BMJ  2008;336:11 (5 January), doi:10.1136/bmj.39444.446725.DB

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Nigerian judge orders arrests of Pfizer officials

Jeanne Lenzer

1 New York

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

A Nigerian judge has ordered the arrests of three Pfizer officials for failing to attend court to respond to criminal charges against Pfizer for treating children with an experimental drug during a deadly meningitis outbreak in Kano, Nigeria, in 1996.

Judge Shehu Atiku in Kano ordered arrest warrants for the head of Pfizer in Nigeria, Ngozi Edozien, and the senior officials Lare Baale and Segun Donguro, after they failed to attend court on 6 November.

Government prosecutors in Nigeria say that Pfizer used critically ill children as "guinea pigs" to study Pfizer’s experimental drug trovafloxacin. Four separate legal actions have been filed in Nigeria against Pfizer, including 31 criminal counts against 10 people.

Plaintiffs seek a total of $9bn (£4.5bn; {euro}6bn) in civil suits. Pfizer says that it will "vigorously defend itself against the ‘untrue allegations’ in the government’s lawsuits," and it says that the children died from meningitis and . . . [Full text of this article]


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