The Constant Gardener
Jodi and I watched The Constant Gardener last weekend. We had high hopes since Rachel Weisz won for her performance as Tessa Quayle. It was a decent movie, but not quite up to my expectations.
It seemed a little bit jumbled to me. They focused on AIDS and how terrible is the AIDS epidemic in Africa (it surely is!), but then suddenly they were talking about TB. Whoa, where did that come from?!
I think the story was interesting and engaging at times. But at the end I couldn’t help thinking it must have been written by Robin Cook. I should explain, since I don’t think I’ve ever blogged about Robin Cook.
I read a couple of Robin Cook books (hehe…. cook books) starting in summer of 2004. Jodi’s roommate Lysa let me borrow a couple of them, and I ended up buying some more while I was out in Redmond doing the ranger training that August. They’re quite fun to read. But they’re in many ways very formulaic and over-the-top. There’s always some crazy twist or the head-of-the-lab-is-actually-a-cold-blooded-killer.
So The Constant Gardener is a bit like that. Without doing too much in giving away spoilers, suffice it to say it couldn’t as simple as “the pharmaceutical company is soulless and thinks there’s no money in giving away its drugs”. Even “the pharmaceutical company is taking proactive action to prevent production of generic substitutions for its cash cow” would have been realistic. No, the plot became a bit thin when the pharma company took explicit and deadly action to “silence” the various players.
Oh, who am I kidding… don’t read beyond here if you don’t want a spoiler! The key thing is it struck me as totally nonsense that the drug company would be unwilling to take a step back from the research program and reevaluate the drugs effectiveness (since it wasn’t working or there were unpredictable side effects or whatever). Let’s get real. If the drug didn’t work or had bad side effects, how successful do you think it would be in the US? A big part of the “we should be ashamed” message of the movie seemed to be around how terrible it was to “use” these folks in Africa as a testbed. Ok. I can totally see that perspective. But the next part of the message was that not only was it bad to use these Africans, but that the Pharma company would have no interest in “fixing” the broken drug… just letting it go on causing problems in Africa in a rush to get it to market in the US.
Um… how does that work? Have those involved with the Constant Gardener not heard about Vioxx? Does anyone really think Merck is happy that they are facing all of these lawsuits over releasing a drug with the reputed side effects? Does anyone really think that drug companies aren’t TOTALLY on edge about releasing drugs that might backfire on them and cost way more than they’re “worth”?
So, I guess I’m getting a bit off on a tirade, but let me close it out. It seems to me that it’s a fine balance to keep. The drug companies need to make money or they won’t have research funds to look for new “miracle drugs”. People all around the world want new drugs. Some of them (in Africa OR the US) need drugs for certain problems more than others do, and there are various ways of getting particular drugs while they’re still in the research/testing phase. Generally in the US this seems to be done through “getting into a test program” while the drug is generally understood to work (I guess through animal testing?), and I don’t think most times these programs cost you a lot of money as a participant since it’s the drug companies who stand to gain most from the transaction (you might get cured, but they almost certainly will get approval if you do). I suppose I don’t know that last bit about $$ for certain. In the movie, it seemed like the same basic strategy in Africa — find a good population of people who could use the drug and “test” it on them. There was some implied concern about how they had to sign some release in order to get the drugs, but I would be very surprised if the same wasn’t required in the US. Sure, maybe the drug companies charge too much after the drug is released. Maybe they release the drugs too soon, without enough testing. Some would probably argue that they wait too LONG to release the drugs. And unprofitable drugs which are produced based on the profits of the profitable drugs are undoubtedly used by some folks in need.
So, it’s all a balance. And The Constant Gardener just seemed a little off balance to me.
