Stan Sorscher, EOI Board Member
Guest post by Stan Sorscher
In a somewhat contentious Town Hall meeting, some of my Congressmember’s constituents, including me, were challenging his adherence to “free trade” policies. In his defense he said, “Go watch The Constant Gardener.” So I did.
Many scenes are shot in Africa, with vivid images of urban slums and timeless poverty, where people express dignity, strength and courage every day. A foreign pharmaceutical company is conducting drug trials using legions of Africans as test subjects. The experimental protocol ignores the villagers’ interests, killing many of them, providing none of the protections we would normally expect of clinical trials in a Western democracy.
The African city has no institutions of civil society (other than the inherent good nature of the people) – weak and distant government, bribery, police corruption, overwhelmed hospitals, a primitive public health agency, no scientific community, no free press or journalism, organized social or political activity…except for the local police, who serve the drug company. Every mother, father and child in the clinical trial is reminded of his or her own insecurity. Everyone dreads being singled out for anti-corporate behavior.
Things go badly, as you might imagine.
The movie is a work of fiction. What it tells us about trade is this: Public policies – trade policy included – create winners and losers. In this case, the winner is a multinational company acting with very little intervention from civil society. The losers are people and their communities who have no voice in choosing their own future.
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Filed under: early learning, education, EOI, health care, minimum wage, retirement security, tax and budget, free trade, industrial policy, jobs, Labor, South Korea, South Korea – United States Free Trade Agreement, standard of living, the constant gardener, trade policy, united states
