The movie that I chose to watch, aka it was the only one that was on Netflix, was The Constant Gardner. During this movie a female named Tessa is determined to expose the pharmaceutical companies that are giving the people in Africa a drug called Dypraxa. She is convinced that the American companies that are producing this drugs are field testing them on these African people because they would rather not spend an extra three years and millions of dollars on recreating the drug. Moral of the story is the American’s and corupt British diplomats are taking advantage of the people that live in Africa. Their excuse is that these people are already dead anyway so its not that big of a deal that they are giving them their drugs and running these field tests with them. Basically these American companies are being bullies and getting their way because of their wealthy and standing. Tessa eventually gets killed because she has learned to much about the situation and is about to expose to the world what is going on in Kenya. Later on Justin does everything in his power to figure out whom has killed his wife. Justin knows the local languages which helps him communicate with the locals when asking questions. One of the times he gets arrested by the Kenyan police, but the British Diplomats use their authority and power and easily get him released from the polices custody.
I was truly disgusted when I learned what was really going on in this movie between the pharmaceutical companies and the fact that the Americans/Brits were behind it. It is a travesty that things like this actually do happen to the people in African because they are so vulnerable and don’t have much say. This movie really opened my eyes to potential and current problems that are going on in the world, and just how corrupt some businesses and people are.
I really like your thoughts on the movie as I also watched the same one. I too like you were blind to the fact that this really does happen in the world on a daily basis. This happens in countries that are very power and underdeveloped because nobody pays attention to or cares about the populations in these countries. In this film, the locals were getting free medication which they were happy for when in other countries it will be very costly, however the locals did not realize that they were human guinea pigs.
However, I would like to know your thoughts on the rampant corruption and bribery? Is this their cultural norm? If so, why was the pilot of the plane so offended at the offer of money to save that small local child? This caused the main character to have to save face and apologize to the offended pilot. I know that you talked about the culture and the need to know the language but I also feel we need to be very aware of customs and forms of bribery or corruption. Also the gift the pregnant women received from the small child, was that a gift or do you think it was a custom for pregnant women? Just curious. Great job.
We are so lucky in the USA. If we die, someone notices. It is not like that everywhere, and that is something I learned from this movie – how lucky we are.