Η μέθοδος της “τυφλής” ανάλυσης (ανάλυση των πειραματικών δεδομένων με στατιστική μέθοδο αλλά χωρίς να έχει κανείς πρόσβαση στις μετρήσεις μέχρι να εξαχθεί το τελικό αποτέλεσμα) φαίνεται πως έχει αρκούντως εντυπωσιακό προηγούμενο μακιαβελλικής απόχρωσης, στην Ιατρική:
Let us take out of the hospitals,… 200, or 500 poor People, that have Fevers,Pleurisies, etc. Let us divide them into half, let us cast lots, that one half of them may fall to my share, and the other to yours; I will cure them without blood-letting and sensible evacuation… We shall see how many funerals both of us shall have. But let the reward of the contention or wager, be 300 florens, deposited on both sides…
John Baptista van Helmont, 1662
Στο μεταξύ οι επιστημονικές πρακτικές έχουν αλλάξει. Στις περισσότερες περιπτώσεις. Ή μήπως όχι ακριβώς;
Nigeria 2001:
In the middle of the chaos, a chartered DC-9 flew in from the US. On board were doctors employed by the giant pharmaceutical company Pfizer, bringing better drugs and medical equipment than Kano [Nigeria] had ever seen. Like MSF, they had come to treat sick children, but they had come to treat them on their own terms – as part of a medical experiment.
For Pfizer had a new antibiotic that it hoped would become a multibillion-dollar blockbuster, the perennial dream of drug companies. It was called trovafloxacin and is now sold in the US under the brand name Trovan.[...]
Pfizer says it saved 189 lives. Five died on Trovan and six on ceftriaxone, which had to be given by painful injection because there were not enough personnel to administer the intravenous drips used in the west. That was a death rate of 6% – as good as the best in the west and dramatically better than the overall death toll which, in some areas, reached 20%.
So Pfizer saved 189 lives, but 15,000 Africans died in the epidemic and many others went blind or deaf. It is in that juxtaposition that questions of amorality in this drug trial arise. Here was a humanitarian disaster. Why were skilled and well-equipped doctors from the richest country in the world gathering data on 200 children when they could have been saving the lives of hundreds more?
Sarah Boseley
Saturday January 20, 2001, The Guardian
Φυσικά η Εταιρεία κοιτάζει το συμφέρον της. Και έσωσε και 189 παιδιά τζάμπα. Το αόρατο χέρι της Αγοράς ελεημονεί και τους φτωχούς πότε πότε.