Global South Bodies in Medical Experiments

With an expansion of colonial regime in Asia and Africa, global north started not only controlling the geological spaces but also human bodies. From illegal human trafficking to the controlled and limited food supply, global north, with a motif of maximizing resources for economic benefits, started doing business of everything and all the things available – land, people and heritage. For these purposes, colonizers exploited the land, people and their heritage, converting them into an undignified object. Unsurprisingly, the messianic mission of civilization met with challenges as they progressed in their trades and occupation. One of the most challenging factors in their progression was health hazards and unexpected exposure of their bodies to the supposed wilderness of the “uncivilized places”.

Colonial efforts were oriented towards taming local people along with taming landscape and culture, while acclimatizing themselves to the climate of the land. Chakrabarti, referencing to the European adjustment in the tropics, believes that “acclimatization was seen as part of a larger set of medical, cultural and social practices of colonial settlement” (64). Later, colonizers associated tropical climate with character of the people living there – converting it into pathological and irrational. Chakrabarti, therefore, underlines colonial ideology that “[tropical weather] made the tropical races slothful and heedless, while Europeans were careful, observant and industrious” (66). Thus, the colonial idea that the global south bodies needed to be cleaned and treated with rational European medical procedure emerged. This fallacious logic warranted all the medical apartheid upon the precarious global south bodies in the history of medicine and health.

Similarly, in the modern days, too, big pharma has continued medical experimentation in global south. Though there are reasons of medical experimentations in the global south, they have certainly converted global south bodies into an extended research lab. In some cases, the people are not properly informed about the experiments that they have become a part of. Thus, such unconsented deceitful medical experiments have converted the global south bodies into docile and ignominious bodies.

A proper and just care encompasses dignified health treatment that includes agency of people and respects their personality. Christa Teston, in her book Doing Dignity: Ethical Praxis and the Politics of Care, defines dignity in terms of respectful care. For her, dignity is “a construct” (12) that respects another human’s agency. It “is networked rhetorical practice that emerges in a response to our primordial ‘affectability or response-ability’” (Stormer & McGreavy, quoted in Teston, 11). Examining from this discursive perspective, the bodies of the global south in medical and health care are devoid of proper dignity and agency.

Pandemic works as the portal to see into undignified treatment of global south bodies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many global south communities were not timely taken care of and delayed medical assistance. Among many, one instance from South Sudan showcases how marginalized communities from these geographies have been in less priorities for treatment as if they are disposable bodies and do not deserve a dignified care.

Evidently, it may seem like sending some humanitarian aid to the affected zone, but it is obvious and undignified that those vaccines were sent to South Sudan when they were about to expire and turn useless. Likewise, Munyaradzi Makoni, in “COVID-19 vaccine trials in Africa”, published by The Lancet describes how the Covid vaccines were put into trial in different countries in Africa. The article informs that one of the richest humanitarian organizations, the Gates Foundation, was behind the experiment and the vaccines were developed by the big pharma in the US (1). Ironically enough, those countries were chosen for vaccine experimentation but were pushed below in priority list in distributing the vaccine. The very intersection of selection for experimentation and the least priority for inoculation exposes the disposability and precarity of human life of the people from Africa and the global south by extension.

Likewise, in an article published on December 3, 2021, Belinda Archibong and Francis Annan, in “What do Pfizer’s 1996 drug trials in Nigeria teach us about vaccine hesitancy?” explore how one of the leading big pharma, Pfizer, insidiously managed to experiment meningitis vaccine in certain parts of Africa. This article unfolds the story of a big pharma that managed to experiment medicine among poor communities in Nigeria.

Joe Stephens, in one of the articles published in series, “Where profits and lives hang in balance; finding an abundance of subjects and lack of oversight abroad, big drug companies test offshore to speed products to market series: the body hunters: exporting human experiments,” brings in instances of experimentation of a newly developed anti-meningitis drug called Trovan. The medicine was put on trial at the cost of human lives in Kano, a Nigerian place. The unchecked and unhealthy administration of the experimented drug had a costly impact on human lives. Pfizer wanted to get Trovan certified for its use among young demographics, and to fulfill its business mission, the company deceitfully carried out the harmful medical experiment.

However, the company publicly released a bulleted note disclosing the effectiveness of the drug, responsible experimentation, and the company’s commitment towards the healthy society. Ironically, it also articulates how the company supported the public. The company donated a huge amount of medical aid to the people of the community.

These press notes are a part of rhetoric of care and kindness that cloud the undignified care and negligent treatments of people, reducing them to disposable entities. These carefully crafted sentences include the words/phrases like “contribution”, “not limited to treating”, “donated”, “a long history of commitment”, “partnered with” and “health standards and accessibility” that continuously confer the message of sympathy and care.

Therefore, from colonial times to the present, the global north peddles such narratives of sympathy and care that creates a narrative shield to push the neoliberal agenda-mediated necropolitical incidents – “ritual violence” (Murray, 2022) – under the rug. Such narratives of care and support are well foregrounded on the chivalric spectacles and the ideology of savior that breaks the bounds with sympathy, guided by the empathetic force of kindness and overwhelmed by humane values.