In early 2006, while running Saturday errands, I quickly selected a DVD at our local video store, based on the following: “Ralph Fiennes, actor” . . . “Intrigue” . . . “British pharmaceutical company” . . . “Rural Kenya.”

Paraphrasing now, the dust jacket would have said something like this: The Constant Gardener, based on the novel by author John LeCarre, is a thriller in which Ralph Fiennes, playing the lead role, attempts to expose the deadly side of drug trials on the people of rural Kenya, who are being treated inhumanely by a British pharmaceutical company. At issue in the storyline is a drug called “Dypraxa,” being used experimentally with the people of Kenya. In the film, the pharmaceutical company goes to great lengths to cover up the number of deaths caused by this drug.

The sinister message of the film – The Constant Gardener

A quick Google search today tells me that I was not the first to wonder if the name, Dypraxa, was inspired by Zyprexa, on the market since 1996 and used off-label with my father. The similarities seemed profound: the treatment of my own vulnerable father whose early 2005 death I was grieving – and the treatment of the poor, sick, and vulnerable people of rural Kenya.

Treated with inhumanity by a powerful corporation

For days, I was processing the impact of this film. I was stunned. Why did I feel suddenly enlightened, confused – and wanting to deny the film’s message and its impact? Was it really saying what I thought?!

Did the pharmaceutical company, which produced Zyprexa, know that it was fatally harmful to elders with dementia – as with the continued marketing of Dypraxa in the film? Did author John LeCarre have personal experience with Zyprexa – or was the pharmaceutical in the film just coincidentally called Dypraxa? Is it possible he also had a loved one with dementia?

Questions weighed heavily around my disbelief as I pondered the film’s sinister message. While the cynicism and conspiracy of this film may seem exaggerated, we would learn later that the film reveals parallel truths about the marketing of Dypraxa and Zyprexa.