I have just completed reading David Stuart MacLean's excellent account of his experience with Lariam (mefloquine) in the early 00s. The book, written in 2014, is titled The Answer to the Riddle is Me: A tale of Amnesia.

I haven't yet had the courage to read Andrew Marriot's book released last year titled If You Wake At Midnight. I'll get there...

Anyway. I'm chatting to my Brother just this week and he drops the mic and tells me he is planning on hitting Everest this year. I'm so excited for him. I even share a recently recovered memory about how I wanted to climb K2 back in the day.

Then my brother drops another bomb-shell.

"The Doctor was trying to prescribe me mefloquine".

I was shocked. It's 2023, not the 90s. Why would some random GP in Melbourne, Australia be casually prescribing a drug with a known history of adverse effects as if it were aspirin?

I don't care if you sign this petition or not. If you are considering using mefloquine (brand name Lariam) consider the following:

Development

Conceived initially as a treatment for people already infected with malaria, the drug was tested on inmates at the Joliet Correctional Centre in Illinois. Of course, these prisoners first needed to be inoculated with malaria to see if the drug would work. After this testing was showed the efficacy of the drug as a cure for malaria, it was then developed in conjunction with Hoffmann-La Roche, a Swiss pharmaceutical company. This was the first time a public-private venture was undertaken in regard to the development of a drug. (Source: The Answer to the Riddle Is Me (page 122), David Stuart MacLean, 2014).

A Long History of Adverse Effects

The World Health Organization noted in it's Adverse Effects of the Antimalarial Drug Mefloquine Alert (8th August 1989) that:

However, recent reports in the literature, as well as notifications to the drug manufacturer and WHO, have suggested that more severe neurological reactions may be associated with its use. These have included severe depression, psychotic episodes and seizures...

History

I could tell you about Matchee in Somalia (1992) or the murder-suicide cluster at Fort Bragg (2002) but those are military stories. David Stuart MacLean again:

My Dad contacted some lawyers about suing Hoffmann-La Roche, the maker of Lariam. The lawyers told him that for years people had been trying to put together a class action suit, but the side effects were too varied to be consistently linked to the drug. Since most people were prescribed the drug before travelling, the symptoms would occur so far away from the prescribing doctor that causal connections were difficult to establish.

There have been only a few settlements regarding Lariam, including an Ohio man who came home from a safari acting strangely. He went down to the basement for a gallon of milk and instead grabbed a shotgun and killed himself. Roche settled with his spouse for an undisclosed sum. (pg. 138, 2014).

Malaria is bad. Really bad.

If you have an adverse reaction to mefloquine/Lariam that is worse.

Mefloquine should be banned