Mankind’s Malady
The best movies I’ve watched are the ones that really disturb you long after the credits have rolled. A good film provides you an escape from reality for an hour or two, a great one makes you think and ponder just how much it reflects reality.
The Constant Gardener is the latter kind.
I watched it a second time on Astro recently and I strongly urge you to see it if you haven’t already. It might be a wee bit slow for some - like my friend who claims to have slept through all of Ralph Fiennes’ movies. ("Can’t he just go and make some slapstick comedies," she moans.)
But then again, I’m partial to Fernando Meirelles because of City of God which is just about one of the most fucking brilliant movies ever. Meirelles has a gift for depicting both beauty and brutality on screen while retaining a gritty sense of realism that only makes the story all the more disturbing.
How disturbing?
Well, after watching City of God, the president of Brazil told Meirelles that it changed his policies of public security.
And that’s the power of film.
On the other hand, The Constant Gardener conjures a conspiracy theory and makes some rather grandiose accusations against the pharmaceutical industry that seem a little too far-fetched for us to believe that kind of thing really does happen in the real world.
In the film, the wife of a British diplomat investigates the unethical practices of a Western drugs company by trying to expose its botched experimental trials on sick, unsuspecting Africans. Would a company whose products are supposed to save lives really engage in practices that would potentially kill people?
Well. Maybe it’s not so far-fetched after all, if you look at case history.
I can’t really remember the facts of the case but basically, several years ago, drugs giant Merck was sued by the family of some guy who died of a heart attack after taking the painkiller Vioxx.
Apparently, it emerged during the trial that internal e-mails showed that Merck was aware that its drug caused a higher rate of heart complications in patients but they chose to ignore the risks against the advice of their researchers. And continued selling Vioxx despite knowing the risks associated with the drug. "Oh, let me see, yes we forgot to mention one of the side effects: you drop dead."
Or what about Novo which tested its drugs on people in India without first completing the clinical studies on animals. They had to stop their human trials when it came out that tumours were growing on their animal test subjects.
Big Pharma is about making money at the end of the day. The drugs industry is a multi-billion dollar industry and you know who runs these companies? Not caring doctors in white lab coats, but businessmen. Let’s not fret until people die and their families hit us with a civil lawsuit, then we’ll just deny we were ever aware of the risks.
Because they’re all about saving people. Right.
If that’s so, why are we stil not getting universal access to affordable AIDS drugs? It’s unspeakable, with all the so-called advances in medical technology, that many in developing nations are still dying from AIDS because of high prices or complete inavailability of new drugs (because these companies choose not to market their drugs in such countries).
When share prices are more important than human life and ethics is just a section on the corporate website, that’s when you know that humanity has lost its conscience.
But they say that’s how the world turns.