Constant Gardener: Murder in the Valley

The Constant Gardener is no doubt a thriller, characterized by a clever weave of secrets, deception, ruthless murder, love and the pain of losing a loved one. We are taken through the lives of Tessa, a young, enthusiastic political activist who meets, and within a very short time marries Justin Quayle, a laid back official of the British High Commission. It however highlights the dangers of drug testing, especially to the unsuspecting poor of any underdeveloped country, but in this particular case Kenya.

It is a film based on John le Carre’s novel and tells of how Tessa Quayle is found murdered in Lokichoggio, Rift Valley, Kenya.

Tessa, 24, was at the time of her murder, the representative for Effective Aid, seemingly attached to the British High Commission. Her job was to ensure that the drugs donated to the Kenyan poor actually got to them. Tessa also took it upon herself to observe whether drugs being tested on the Kenyan poor were working effectively.

On her watch, she discovers that Dypraxa, along with curing tuberculosis, had other terribly negative side effects; liver failure, blurred vision and ultimately death for some patients. This we discover when Tessa, having lost her baby in childbirth, confides in Sandy that Wanza Kilulu, a new mother at 15 and a patient at the hospital where Tessa gives birth, was used to test Dypraxa and died because of its effects.

Sandy Woodrow promises to hand in Tessa’s report on the drug’s effects to Bernard Pelligrin, a British Government official, who is supposed to help her get the word out that The Three Bees is killing people with. Her report does get to Pelligrin but is pushed aside. Tessa is asked to drop it. What Tessa didn’t know is that Pelligrin was complicit in the clinical trial use of Dypraxa and in hiding its effects.

Tessa did actually do her job, the known and the unknown. She kept the nature of her work from her husband, to protect him. She’s seen bullying an official from Kenya’s Ministry of health and embarrassing several other colleagues of her own in the same breath. Her husband’s colleagues and hers as well, mistake her passion for bitchiness and suggest to her husband that he lock her up, if he can’t control her.

Tessa’s tenacity however is not slowed down any. Even when Sandy, a colleague and friend of her husband’s wants her to promise to sleep with him, in return for a piece of information, she accepts but, known only to her and the viewer, that is one promise she does not intend to keep. The piece of information regards the British Government’s relation to the death pill Dypraxa, its manufacturer KVH (a Swiss Canadian drug manufacturing company) and its distributor and tester Three Bees Pharmaceuticals (a British Drug Company).

Tessa’s digging gets her killed.

It is not all in vain however. Her husband, Justin unconvinced of his wife’s unfaithfulness, searches for the truth. He gradually uncovers what Tessa had kept so well hidden from him and puts it all together bit by bit.

As the plot unfolds, Justin discovers that the British Government is letting Karel Vita Hudson (KVH) a Swiss Canadian pharmaceutical company distribute Dypraxa, a drug that is supposed to cure Tuberculosis through a British distributor known as The Three Bees.

The common man can only hope that the Kenyan Government would not sell out its citizens as was portrayed in the film. Apparently, the British Government bribed the Kenyan Government so that Three Bees could carry out drug tests on the poor in Kibera. As the film nears its end, we learn that the deaths were nothing to KVH or Three Bees. That according to them, a Tuberculosis epidemic was going to sweep across all continents. Their intention was to come up with a drug that could cure TB and they did. This drug would then go on sale, curing TB patients all over the world, hence making KVH billions in profit. The deaths that occurred in the trials were because KVH had not yet got the formula for Dypraxa right yet. The British Government played with what they considered “dispensable lives” but lives nonetheless. Not only did they break the law of any and every land but they also

It has been frequently said that developed countries use poorer countries to test all sorts of products, not only drugs. This film is just one that shows the lengths to which profit oriented companies will go, to protect their interests.

This is just one of those cases and to use the very poor who are in need of treatment and are unable to pay for their own is just ghastly. Wanza Kilulu, the 15 year old mother who died after being administered with Dypraxa is a representation of the many poor people who will assent to such experiments.

In many of the experimental trials, especially in Africa, patients are not told of the possible side effects of the drugs that are tried on them and end up suffering alone because they signed release forms, which makes them the toys of companies such as these.

Who knows how many AIDS drugs, skin lotions; birth control pills have been tested on us Africans and had deadly effects? And yet, nothing has been done or even said about it.

Perhaps with more writers like John Le Caree, on whose novel the film is based on, Africa as a whole will see ‘donations’ for what they really are and refused to be used on guinea pigs.