Third World Exploitation

Did you know that when you buy Panadol you are buying Paracetamol but paying a lot more for the name? If Joe Public can spend over the odds for something that is relatively straightforward then what chance do we have with relatively complex medicines on a world scale? What chance do we have if one company has a monopoly on a drug? We often see this from the point of view of the patient. If they received a particular drug then it could prolong their life but it is so expensive. One example is a drug called Nexavar that helps prolong life for those with liver cancer. Hower it costs around £3 000 per month so the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE - notice the irony of the acronym) get the criticism for saying that it is too expensive.

Why do NICE get criticised? Who says that the drug is so expensive? I haven't noticed drugs companies being hit by the recession. In fact they tend to do rather well especially when they can charge thousands of pounds for drugs. I won't mention the company but I was once part of a very nice two-day course in Cambridge and I jokingly praised the company for weeks afterwards, but someone has to pay for the free bar, the meals and the accomodation.

I did make a joke but it is a serious problem. Take Tamiflu. The company tells us that H1N1 is a more serious flu than we might think. I have heard of students who organise parties when they hear that one of their friends has the H1N1 virus, but for a moment let's take the company's point of view. Then why ia Tamiflu so expensive? Trials are conducted by universities and companies tend to come in at the later stages to produce the drug and get a patent. Poorer countries can't produce life-saving drugs unless under licence and even then the costs have rocketed. If the World Health Organisation are serious about health in poorer countries then they need to have a good look at the costs of production in the wealthy countries.

It is no use complaining of third world debt only to find that the poorer countries are poor because of exploitation. If we can be fooled into buying Panadol then we have a long way to go before we help the poor.

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A comment on Iraq

I received a comment to Friday's blog but I only received it via email. I tried to post the comment myself but I couln't paste it, so today's blog isn't from me but it does fit in with what I remember...


I wrote this blog in 2003.

As far as I could make out:

The "good guys": We think you have weapons of mass destruction.

If you have weapons of mass destruction, we'll bomb the c**p out

of you.

Sadam: I don't have weapons of mass destruction.

The "good guys": Give us a dossier on everything you've got on

weapons of mass destruction or we'll bomb the c**p out of you.

Sadam: Here you go. I don't have weapons of mass destruction.

The "good guys": Let our weapons inspectors into Iraq to search

for weapons of mass destruction or we'll bomb the c**p out of

you.

Sadam: Ok, let them in. I don't have weapons of mass

destruction.

The "good guys": Right, we've had enough - our inspectors can't

find any weapons of mass destruction - we'll bomb the c**p out

of you.

A few months later...

BBC: After weeks of searching, the inspectors find nothing. We

think Sadam may have been bluffing when he claimed he had weapons

of mass destruction.

Hmm. anyway...

Today, two BBC news headlines - both on the front page

1 - Inspectors conclude no WMD in Iraq

2 - Saddam worse than thought - Straw

Under heading 2, the following paragraph:

But Mr Straw, speaking in Baghdad, said 'the threat from Saddam Hussein in terms of his intentions' was 'even starker than we have seen before'.

The intention of building WMDs is worse than the possession of WMDs???


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Let's say the war was legal

There is continued news about the Iraq Inquiry so I will follow on from yesterday's blog. Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who at that time was the UK's ambassador to the UN, was questioned about whether we were right to go to war. He said the war was of "questionable legitimacy". I take this to mean that he doesn't know whether the war was legal. Slightly confusingly, he went on to say that the US and the UK had established its legitimacy and this had never been challenged in the courts. I think this means that we think the war was legal but nobody else does. If he is saying this and he is on our side what must our opponents be saying?

All the information that is coming out now was evident even in 2003 to anyone who was willing to do a bit of digging. It will be interesting to see how much difference it will make now that we don't have to dig. Our senses have been made dull by the passage of time and even the thousands who marched against the war will not give the same priority to the inquiry as they did to the war itself.

There must be a feeling in Downing Street that the inquiry will not tarnish Gordon Brown's record. This may be the case but I don't think Tony will be so lucky. If they both get away with it then this will be quite a trick, given that they were both more-or-less equally pro-war.

Let's see.

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The spin continues

Did the House of Commons know perfectly well about the arguments for going to war? On Question Time yesterday Lord Falconer said that this was the case. My problem with this (among many) is that my Labour MP supported Tony Blair and then wrote in The Guardian that she was misled into war. Even now there is spin going on. We are told that we were not misled.

We are also told that Saddam had terrible plans and he deserved what he got. I do remember the reluctance of Saddam to allow inspections for weapons of mass destruction. I remember him allowing inspections and then finding nothing and then the war started. I also remember millions of people protesting at the time. I also remember that we went in without UN support.

There was "no smoking gun" and my selective memory recalls no evidence of weapons of mass destruction. However now we are being told that selective memories should choose to remember that Saddam taunted us with these weapons and we had to take his threats seriously. The spin continues.

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G20 Review

Back in April I wrote about the police tactics in the G20 protests. A review of these tactics is due out tomorrow and is expected to recommend improved training for the police. It is not difficult to remember the incidents shown on television when protestors were hit by batons when speaking to the police. There will be recommendations about the use of "force". There will also be talk of "kettling" in which protestors are contained in confined areas and the confinement could last hours. Stories were heard of people who were not protesting, they were just in the wrong area at the wrong time, and they found themselves held for hours. If don't think this is a bad tactic then just think that you are in that position and imagine that you want to go to the toilet. Then add on a few hours.

The main reason I wanted to write this blog is because I heard a protestor talk about legitimate demonstrations. I would have liked him to talk about legitimate demonstrations and illegitimate demonstrations, and then talk about how the police should deal with the breaking of the law. How often do we see blinkers going on. In this case the protestors don't mention that there are other people who legitimately want to go about their business but can't use their street because of a demonstration. There will also be a recommendation that communication should be improved between protestors and the police. It's not just a problem for the police as communication goes both ways.

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Compensation Culture

The National Accident Helpline have just advertised their service on TV. It was the advert in which an office worker slips on the floor and manages to make a successful claim. I didn't pay too much attention but I think they tell us that she got a few thousand pounds. I imagine that this was because there were no signs to say wet floor. However a lot of people can't read so it may be that the company did not have someone next to the water telling people that the floor was wet.

About ten years ago my daughter broke her arm. She had fallen off her bike. A couple of weeks later she was in the centre of town with my wife. Someone saw the plaster and ran across the road to them to ask if she wanted to make a claim. We didn't claim but it made me think whether bike shops should have signs saying "you may fall off this bike" or whether councils should have signs saying "these roads are hard".

I can see the point of compensation where negiligence is evident but the recent case of a youngster who was attacked by another child reminded me of Bart Simpson. Bart lost in court because it turns out that he didn't lose any income and he quite enjoyed being off school.

I recently overheard two people talking about whiplash injuries and how it is worth a few thousand pounds as long as they say they have an injury. There is nothing wrong with advertising but it seems to me that there must be a lot of times when compensation claims for injury are based on a compensation culture.

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How do you define murder?

An article on yesterday's BBC news related to yesterday's Panorama. It was about murder convictions for people who were not directly involved in the violence and there was an interview with the mother of a murderer who felt an injustice had been performed. There was also an interview with the wife of Garry Newlove who was kicked to death by a gang outside his home in Warrington. She thought that justice had been done.

So are you a murderer if you stand by and watch the person next to you murder someone? The law obviously says this is a possibility. I don't have any knowledge of the detail of this attack, but what I do know is that if I stood next to a someone who was killing someone else then I would feel guilty if I did nothing. I may even feel guilty if I did my best to stop it, and I would find it really hard to feel innocent.

We should let the courts decide who is the murderer. If we have a law that says bystanders are always innocent then that law is not just.

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