Paul I. Adujie    New York, United States, United States    August 11, 2007

With all due respect, my brother-Nigerian and friend...

Pfizer's fate in Australia and I have posted it under my recent article. See? Nobody died, Pfizer is made to pay fines..... but in Nigeria, 11 innocent children died in the hands of Pfizer and countless others were maimed and Pfizer denies them compensation!

It cannot be a winning argument anywhere, to the effect that, because elections were rigged in Nigeria …. And a thousand or several thousand people died in the process, so, we can no longer hold other murderers accountable!

Pfizer was held to account and made liable in Australia, and yet, NOBODY died in the Australian case! SEE BELOW.

Pfizer has to pay fine over Celebrex ad in Australia

Pfizer will have to pay a A$100,000 ($85,454) fine for an ad
Australia's Reader's Digest, which promoted its COX-2
inhibitor Celebrex (celecoxib) for arthritis to the general public.
The code of conduct committee of the industry association
Medicines Australia said Pfizer's article was a "seemingly
flagrant disregard" of the code of conduct, breaching points
9.4 (promotion to the general public) and 9.5.2 (patient
education). The company has been told not to distribute the
article again directly to the general public.

Direct-to-consumer advertising of medicines is banned in
Australia, although advertising certain diseases is allowable.
Pfizer's four-page advertising feature, entitled "Choose to
Move: Living with Arthritis", included four references to
Celebrex product information and another reference to the
drug's consumer medicines information. In its defence, Pfizer
said that the ad had been drafted for a healthcare audience,
and that it was an "unfortunate oversight that in this instance
the referencing had not been adequately changed for
distribution to the general public".

The complaint was made by an unnamed academic at NSW
University, but Healthy Skepticism, the Australian-based
organisation that highlights the techniques used by
pharmaceutical companies to promote their drugs, followed
up the charge with a detailed account of the faults of the ad
on its website.

Healthy Skepticism points out that the ad's photo of two
arthritis sufferers was used extensively in Celebrex
promotional campaigns targeting doctors.

"This is a common approach used by drug companies to
sidestep the ban on direct-to-consumer advertising of
prescription medicines in Australia. The same illustration is
used in the promotion to consumers and to prescribers.
However, the name of the product advertised (in this case
Celebrex) is omitted in the consumer promotion to avoid
blatant DTCA. If doctors are shown the brochure by patients,
they cannot fail to recognise the product being promoted."

Healthy Skepticism says: "Confusing, misleading,
incomplete, deceptive, this consumer advertorial by Pfizer is
a very worrying example of de facto DCTA. Patients and the
public need reliable information they can trust. Consumer
information provided by drug companies aims to promote
sales first and is fundamentally biased. There is no role for
industry in the provision of information about diseases or
comparing treatments."

cInforma UK l.td 2007 ] http://www.scripnews.com ] July 6th 2007 ] No 3274

OMOTAYO, J. A.    Lagos, NIGERIA    August 11, 2007

Life has no replacement once lost. The loss of lives in Kano State through the administration of unsatisfactory drugs is regretted. May God Almighty save us from such tragedy in our national lives, amen.

The lost of lives in the April 2007 elections in Nigeria ran in hundreds. For example, a returnee from Kogi State made a phone call to Galaxy Television while a panel was discussing the troubles with the Elections. He mentioned that 32 Nigerians were killed in Kogi State during the Governorship elections but that nobody reported it. He went ahead to ask if that was because Kogi State was far from Lagos. In Oyo, Rivers, Ondo, Osun, Edo, etc, it was similar. Even in Katsina, there was arson.

Since my good friend and brother has so much human feeling, shouldn't he have extended the same to the April 2007 elections? He has considered the elections satisfactory and acceptable. Are the human lives lost during the elections wasted in vain? It is this switch from one side to the other that separates my good friend and brother from me.

Notwithstanding our differences, I quite agree with Mr. Adujie that the offender should not go unpunished. Justice must be done so that the souls of the departed can rest in paece.

God bless Nigeria.