The Halo Effect

PER-ANDERS PETTERSSON / GETTY FOR TIME

MOBILIZING A RESPONSE: ACHAP organizes community meetings for adults, and basketball games for children

Why would any drug company want to do business in Africa? To be a pharmaceutical giant on the continent is to be accused of discriminating against the poor, either by pricing medicine beyond their reach or by ignoring diseases that are endemic in poverty-stricken areas. It is also to invite suspicion of using Africans as guinea pigs in unsafe drug trials — such allegations have led to ongoing lawsuits seeking more than $9 billion against Pfizer in Nigeria. (Pfizer says the allegations "are simply untrue" and is fighting the charges against a trial it calls "responsible and ethical.") And on a...

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