In the early 1990s, a secret HIV vaccine research project was carried out in the Central African Republic. The project didn’t yield results and was hidden for many years.
Today it sheds light on debates over clinical trials, access to treatment and, more broadly, a specific form of exploitation rarely discussed: biomedical extractivism.
I tell this story in my recently published book, Opération Bangui. Promesses vaccinales en Afrique postcoloniale (The Bangui Operation: Vaccine Promises in Postcolonial Africa). As a sociologist and pharmacist, and a lecturer in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the Université de Montréal, my research interests focus on issues related to pharmaceutical policies. Specifically, I examine biomedical research, access to medicines and pharmaceutical practices by focusing on the ambiguities inherent in pharmaceutical policies and global health systems.
