rumours of war

Elsewhere:

Cherif Bassiouni, who is leading a UN rights inquiry into the situation in Libya, suggested that the claim was part of a "massive hysteria".

Mr Bassiouni told journalists that he had heard those claims when he visited rebel-held eastern Libya.

But when he went to Tripoli, "the same story comes up".

"This time it's the government people telling us, 'you know what? The opponents have a policy of rape, we have discovered that they are giving out contraceptives and Viagra pills'," he recounted.

By the way, does anybody detect the hand of a certain pharmaceutical company at work here:

According to a report from "The Atlantic Wire", the drugs that were supposedly found in the possession of Libyan soldiers were new packages of name brand Viagra from Pfizer. Gaddafi already has a history of dealing with generic manufacturers of drugs, so it is unlikely that he would have reached out to purchase drugs from Pfizer in the first place. Couple that with the fact that Pfizer stopped shipping their products to Libya in February, and that further increases the probability that something is amiss in these allegations.

That was the first story on the allegations that came up when I ran Viagra through google news.

Comments

[ajay]

That second quote doesn't make any sense at all. First of all I doubt you can get generic sildenafil very easily, it's still under patent in the US.

Couple that with the fact that Pfizer stopped shipping their products to Libya in February

Er, it's not entirely impossible that you might still in May have stocks left of something that you imported in February!

But you're right that this has all the hallmarks of propaganda rumour - right up there with the bayonetted babies and the Estonian female snipers.

[dsquared]

First of all I doubt you can get generic sildenafil very easily

do you have an email account? ;-) They manufacture it in India, apparently.

[flyingrodent]

Yes, I felt quite bad for doubting this story when it came up - until today when Dave Aaronovitch also expressed skepticism. It's comforting to know that the UK's foremost authority on conspiracy theory agrees.

[ajay]

They manufacture it in India, apparently.

Hmm. Do they export it? I mean, legally, rather than just over the internet.

[cian]

First of all I doubt you can get generic sildenafil very easily, it's still under patent in the US.

While I'm amused that you think Mad Dog Gaddafi would be squeamish about Intellectual Property, its patent expired last year in Brazil.

[dsquared]

btw, one of the big believers and publicisers of this story is Luis Moreno Ocampo of the ICC; I think it's my clock-strikes-thirteen moment on him - he was a bit of a loose cannon with respect to Darfur (although IMO he was proved right contra Alex de Waal and lots of other experts, in that no drastically awful consequences resulted from the Bashir indictment), and this is of a piece in respect of having a really inappropriate prosecutorial style.

[ajay]

I dunno, the article seems to prove less than it promises, and it misquotes Bassouni extremely seriously in the second paragraph. (He doesn't say that the charges are "a massive hysteria", he says they've caused "massive hysteria", which is very different.)

Gaddafi already has a history of dealing with generic manufacturers of drugs, so it is unlikely that he would have reached out to purchase drugs from Pfizer in the first place. Couple that with the fact that Pfizer stopped shipping their products to Libya in February

Right, so: Gaddafi favours generics, so he would never buy drugs from Pfizer, and also Pfizer hasn't sold him any drugs since February. There's maybe just a little bit of inconsistency here.

[Cian]

Pfizer manufacture several drugs for which no generic is currently available, and also have their own generics arm. I'm not seeing a huge inconsistency here. When given a cheaper alternative, Libya buys the cheaper alternative.