Pfizer: The bright and the dark side

Pharmaceutical companies and various countries are in a global race to develop a vaccine against the virus. Pfizer says COVID-19 vaccine is looking 90% effective. Did not provide any more details and cautioned that the initial protection rate might change by the time the study ends. We won't be talking about vaccines, but we will tell you about the company behind them. Governments trusted Pfizer to vaccinate the people. So it’s logical to want to inquire into the company’s track record and safety and ethics. After all, they must be trustworthy in fighting humanity right. Pfizer made itself one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world by purchasing its competitors and through aggressive marketing tactics. In the 90s they involved in defective heart valves that led to the death of more than 100 people. The company had deliberately misled regulators about the hazards. The company agreed to pay 10.75 million dollars to settle justice department charges. Pfizer also had a class action suit with a 60 million dollar settlement over resilin diabetes medication that resulted in patients dying from acute liver failure said to be caused by the drug. Buying competitors and miss-selling drugs weren’t the only factors in making them the giant of a company they are. Their special relationship with doctors and medical professionals has also helped. In 2004 Pfizer's subsidy agreed to pay 430 million dollars to resolve criminal charges that it paid physicians to prescribe its epilepsy drug Neurontin to patients with ailments for which the medication was not approved. In 2010 a federal jury found that Pfizer committed racketeering, fraud in its marketing of the drug. Pfizer disclosed that during a six-month period the previous year, it had paid 20 million dollars to some four and half thousand doctors and other medical professionals for Speaking on the company’s behalf. 2012 the U.S securities and exchange commission announced that it had reached a 45 million dollar settlement with Pfizer to resolve the charges that its subsidiaries had bribed overseas doctors and other healthcare professionals to increase foreign sales. But some of you might say they are a business and still trying to help humanity. Pfizer was sued in a U.S federal court by Nigerian families who accused the company of testing a dangerous new antibiotic called trovan on children without parents' consent and using their children as human guinea pigs. A panel of medical experts concluded that Pfizer had violated international law and the company agreed to pay 75 million dollars to settle the lawsuits in Nigerian courts.

Now ask yourself if it was a car manufacturer would you buy a car from them? 
Louise Creffield from Save Our Rights said to the Guardian “I’m not about feeding conspiracy theories – I’m just about making sure that we have the full facts of the matter, including about where these things are coming from.”
“If there are questions on any of those answers … that doesn’t mean necessarily it’s untrustworthy and that you shouldn’t take part in whatever it is. It just means you need to satisfy that … nothing untoward is going on.”