April 4, 2003

Academic Values and the Lure of Profit

By DEREK BOK

John Le Carré's latest novel, The Constant Gardener, tells of the murder of a young woman in Africa and her husband's valiant efforts to avenge her death. It soon appears that these events all grow out of a major pharmaceutical company's campaign to develop a new drug for combating tuberculosis. Discovered in a Polish laboratory, the drug looks promising at first, raising hopes of earning hundreds of millions of dollars. As tests on human subjects begin in Kenya and other African