By Javier Cardenal Taján
Buenos Aires Herald
Excerpts:
GlaxoSmithKline Argentina Laboratories Company was fined 400,000 pesos by Judge Marcelo Aguinsky following a report issued by the National Administration of Medicine, Food and Technology (ANMAT in Spanish) for irregularities during lab vaccine trials conducted between 2007 and 2008 that allegedly killed 14 babies.
Likewise, two doctors -Héctor Abate, and Miguel Tregnaghi- were fined 300,000 pesos each for irregularities during the studies.
The charges included experimenting with human beings as well falsifying parental authorizations so babies could participate in the vaccine-trials conducted by the laboratory from 2007 to 2008.
Pediatrician Ana Marchese, who reported the case to the Argentine Federation of Health Professionals (FESPROSA in Spanish), and was working at the Eva Perón children’s public hospital in Santiago del Estero by the time the studies were being conducted, said this morning in conversations with Continental AM radio that “GSK Argentina set a protocol at the hospital, and recruited several doctors working there.”
“These doctors took advantage of the many illiterate parents whom take their children for treatment by pressuring and forcing them into signing these 28-page consent forms and getting them involved in the trials.”
“Laboratories can’t experiment in Europe or the United States, so they come to do it in third-world countries.”
Colombia and Panama were also chosen by GSK as staging grounds for trials of the vaccine against the pneumococcal bacteria.
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