The Constant Gardener

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Let me rush to the protection of the British High Commission in Nairobi. It is not the place I described, for I have never been inside it. It is not staffed by the people I have described, for I have never met nor spoken to them. I met the High Commissioner a couple of years back, and we had a ginger beer together on the veranda of the Norfolk Hotel and that was all. He bears not the least resemblance, externally or otherwise, to my Porter Coleridge. As to poor Sandy Woodrow — well, if there were a Head of Chancery at all in the British High Commission in Nairobi as I write, you may be sure he would be a diligent and upstanding man or woman who never covets a colleague's spouse or destroys inconvenient documents. But there isn't. Heads of Chancery in Nairobi, as in many other British missions, have fallen to the axe of time.

In these dog days when lawyers rule the universe, I have to persist with these disclaimers, which happen to be perfectly true. With one exception nobody in this story, and no outfit or corporation, thank God, is based upon an actual person or outfit in the real world, whether we are thinking of Woodrow, Pellegrin, Landsbury, Crick, Curtiss and his dreaded House of ThreeBees, or Messrs. Karel Vita Hudson, also known as KVH. The exception is the great and good Wolfgang of the Oasis Lodge, a character so imprinted upon the memory of all who visit him that it would be ridiculous to attempt to create a fictional equivalent. In his sovereignty, Wolfgang raised no objection to my traducing his name and voice.

There is no Dypraxa, never was, never will be. I know of no wonder cure for TB that has recently been launched on the African market or any other — or is about to be — so with luck I shall not be spending the rest of my life in the law courts or worse, though nowadays you can never be sure. But I can tell you this. As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.

On a happier note, let me warmly thank those who helped me and are willing to have their names mentioned, as well as others who helped me and for good reasons are not.

Ted Younie, a longtime and compassionate observer of the African scene, first whispered pharmaceuticals in my ear and later purged my text of several solecisms.

Dr. David Miller, a physician with experience of Africa and the Third World, first suggested tuberculosis as the way, and opened my eyes to the costly and sophisticated campaign of seduction waged by pharmaceutical companies against the medical profession.

Dr. Peter Godfrey-Faussett, a senior lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, gave me precious expert advice, both at the outset and again at the manuscript stage.

Arthur, a man of many trades and son of my late American publisher Jack Geoghegan, told me horrendous tales of his time as a pharma man in Moscow and Eastern Europe. Jack's benign spirit presided over us.

Daniel Berman of Medecins Sans Frontieres in Geneva provided me with a briefing that was three-star Michelin: worth the whole journey.

BUKO Pharma-Kampagne of Bielefeld in Germany — not to be confused with Hippo in my novel — is an independently financed, undermanned body of sane, well-qualified people who struggle to expose the misdeeds of the pharmaceutical industry, particularly in its dealings with the Third World. If you are feeling generous, please send them some money to help them continue their work. As medical opinion continues to be insidiously and methodically corrupted by the pharma-giants, BUKO'S survival assumes ever greater importance. And BUKO not only helped me greatly. They actually urged me to extol the virtues of responsible pharmaceutical companies. For love of them, I tried here and there to do as they asked, but it wasn't what the story was about.

Both Dr. Paul Haycock, a veteran of the international pharma industry, and Tony Allen, an old Africa hand and pharmaconsultant with a heart and an eye, gave me freely of their advice, knowledge and good humor, and graciously suffered my assaults on their profession — as indeed did the hospitable Peter, who prefers to remain modestly in the shadows.

I received help from several sterling individuals in the United Nations. None had the smallest notion of what I was about; nevertheless I suspect it is tactful not to name them.

With sadness, I have also decided not to name the people in Kenya who generously gave me their assistance. As I write, news is coming in of the death of John Kaiser, an American priest from Minnesota who worked in Kenya for the last thirty-six years. His body was found in Naivasha, fifty miles northwest of Nairobi. It had a bullet wound to the head. A shotgun was found close by. Mr. Kaiser was a longtime outspoken critic of the Kenyan government's human rights policies, or lack of them. Accidents like that can happen again.

In describing the tribulations of Lara in Chapter 18, I drew on several cases, particularly in the North American continent, where highly qualified medical researchers have dared to disagree with their pharmaceutical paymasters and suffered vilification and persecution for their pains. The issue is not about whether their inconvenient findings were correct. It is about individual conscience in conflict with corporate greed. It is about the elementary right of doctors to express unbought medical opinions, and their duty to acquaint patients with the risks they believe to be inherent in the treatments they prescribe.

And lastly, if you should ever chance to find yourself on the island of Elba, please do not fail to visit the beautiful old estate that I appropriated for Tessa and her Italian forebears. It is called La Chiusa di Magazzini, and is the property of the Foresi family. The Foresis make red, white and rose wines and liqueurs from their own vineyard, and an immaculate oil from their own olive orchard. They have a few cottages that you may rent. There is even an oil room where those in search of answers to life's great riddles may seek temporary seclusion.

JOHN LE CARRE

December 2000