needed]}

Forced contraception in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe): 1970s

Unethical medical experimentation that has occurred for over a century may be the cause of the documented fear and mistrust of doctors and medicine in Africa.[8] For example, polio has been on the rise in Nigeria, Chad, and Burkina Faso because many people there avoid vaccinations because they believe that the vaccines are contaminated with HIV or sterilization agents.^[8] Due to the meningitis testing incident in Kano, many Nigerians now refuse to participate in clinical trials.^[2]

The role of poverty

Many African nations cannot afford to offer medicine for their citizens without subsidies from multinational pharmaceutical corporations.^[4] To court these pharmaceutical corporations, some African nations minimize legal regulations on the conduct of medical research, which prevents potential legal battles from arising.^[4] This forces some Africans to make a Hobson's choice: "experimental medicine or no medicine at all".^[9] People living in the rural or slum area are also more vulnerable to experimentation because they are more likely to be illiterate and to misunderstand the effects of the experimentation.^[10]

Codes of ethics

Several national and international bodies have devised codes of ethics for conducting experiments and clinical trials. These include the

• Human experimentation in North Korea
• Japanese human experimentation
• Nazi human experimentation
• Unethical human experimentation in the United States
• Project Coast

References