Nigeria is bringing criminal charges against Pfizer pharmaceuticals in the wake of its 1996 drug testing during a meningitis epidemic. The Washington Post reports that authorities filed eight charges this month, including counts of criminal conspiracy and voluntarily causing grievous harm. They also filed a civil lawsuit seeking more than $2 billion in damages from the world's largest drug company.

The move represents a rare -- perhaps unprecedented -- instance in which the developing world's anger at multinational drug companies has boiled over into criminal charges. The government alleges that Pfizer researchers selected 200 children and infants from crowds at a makeshift epidemic camp in Kano and gave about half of the group an untested antibiotic called Trovan. Researchers gave the other children what the lawsuit describes as a dangerously low dose of a comparison drug made by Hoffmann-La Roche. Nigerian officials say Pfizer's actions resulted in the deaths of an unspecified number of children and left others deaf, paralyzed, blind or brain-damaged. The lawsuit says that the researchers did not obtain consent from the children's families and that the researchers knew Trovan to be an experimental drug with life-threatening side effects that was "unfit for human use." Parents were banned from the ward where the drug trial occurred, the suit says, and the company left no medical records in Nigeria.

Here's a link to a bunch of MoJo coverage of Big Pharma's trixsy ways. --JULIA WHITTY

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NASA and Columbia University Earth Institute research finds that human-made greenhouse gases have brought the Earth's climate close to critical tipping points. Using climate models, satellite data, and paleoclimate records, the scientists conclude that the West Antarctic ice sheet, Arctic ice cover, and regions providing fresh water sources and species habitat are under threat from continued global warming. Lead author James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, concludes: "If global emissions of carbon dioxide continue to rise at the rate of the past decade, this research shows that there will be disastrous effects, including increasingly rapid sea level rise, increased frequency of droughts and floods, and increased stress on wildlife and plants due to rapidly shifting climate zones."

Meanwhile, GW Bush appears to have woken from his Rip-Van-Winkle slumber and is proffering ideas to the world that the world has already processed & left to the dust of history. Somebody give him a cup of coffee, please, and brief him on the fact the G-8 already has proposals on the table ready to be acted on NOW. The only thing holding them up? His administration. --JULIA WHITTY

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Alex Steffen blogs at WorldChanging on the Worldbike--a cargo-carrying bicycle designed for Africa, where most bikes are used by small entrepreneurs to transport goods for a living. Now, Steffen reports, the bike has appeared in the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum exhibit, "Design for the Other 90%." According to WorldBike:

The Worldbike [is] a new platform for developing world bicycle entrepreneurs. With a lighter weight, stronger frame, V-brakes for stopping power, an ergonomic seat and riding position, a seven-speed drivetrain for hill climbing and integrated cargo racks, the Worldbike is the bike people are calling out for in developing countries. Why hasn't it been built before? Because American recreational customers are the singular focus of the bicycle industry. But things are changing. The Design for the Other 90% is one example of a growing awareness of the importance of developing products that can assist the world's poor.

In my perfect world: You could only shop at CostCo if you carried back what you bought on one of these… --JULIA WHITTY

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The two lost whales have picked up the pace and are now within 10 miles of Golden Gate. The injured mother and her calf have made good time since we followed them last week, 90 miles up the river in Sacramento. They're nearly home to the Pacific Ocean.

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