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ertain drugs companies test their new products on the citizens
of countries in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and South
America, and during the course of these experiments, moral and pro-
fessional laws are violated. In 1996, a 10-year-old girl weighing only
18.5 kg (40 pounds) and living in the Nigerian city of Kano suffered ter-
rible pain due to meningitis. A world-famous American drug company
was testing an antibiotic—which had not yet been licensed—on chil-
dren in a camp it had set up. The drug being tested was of great impor-
tance to the company: stock exchanges estimated that if the Food and
Drug Authority granted permission for the drug to be used, it would
bring the company some $1 billion a year. The firm was unable to find
test subjects in America, and so had come to Kano.
The firm's doctors began giving the girl an experimental daily
dose of 56 mg of this drug. On the third day the girl died.
Investigations by the Washington Post showed that drugs testing for
profit was becoming increasingly widespread in Africa, Asia, Eastern
Europe and South America. In order to circumvent the American
FDA's strict rules, some American firms were cooperating with doctors
in these countries, and tens of thousands of Third World country citi-
zens were being used as guinea pigs in experiments. Although a
spokesman for the firm in question stated that the experiments had re-
ceived the necessary permission, experts stated that the meningitis ex-
periment in Nigeria incident was incompatible with medical ethics and
regulations in a number of regards. For example, although experi-
ments of this kind should last at least a year, the one in Nigeria lasted

The Social Weapon: Darwinism