Sunday 31 March 2013

The Constant Gardener - Big Pharma In Piss Poor Africa




I'm increasingly impressed with John Le Carre. I've been going back and downloading everything he wrote that was put on film including the TV series from the 80's. The Constant Gardener is a very savvy telling of how Big Pharma uses Africa as a testbed for drug testing or as the strap line for KDH Pharmaceutical puts it "The world is our clinic"

Conspiracy theorists might be interested in watching this movie because there are more than a few nods to Big Pharma creating global illness such as a new form of Tuberculosis and then providing the only drug that will work. I think the potential for this is far more realistic than the global depopulation ideas that I often come across though there is a room for both ideas to work together I guess.

The cast of The Constant Gardener were so moved by Africa when filming there that they set up a charity fund for the area it was filmed in. John Le Carre also wrote the following:

"Nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world, but I can tell you this, as my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard".