The Constant Gardener

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