The main points in the Bank of England Bulletin, which was issued last month, were well covered by television, radio and newspapers. Anyone taking what was said in these reports as what was meant would have been delighted with the good news. Here are some of the ways in which the news was reported: “Recession or no WE are getting richer abroad”; “According to figures assembled by the Bank’s statisticians . . . OUR external wealth was actually £4.3 billion more in 1979 than we thought it was a year ago”; “In 1980, for the first time, OUR assets abroad exceeded £200 billion ...” (Our emphasis).
Great, you might think. You can leave that dreary job, or stop looking for one. You can move out of your cramped home and move into spacious accommodation with pleasant amenities. No longer will your lifestyle be tethered by a meagre and insecure income. No longer will your impulses be repeatedly smothered by your poverty. So you get on the blower to the Bank of England, explain that you have heard the news about our great wealth which is invested abroad and ask how you might go about getting some of your share now.
Waiting for your reply from the other end of the line, the dialling tone, or worse, would be your signal that all is not as it seems. In fact what is described as "our overseas wealth’, if it was being reported from the point of view of the great majority, would be described as "their overseas wealth’. In Britain today, the entire pooled wealth of the poorest 80 per cent of the adult population amounts to less than that which is owned by the wealthiest 1 per cent (Report of Royal Commission on Distribution of Income and Wealth, 1980) and 93 per cent of adults do not own any stocks or shares. (CIS report, The Wealthy).
Meanwhile, in Japan the capitalist minority’s quest for profit continues with its inevitable disregard for the common social good. For many years a drug developed by a Professor Chisato Maruyama to treat terminal cancer has been dispensed at his small clinic in Tokyo. The vaccine seems to be regarded as effectual, at least by the hundreds of people who queue from dawn every day outside the clinic to collect a forty days’ supply for their suffering friends or relatives.
Research conducted at Tohoku University suggests that where the vaccine has been used in conjunction with other medical treatment survival rates in terminal cancer have much improved over treatment with other drugs. However, the small clinic cannot keep up with the demand and at the moment it is the only place allowed to dispense the vaccine. In order for the drug to become generally available it must be licenced by the Pharmaceutical Council of the Health Ministry. The Health Ministry usually rules on new drugs within 18 months but the Pharmaceutical firm making the vaccine first applied for licensing five years ago, and still no decision has been reached.
The issue became publicised after patients’ families petitioned the Ministry with 60,000 signatures, and the clamour could no longer be ignored by the government. The reason for the extraordinary delay in official approval being granted to the drug cannot be certain as deliberations of the decision makers—and this applies across the world under capitalism—are conducted in secret, or privately as they would prefer to call it.
But all of the available evidence suggests that there have been “close relations" between the Health Ministry and major drug companies. It seems that these firms are exerting strong pressure (the Yen variety) on health officials to block the commercial licensing of the Maruyama vaccine, which would present damaging competition to their own anti-cancer drugs already on the market. There is a trend for many senior ministry bureaucrats who are ‘co-operative’ with the representatives of large drug companies to be given highly paid appointments with the companies once they have retired from government employment. The rather well-titled ‘vice-president’ of one of the largest Japanese pharmaceutical companies was Deputy Health Minister a few years ago. Until the power of control and decision-making is withdrawn from the minority who now exercise it all over the world, society will continue to be run by us for them.
Gary Jay
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