A potential vaccine for coronavirus has been developed and is being suggested by two French doctors for testing on people in Africa. The two doctors triggered criticism and are being accused of racism for discussing in a TV show the idea of testing the vaccine for the coronavirus in Africa.

The statements were made on Wednesday 1st April 2020, as they discussed about the COVID-19 trials set to be launched in Europe and Australia to see if the BCG tuberculosis vaccine could be used to treat the virus.

According to the head of the intensive care unit at the Cochin Hospital in Paris, Jean-Paul Mira, “It may be provocative. Should we not do this study in Africa where there are no masks, no treatment or intensive care, a little bit like it’s been done for certain AIDS studies, where among prostitutes, we try things, because we know that they are highly exposed and don’t protect themselves?”

The research director at France’s national health institute, Inserm, Camille Locht, supported the statement saying “You are right. And by the way, we are thinking of in parallel about a study in Africa using this same approach.”

After these derogatory statements were made, a lot of back lash started brewing up as people made their individual remarks.

Didier Drogba in a tweet said, “It is totally inconceivable we keep on cautioning this. Africa isn’t a testing lab. I would like to vividly denounce those demeaning, false and most of all deeply racists words. Helps us save Africa with the current ongoing COVID-19 and flatten the curve.”

According to Olivier Faure, of France’s Socialist Party, the marks were hardly a provocation. In a tweet, he said, “It’s not provocation, it’s just racism,”. “Africa is not the laboratory of Europe. Africans are not rats!”

In response to the statement by the two French doctors, the anti-racism group SOS Racisme called on France’s media regulator, the Conseil Supérieur de L’Audiovisuel (CSA), to formally condemn the remarks.

The group said that Africans are not guinea-pigs comparison with AIDS and prostitutes is “problematic” and “unwelcome”.

However, having made this statement, the CSA did not respond to their complaint even as a member of the SOS, Amar Thioune, complained saying “it is scandalous to see that not a single regulatory authority has come out to publicly denounce these statements,”

Meanwhile, a Moroccan lawyers’ collective, Le Club des avocats au Maroc, declared their intention to sue Jean-Paul Mira for racial defamation.

In response to the backlash that emanated from a proposed intention to test the newly developed vaccine in Africa, Inserm, Camille Locht’s employer, tweeted with a hashtag fake news, saying that the remarks were misinterpreted. And he also included that Africa should not be forgotten or excluded from this research as the pandemic is global.” Also, Jean-Paul Mira tendered a documented apology saying, “I want to present all my apologies to those who were hurt, shocked and felt insulted by the remarks that I clumsily expressed on LCI this week.”

Clinical trials for new medications take place all over the world, but developing countries often serve as cost effective locations. Not to mention some of the trials which aren’t conducted according to leading ethical guidelines. This puts clinical trial participants at risk of being physically harmed or having their rights violated. Every warning you see on a drug/vaccine label is there because a test subject or 50 of them, or even 500 of them have suffered that side effect.

In 2008, the Center for Research on Multinational Corporations released a document full of examples of the detrimental effects of unethical clinical testing that went on the 1990s and throughout the 2000s in the developing world. The report included the case of clinical trials in Uganda between 1997 and 2003, when women taking the anti-transmission drug Nevirapine experienced thousands of serious adverse effects (SAEs). These symptoms went unreported and testing was allowed to continue, resulting in the (also unreported) deaths of 14 women. This is just one out of the numerous tests that have been conducted in Africa and more that are unrecorded.

It is important that in whatever efforts being made to discover a cure for the ongoing pandemic, human rights should still be maintained. If a potential cure is developed, it should be used by individuals of the same country who willingly volunteer to be a part of clinical trials to find out if the newly developed vaccine is potent and what kind of side effects we humans should expect.