Danger: pills for profit (2003)

From the December 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

One would have to be remarkably unaware of what is happening in the world today not to know that society was facing a drug problem. A drug problem on a scale which is costing thousands of lives and untold millions of pounds to control. This is not a question of Chinese opium rings in Soho – it is a social menace which affects society as a whole across age and class.

The government is worried, the police are pretty much baffled but nobody really knows what to do. We hear of spectacular police ‘busts’ where they come across huge amounts of drugs with a street value of millions of pounds but it doesn’t seem to make much difference to the overall picture. Apparently this is a problem that has no solution. In a probably futile attempt to control it the government in Britain is considering making some drugs such as cannabis, legal or rather partially legal. One question that never seems to get asked though is – why?

“Why?” of course is a question spectacularly lacking in politics, and the reason for this is simple – they dare not ask it because the answer would lie in the nature of capitalist society. And of course there is the point that a very workable diversion exists to keep workers’ minds off their real problems. Capitalism is content, or has to be content, with a good many expensive circuses to maintain itself in existence.

However there are other aspects to drugs that never get mentioned. These are the problems of the other sorts of drugs – the legal ones. One may come across an odd mention of a particular drug that is having “side effects” (an outrageous euphemism if ever there was one). Scandals such as Thalidomide made the headlines, but there is no sustained coverage in the media such as is given to Ecstasy where one death will make the headlines, especially if it happens to a young girl. Legal drugs, that is drugs prescribed by doctors to treat disease are never described as a problem. Yet problem it is, because legal drugs kill far more people than the illegal ones.

This is a shocking statement. Yet it is true, as records published in the USA and the UK show. According to the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association at least 106,000 Americans die every year as a result of some adverse reaction to a prescription drug. A further 7,000 die from an error relating to a drug such as a wrong dosage or a wrong mix (drugs which do not combine). This finding was only for drugs administered in hospital. The Institute of Medicine, which carried out this survey, admitted that its findings did not include drugs consumed outside of hospital as a result of GP or consultant prescription.

In the UK, according to a study by University College London, estimated medical errors, which include unwanted drug reactions, kill 40,000 people every year. This again only applied to hospitals, and did not take into account the many more fatalities that occur at home. Figures taken from Secrets of the Drugs Industry, by Bryan Hubbard, suggest that the monitoring system used to test new drugs for efficacy and “adverse reactions” (the name given to unwanted effects) is far from foolproof, and can be pretty sketchy. Children and the elderly are not often included in the tests though many drugs may be aimed at just such people. The real test comes when they are put on the market.

To cover this, doctors are expected to report the side effects that they come across, that is, that are reported to them by patients. In the UK adverse reactions to prescription drugs should be monitored by the Yellow Card system, whereby if a doctor suspects a drug has caused a reaction not intended by the manufacturer, he or she notes it down and sends it to the Medicines Control Agency. They oversee the safety of drugs once they are licensed but the system has many loopholes. It is estimated by Dr Bill Inman, the man who initiated the system, that only about ten percent of all reactions are ever reported, either because a link is not suspected or because GPs are overburdened with paperwork. In France researchers estimated that doctors report only one in 24,000 adverse reactions. And if the adverse reaction is not already noted, many doctors will tend not to believe the patient.

So far one could conclude that all of these are unfortunate results due to human error from over-worked doctors under a lot of pressure. The true picture is far more sinister than that and has to do with drug companies, profits and the nature of the social system we are all living under, capitalism.

Drugs, as with all else that is produced in this world today, are produced for one reason only – to make a profit. Not a profit for the producers, the workers who actually make the stuff of course – they are the source of profit. The owners of capital in the drugs industry make the profit. And what profits! The drugs industry is one of, if not the most, profitable industry in the world today.

The ten top drug companies are so large primarily due to a series of mergers that have consolidated their position. The largest single company is Pfizer closely followed by the British Glaxo-Wellcome-Smith-Kline-Beecham, now calling themselves GSK. Other major pharmaceuticals are Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers–Squib, and Merck. For the ten leading drug companies their profits topped the Fortune 500 companies in the US by a large margin. In the UK GSK alone had sales of £20.5 billion in 2001, and a pre-tax profit of £6.2 billion.

Why is this? Most drug companies admit to making massive profits but seek to explain this away by pointing at the costs of research, which, they claim, is necessary to put new drugs on the market and keep up with the increasing demands of modern medicine. New research is very costly and does seem at first glance a valid justification. A closer look at the marketing habits of drug companies will reveal a very different story. While the money required for completely new formulations is indeed massive, there are not as many completely new research discoveries as they would like us to think. Whilst the cost of producing an entirely new drug can rise to £350 million and can take from ten to fifteen years to bring on to the market, the reality is not quite so clear cut. Many “new” drugs are not new as far as involving new chemicals but are re-formulations of existing drugs. A study in America discovered that, of all the drugs approved during the 1990s, only 15 per cent contained new active ingredients.

But for the drug companies launching a new product on the market is a matter of vital importance because that’s where they make their money. Prices charged for a new product are substantially higher. In America in 2000 the average price per prescription for the most innovative new drug was $91.20 compared to an average price of $37.20 for older drugs that were approved before 1995.

Share prices

The launch of a new drug can also have remarkable affects on the share price. For example, shares in Cambridge-based drugs firm Alizyme rocketed from 34.5p to 114.5p after second-stage trials of the anti-obesity drug ATL-962 dramatically aided weight loss without the damaging side effects of its rivals. “This will definitely be a blockbuster drug” said Finance Director Tim McCarthy. “We would anticipate sales of at least $1bn a year once it is fully approved.” The Daily Mail commented: “The £110 million company’s future is virtually guaranteed. On top of a hefty one off fee, it is likely to secure a double digit percentage of any future royalties” (20 September 2003.)

Once a “new” drug is approved pharmaceutical companies can usually look forward to a rosy future. They have a patent, which usually extends to 20 years, and no other drug firms may produce that drug. However other companies may produce what is called a generic drug, given permission from the parent company. That is a drug containing the same ingredients but not entitled to use the same name. These can be produced much more cheaply and there is, for example, a long-running dispute between companies producing anti-aids drugs and governments in Third World countries over permission to produce generic drugs. The nascent drug industry of Pakistan would like to build on the production of generic drugs but a big demand from South Africa is being blocked by the parent companies, who see their profits threatened. Needless to say both parties are on their moral high horse. In this connection it is worth noting that most drug companies spend twice as much on marketing and advertising as they do on research.

Enormous amounts are also spent on lobbying governments especially in the United States. “Overall, drug companies spent $78.1 million on lobbying in 2001 bringing the total lobbying bill for 1997-2001 to $403,071,467. The companies employed 623 different individual lobbyists in 2001 – or more than one lobbyist for every member of Congress”. (source. Public Citizen, 12 June 2002: http://www.citizen.org/congress/reform). The reason for this is that after such huge amounts have been paid out on research the costs have to be recouped by an aggressive selling campaign. Development of a new drug can take up to fifteen years after its initial licensing, leaving a mere five years before the patent runs out. And since these are prescription drugs that are dependent on doctors to administer, the main promotional target must be a doctor. Doctors, who, after all, we must believe have their patients’ interests at heart, have to be persuaded that a new drug will be more efficacious than one they have previously relied upon. It must be pointed out that development in drugs moves at such a rapid pace that within a few years from graduating the average doctor will be heavily dependent on outside sources for any knowledge of their usefulness. And the companies concerned do their level best to ensure that such knowledge comes from the producer.

How is this done? The short answer is bribery, but this is carried out in such subtle ways that doctors themselves are unaware that they are being wooed. Expense-paid ‘holidays’ to seminars in foreign locations are one such, but there are many other methods pursued to persuade doctors. Articles in medical journals are heavily influenced by biased reports from company funded research. Drug companies are very powerful entities and they use every method they can to sell their products. Remember, to them drugs are a commodity, and a commodity is something that is put on the market to make a profit for the shareholders.

That the pharmaceuticals industry is way up there as one of the more unpleasant features of capitalist society does not need much proving. To degrade what should be an honourable attempt to alleviate the ills suffered by humankind, (many of them caused by capitalist society itself) into a sordid scramble for wealth should be sufficient indictment of the capitalist system, but what is the solution? All those who consider that state regulation is an answer should look closely at other attempts by the state to regulate some of the ‘unacceptable faces of capitalism’ such as the arms trade. They should also perhaps reflect on the fact that in Britain up to one third of MPs receive some funding from drug companies to help pay for administrative expenses etc.

Will drugs be as big a menace in socialism? As far as legal drugs are concerned there should be no problem. Without the commercial pressures of today and the drive for profit it would be possible for researchers to behave in a responsible manner and pool their findings. What is now called the problem of illegal drugs might not be so easy to solve. One prime factor, however, would immediately disappear in a socialist system – the monetary incentive to produce such drugs. We believe that socialism would fill up the gaps in people’s lives making it less likely (if not completely unlikely) that they would turn to drugs to fill an empty life or escape from an intolerable one. One thing is for sure that there is no solution within capitalism. The consensus of opinion is that the problem is growing.

But the question has still to be asked – why is it that the terrible death toll from prescription drugs is so under-reported in the media?

The answer is that the powers that be are quite prepared to tolerate all manners of injustices and deceptions in the pursuit of profits, as long as they don’t rise to an uncontrollable level and get out of hand, and the drug companies are in a very powerful position in setting social and political agendas.

Cyril Evans

Animal rights? (1986)

From the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every day over ten thousand animals die in laboratories in Britain. They are burned, blinded, scalded, poisoned, cut up, and many of the other unpleasant things you can think of. Eighty per cent of the experiments take place without anaesthetic. This is what is known as "vivisection".

Recent times have seen the rise of vociferous campaigns against this and against other forms of animal cruelty. Today, we not only have the RSPCA and League Against Cruel Sports, but also an active National Anti-Vivisection Society, Animal Aid, Compassion in World Farming, Greenpeace, the Animal Liberation Front, and others. Nothing — not even the nuclear threat — is more calculated to fill the postbags of newspapers than the appearance of a letter or article on the subject of animals. When my own local paper recently published a letter about the use of animals, readers wrote in in large numbers. The writer of the original letter had said that his wife had died of cancer and had more experiments been allowed to take place on animals, a cure may have been found and she might still be alive. He went on to say that campaigners against animal experiments were killers because their efforts to limit such experiments were condemning many sick people to death. One of the replies, from Brian Gunn, General Secretary of the National Anti-Vivisection Society, showed that the writer had little to fear. Gunn pointed out that new parliamentary legislation against vivisection was leaving the situation very much as it had been since the first Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876. It would not stop the experiments at present taking place. The main difference in the new (1986) law is the fact that it grades experiments from one to five according to the intensity of pain they cause. And in one sense, say the animal campaigners, the new law is worse than the old one as it no longer insists that animals be killed after they have been experimented on but allows them to be used for a second experiment if they are still in fit condition.

Brian Gunn also mentioned that animals are not just used for medical purposes but figure on a large scale in tests on cosmetics, alcohol and tobacco and in warfare and behavioural and psychological tests. And if we look a little more closely, we can add to the animal-tested list innocuous seeming products like oven cleaner, candles, shampoo, polish, anti-freeze and detergents, as well as the cosmetics which the campaigners frequently condemn and which they are trying to combat by their own list of "cruelty-free cosmetics".

But the campaigners' concerns stretch further than just vivisection. I recently received through the post a letter from the Save the Seals campaign of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, which graphically described the clubbing to death of baby seals. It appealed for a donation and asked me to pledge myself to boycotting Canadian fish products. In the letter was a small folded brochure showing Canadian fishermen killing baby seals. A notice on the outside said I would find the scenes "extremely disturbing". and I did. Not long before, I had received a similar request from Greenpeace to help its work of trying to save the whales from extinction. And when the Socialist Party debated with the local Animal Rights group last year in Swansea, it was this kind of literature our opponents gave out as well as material on vivisection.

Different pro-animal groups have different methods. The more conservative try putting pressure on governments, firms and educational institutions by letters to the press and MPs and organising petitions. Others picket fur shops, circuses and research establishments. The most "radical". like the Animal Liberation Front, favour "direct action" such as "liberating" animals from laboratories, damaging equipment and sabotaging hunts. One thing that unites them all, however, is the idea that, since animals cannot organise their own protest, they must be protected by those who can. "We are the voice for the voiceless", as they put it, and it's hard not to be sympathetic to that voice and indeed to the millions of tortured creatures it speaks for.

But can the voice be an effective one? The animal campaigners point in particular to the other methods of experimentation that can and already are being used. First there is the use of cell and tissue cultures which avoid the direct use of animals and can utilise human samples taken from such sources as placenta and parts of the uterus removed during hysterectomy. The human cultures are said to be more reliable for research into illness since animal bodies often react differently to drugs than human ones and examples of animal-tested disaster drugs like Thalidomide and Eraldin are easy to find. Cultures have already been used for work on cancer, diabetes and arthritis and the production of vaccines, hormones and enzymes. Then there are a number of computer assisted techniques, in particular the mathematical modelling and quantum pharmacology methods, which have already been used. Finally, among other methods still in their early stages but being developed are chemical analysis by mass spectrometry, genetic engineering, and scanning by sophisticated photographic techniques.

Why then, given the existence and use of other methods, are animals still dying in their millions? The answer is quite simply that animals are cheap. Since the aim of research in today's world is not primarily to alleviate suffering but to yield products that can be sold on the market at a profit (or at least to smooth the overall running of the profit process), then clearly the single most essential factor is cheapness. No firm producing drugs, cosmetics, oven cleaner, or detergents will pay for research without the prospect of a product they can sell at a profit. And since it must also be assessed whether the amount of resources being put into a research project is worth the profit it will finally produce, research sponsors will inevitably want the work to be carried out as cheaply as possible. And if cheapness means using animals rather than other methods that may be available. then animals will be used, regardless of their suffering.

The Animal Rights movement's literature often recognises that profit is the driving force of animal exploitation. But. curiously, they never seem to look beyond the profit system for a possible solution to the problem. They would like "compassion" to enter into the production process (the organisation. Compassion in World Farming, encapsulates this in its title), but if the driving force of production is profit, is compassion for animals likely to come anything but a poor second? Especially when we consider that compassion for humans comes a very poor second to profit. Every year millions of human beings are killed, maimed, ill-treated or driven from their homes in the wars and power struggles associated with the pursuit of profit in many parts of the globe. Every year millions of human beings are allowed to die of starvation because they can't afford to buy food at a price that would allow its production or distribution to be profitable. Every year millions of human beings, even in so-called civilised countries like Britain, are set at odds with one another by profit society's competitive ethic and hostile social environment. Many are victims of material want and mental distress leading to such problems as violence, theft, drug addiction, suicide and death by hypothermia. Can we expect compassion for animals on any significant scale in a society whose social organisation so militates against compassion for human beings?

The necessary change is to a society where production is for use not profit, where people co-operate voluntarily to produce what they need and enjoy free and equal access to what they have produced. What we are talking about is a society without wages and salaries, without buying and selling, without money and banks and stock exchanges. It may seem a tall order, but it's certainly less of a tall order than emancipating animals in the framework of the present society, and in fact socialism is entirely within our grasp once the majority of us decide we want it and are prepared to take democratic political action to bring it about.

How will the position of animals be different in such a society? It is hard to imagine that, just as the peace and security of socialism will change people's attitudes towards their fellow human beings, their attitudes towards animals will not change too. In a truly human society, compassion for other living creatures can hardly fail to be something that will concern us. On a practical level alone, many of today's experiments will simply be unnecessary. For instance, weapons won't be needed, so animals won't be used in their development or testing. Many of the drugs used today will probably not be produced, since so many illnesses are produced by the conditions we live in rather than by intrinsic human factors. Socialism will not be a society of tranquillisers, antidepressants or pain killers. Nor will it be a society in which today's killers — cancer and heart disease — are widespread. According to Philip Churchward, "it is widely accepted that cancer is a largely preventable disease. Seventy to ninety per cent of cancers are caused by environmental factors, with smoking and diets high in animal fat as the two main offenders".

But wouldn't animal experiments be needed for the remaining 10-30 per cent of cancer victims? And what about the production of candles, weedkiller, polish and (if we still use them) cosmetics and tobacco? Well, first of all in a society where there are no cost factors to be placed above human need, all methods of research that exist will be used in preference to making animals suffer. Then, even where there seems to be no alternative to the use of animals for a particular purpose, we will think carefully before condemning other sentient beings to suffering or death. When people take their democratic decisions on such matters (and all decisions in socialism will be democratic), they will have to weigh the benefit to themselves and to the community as a whole of using animals against the debasement of humanity this involves. They will have to ask themselves whether the benefit to humanity is so vital as to be worth causing defenceless creatures to suffer. This writer's guess is that it will rarely, if ever, be.

In their letters to the press, the anti-vivisectionists have the habit of signing off with a "Yours for Human and Animal Rights", and in so doing they highlight the similarity of their position to the countless other organisations campaigning not for animal reforms but for human ones — Shelter, Help the Aged, Oxfam, Amnesty International, War on Want, Child Poverty Action and so on. And both sets of "rights” campaigners have the same dilemma. They are campaigning for rights within the framework of a system where any such notion must always be subordinated to the needs of profit. In other words, they are fighting to get rid of problems without aiming to get rid of the system that produces the problems. Their fight must always therefore be a losing one. Calming the symptoms is the best they can hope for, because as long as the root cause of the pain is still there, then the pain will keep coming back, and indeed will break out in other places too.

The answer, as perceived by the anti-vivisectionists themselves, is political. But not political in the sense of demanding, as they put it, "open government", or of appealing to governments to act in the interests of animals and against the interests of profit. Political in the sense of our taking the situation into our own hands and peacefully and democratically voting to get rid of governments, to get rid of the profit system, and with it to get rid of the bottomless pit of problems, for both humans and animals, that it inevitably produces.

Howard Moss

Animal cruelty (1986)

From the July 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vivisection means literally "cutting alive" and is a worldwide practice involving millions of animals. Live animals are used in experiments to further scientific knowledge, to manufacture drugs, to test the safety of cosmetics, household and industrial products. Many of the experiments are unnecessary, unpleasant and involve varying degrees of suffering to the animals. These experiments have been taking place since the seventeenth century and today the treatment of animals in the course of such activity is the subject of concern among many welfare groups who campaign for an end to experiments on live animals.

Beauty Without Cruelty oppose commercial exploitation of animals especially for cosmetics and furs. Animal Aid would like to see abolition of all live animal experiments. The Humane Research Trust aims to promote essential research in which the use of animals will be replaced by advanced techniques. The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection have minimum demands for a ban on alcohol and tobacco experiments as well as cosmetics, warfare and behavioural/psychological experiments. All of these organisations have in common a desire to alleviate animal suffering and some act as pressure groups seeking legislative change. Obviously it is an emotive subject among those who take a moral stance on the issue of vivisection and argue for animal rights.

The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is the most militant of these groups and has pointed out that

  For many decades, people have attempted to stop these atrocities through legal peaceful means such as petitions, leaflets and writing to politicians. Sadly, these methods . . . have failed . . and the situation for animals has got gradually worse.

Therefore, their policy is to take

  direct action in rescuing animals from . . . cruel establishments and also causing damage to property belonging to animal abusers . . . and financial ruin to those who persecute defenceless creatures. . . ALF is bringing the day closer when all cruelty to animals is ended. (ALF leaflet)

They neglect to mention exactly how they aim to go about ending cruelty to animals other than by episodic action just described which, since it is thought that one animal dies every six seconds in a British laboratory, can have very little effect.

Around 80 per cent of animal experiments are related to medical research drugs. However, of the 40,000 drugs on the market the World Health Organisation regards only about 220 as essential. Most are duplications of already successful products. Nevertheless manufacturers must test each one for possible side-effects and as a protection against claims for damages which could ruin a company. The most controversial tests in this respect among animal rights groups are the LD50 and Draize tests used to test the safety of drugs, household and industrial products.

The LD50 test represents the single lethal dose required to kill 50 per cent of animals involved in the experiment, the purpose being to predict the drug's lethal dose and to recognise the symptoms of overdose. The Draize test involves dripping solutions such as perfume or shampoo into the eyes of animals. usually rabbits, to ascertain safety of use for human beings.

Such tests are not infallible. Some studies have claimed that animal drug tests predict only one side-effect in four. Thalidomide, for example, cause deformities in human babies but was harmless to most animals. Insulin does not harm human beings but can deform baby rabbits and mice while penicillin poisons guinea pigs. So the value of such tests can be questioned on two counts. Firstly, many are used to produce unnecessary duplications of already successful products and are therefore simply an attempt by drug companies to grab a slice of the lucrative market. Secondly, such tests do not always predict correctly.

Apes and monkeys are widely used for psychological research. This type of experiment is carried out to find solutions to some of the problems created by the type of society in which we live. Monkeys are turned into drug addicts and alcoholics, force-fed sweets for dental research and are used as victims in car crash tests. In military research monkeys and apes are used to determine the effects of nuclear radiation and along with other animals to test the effects of weapons and chemical and biological warfare such as nerve gases and viruses.

The ruthless exploitation of animals for experimental purposes is another vicious effect of the profit system. Groups like AI.F have gone some way towards recognising the futility of reformist action but have stopped short of the socialist conclusion. The fact is that capitalism maltreats animals because it has a vested interest in cruelty.

Cathy Gillespie

Pathfinders: Avatar, avachange (2006)

The Pathfinders Column from the April 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Avatar, avachange

Anti-socialists who peddle the old saw about human nature being unchangeable ought to hang out more with the kids and play online computer games, because if they did they would soon realize just how malleable human behaviour actually is. A recent study by researchers in Palo Alto, California, took two groups of virtual reality gamers and assigned them online cartoon representations, or avatars, which were deliberately given distinct physical characteristics, shorter or taller in the first group, and uglier or prettier in the second. Then they studied the behaviour of the gamers. (New Scientist, Feb 25, p.30). Those whose avatars were taller displayed consistently more assertive and aggressive behaviour while the shorter players were more acquiescent, and in the second group, the uglier players stood farther apart than the prettier ones. A quick and informal interrogation by Pathfinders of known local players reveals that this sort of behavioural change is common knowledge among gamers and in fact accounts for much of the appeal of virtual reality gaming. If our behaviour is so easily influenced by our perception of ourselves and our virtual surroundings, it is not hard to imagine a sea-change in human behaviour occurring almost overnight if our actual material surroundings were changed, say by the abolition of private ownership. The researchers plan to run the experiment next using age as the defining characteristic. We look forward to gamers, confronted by themselves with wrinkled skin and grey hair, suddenly becoming gurus of wisdom and maturity.

RFID, RDFI, DRIF, FRIED…

News that researchers have managed to infect state of the art RFID tags with a virus (BBC Online, March 15) raises a number of disturbing issues for the security of this new technology, as well as a highly interesting question for socialist revolutionaries in the wired world of the 21st century. These electronic Radio Frequency ID tags, which give every inanimate object the ability to identify itself electronically, can now be printed on cans of beans, and even sprayed on advertising posters, so that in the supermarkets of the near future the checkout till, barcode reader and human operator will disappear and your goods will be automatically identified in the trolley, and your bank account debited, as you push your wonky-wheeled chariot through the doors and into the carpark. Such ‘smart-tagging’ of products, posters, pets and even people carries huge benefits from a capitalist point of view, and not a few benefits from a future socialist society’s point of view too (see Socialist Standard, Jan 2005), but none of this takes into account what happens when a virus introduces Factor X – the RF Identity Crisis. When all forms of hard cash have disappeared, and the circulation of money in the economy is replaced by the circulation of binary digits round a computer network, the money economy will have reached its zenith of efficiency, and its nadir of vulnerability. One smart hacker could in theory do by stealth what all the revolutionaries of history have failed to do by force – abolish price tags, wipe out bank accounts, mortgages, debts, profits, rents and fees, thus effectively ‘rebooting’ society and resetting all values at zero. The question, for socialists, is whether they could ever condone, or advocate, such a draconian step, given the chaos which would quite likely ensue. Given the organized chaos of a society which at present lets most of its members suffer appalling deprivation within a sea of riches, the answer is surely not straightforward.

More on viruses

AOL, the American internet giant, have recently been hit by a double whammy. First, according to informed sources close to Pathfinders, their endorsed anti-virus partner Macafee turned out a March upgrade to their anti-virus software which, oh dear, oops, deletes certain vital Windows DLL overlay files, which is the equivalent of removing the spark plugs from your car engine. Then, within days, the Norton group produced their anti-virus upgrade which accidentally removes, yes, you guessed it, your AOL internet software. If anti-virus companies are going to carry on doing more damage to your computer than the viruses they are supposed to catch, surely the obvious question is: why don’t they test these upgrades on virtual animals first? Remember, you saw this idea here first.

Lastly, on viruses

In case you missed this: the animals in the jungle are discussing who is the scariest of them all. ‘Me’, says the lion, and gives out a big roar. The animals shake their heads, unimpressed. ‘Me’, says the gorilla, and thumps his chest. The animals tap their paws, underwhelmed. Then the parrot lets out a sneeze, and everybody runs for miles…. You know it’s serious when the jokes start appearing.

Drugs trial + Pro-Test

The controversy over animal testing has always generated more heat than light, and the temperature has now been turned up several notches on the regulo dial by two unrelated but curious events. One is the unprecedented ‘coming out’ of pro-test students in Oxford under the name ‘Pro-Test’, instigated by a young student disgusted with anti-testers’ increasingly terrorist tactics against individuals as well as the alleged poor quality of the debate. The other is the catastrophic clinical trial of the drug TGN1412, developed by the German TeGenero biotechnology company, that left six UK volunteers in intensive care, with two of them in critical condition as this goes to press (FT.com, March 16). Early reports are suggesting that the paperwork for the trial was entirely in order and that the drug had already been extensively tested on rabbits and monkeys with no discernible adverse effects, so that it was deemed entirely safe to proceed with clinical trials in humans. What is especially interesting about this calamity is that both sides of the animal testing debate will immediately seize on it as proof of their position: the anti-testers will parade this disaster as evidence that animal testing is unable to prevent harmful drugs like Thalidomide and Seroxat, now TGN1412, from reaching humans, while pro-testers will be entirely justified in asking how many more potentially lethal drugs would have been tried on humans if animal testing had been banned outright. As with many things in science, both sides have a point, and there are no simple answers. Even in socialism, where there would be little likelihood of animal testing for non-medical purposes, eg. cosmetics (such research today account for around three quarters of testing), this debate would most probably run and run.

Paddy Shannon

Profits from diseases (1986)

From the March 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

All over the world ill-health and premature death are caused by capitalism's ruthless drive for profits. It is tragic that this should be the case, given technological advances and medical knowledge of the causes of major diseases in both the "underdeveloped" and industrialised countries.

Cancers are a common cause of death in the West but are mainly preventable, being related to smoking, occupational hazards, environmental pollution or diet. Every year more than 50.000 people in Britain die prematurely as a result of cigarette smoking, or from diseases to which cigarette smoking substantially contributes. Although the habit is known to be directly linked with lung cancer, heart disease and chronic bronchitis there has never been any attempt to regulate the highly profitable tobacco industry. The treasury receives about £4,000 million a year from tobacco tax and in return makes a token gesture of warning the public of the dangers of smoking. By contrast the tobacco industry spends £80 million a year on advertising to persuade the public that smoking is either manly or the hallmark of sophistication and success.

In underdeveloped countries the problem is worse: in the absence of information of the health dangers of tobacco consumption and unrestricted advertising, cigarettes, often with a high tar content, are marketed in a quite unscrupulous way. The expansion of tobacco growing has also taken land from socially more necessary but less profitable food production.

In Britain there are about 2,000 deaths a year as a direct result of working in the asbestos industry or living near an asbestos factory. The industry employs over 20.000 people and is worth £200 million. But in spite of knowledge of the dangers of asbestos for the last eighty years, regulations to control the levels of asbestos dust have only been introduced gradually and inadequately since 1932 and. in a number of cases, not properly enforced. The Asbestos Information Committee, faced with public pressure and fears over the dangers of asbestos in the 1970s. spent about £500,000 advertising the cheapness, usefulness and "safeness" of the material. But public anxiety over blue asbestos led to the closure of some British factories and the transfer of mining to countries where the absence of regulations allows greater profits to be made, at the cost of workers' lives.

A number of other industrial processes are hazardous. Exposure to benzene can cause leukaemia; angiosarcoma (a rare liver cancer), cancers of the lung, digestive tract and brain can be caused by working with vinyl chloride; working with acrylic fibres increases the risk of developing lung and colon cancer; pesticides, particularly 2,4,5.—T, are dangerous carcinogens and. in some cases, cause severe birth defects in later generations.

The response of the chemical industry has been unvarying: to deny the health risk; to withhold information (the report on the causes of the Seveso explosion was not made available to the Health and Safety Executive in Britain or the trade unions); to put pressure on governments by claiming that the cost of pre-market testing and implementing safer working methods would be too expensive and lead to factory closures. And, as was the case with mining blue asbestos, multinational firms often move their factories to countries where controls are more lax if profitability is threatened. The tragedies of Bhopal and Seveso illustrate the devious ways in which multinational industries evade safety regulations in countries like Britain and the United States by exploiting workers who are inadequately protected by safety laws.

  . . . by offering compensation, the state recognises the risk to workers. However, it also accepts the continuation of the risk at its existing level and as a result it is the British worker who bears the burden of proof. Such flagrant discrepancies are not due to lack of information. but reflect the influence of industry on the regulatory process and a lack of commitment by government bodies to the removal of unnecessary cancer hazards from the workplace (L. Doyal and S. Epstein (Eds). Cancer in Britain, Pluto Press)

A number of food additives have been shown to cause cancer in animals yet they continue to be used to make food more attractive. mould resistant, or sugar-free in the case of saccharin. The production of food is grotesquely and artificially manipulated under capitalism to provide maximum profits. The European Economic Community maintains a policy of restricted food production. having recently cut back milk production by nine per cent, while 82 million acres of land were taken out of food production in the United States in 1982.

All of this happens despite millions of deaths from starvation or diseases associated with malnutrition because it is the ability to pay, and not social needs, that determines who will eat under capitalism. But, in the more “affluent" countries profits are increased by extending the number of processes which food undergoes. Easily digested junk-foods with a low-fibre, high-fat and high-sugar content are sold at inflated prices. Obesity, heart disease, bad teeth, constipation and cancer of the bowel are all problems which have, in some degree, been blamed on the refined foods consumed in industrialised countries. The health conscious person can buy — usually at a higher price — products such as bran, which have been originally removed in the refining process. To charge more for not adulterating food must be one of the most brazen forms of profiteering imaginable.

There are nearly 7,500 drug preparations available, a figure which has more than doubled in the last 20 years in spite of the fact that the majority of health problems could be treated with less than 200 drugs. The proliferation of drugs has not been due to their effectiveness; indeed, the reverse is the case, with nearly one in thirty hospital patients in Britain being admitted as a result of the side-effects of drugs.

Drugs such as Thalidomide and Debendox have caused severe birth defects; oral and injectable contraceptives have caused cancers of the liver, breast and uterus; female sex hormones have led to birth defects and cancers; anti-arthritic drugs frequently lead to ulcers, and "Opren" resulted in 61 deaths in a two-year period. Products of dubious benefit, or even those which are positively dangerous, are marketed with callous disregard for the well-being of the consumer. Drugs which are only available on prescription or restricted in Britain are sold over the counter in underdeveloped countries, allowing extra profits to be made at the cost of people's health.

The environment has been damaged in the quest to produce goods as cheaply as possible to undercut competitors. Inner city pollution leads to higher rates of chest diseases such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema; the smogs of the 1950s forced some legislation to control smoke emission from factories, but with competition to produce goods more cheaply in a time of recession there have been calls to relax environmental controls. Dangerous chemicals and radioactive waste are dumped with scant regard for public well-being, while in the vicinity of nuclear power stations deaths from leukaemia exceed the national average.

Ill health and premature death are inexorably tied to the profit system; drugs could be safer; dangerous food additives need not be used; the pressure on young people to smoke and the stresses of employment which reinforce the habit could be removed; food could be produced for all of the world's population; working with chemicals could be safer; pollution of the environment is not inevitable; the elderly need not die from the cold. But it will require the abolition of capitalism and of production for profit: only a society which produces for human needs can stop workers' lives being squandered.

Carl Pinel

Drugs . . . drugs . . . (1988)

Book Review from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cured to Death by Arabella Melville & Colin Johnson. (New English Library, £2.50).

The authors' aim in this well referenced book is to show that "Western medicine has made a fundamental error in allowing itself to become reliant on the universal use of drug therapy" (p.3).

The authors present a comprehensive analysis of the effects, on individuals and society, of prescription drugs and the factors involved in their use. "Drugs are manufactured by commercial organisations for the same reason as any other product: to make a profit" (p.4). The methods employed to increase these profits include high pressure sales techniques (for the so-called ethical products), falsification of test results, the dumping of drugs with proven dangerous side effects onto countries with less effective, or more corrupt, control procedures after they have been withdrawn from sale in other countries. The drugs industry have created unnecessary cases for treatment, promoted new diseases to meet the need for "cures" already discovered and moved towards mass medication in the name of disease prevention.

Also included in this analysis are the political power of the drugs industry, the inherent danger of all drugs and inadequacy of testing procedures, the difficulties of identifying side effects, the pressure on doctors, the conditioned attitudes of doctors, patients and the medical establishment and some harrowing case histories of victims of drug side effects.

Owing to the difficulty of identifying side effects in individual patients and the understandable reluctance of many doctors to consider the possibility that treatment prescribed by them may have caused harm, the only statistics available to indicate the extent of the harm caused by the mass use of drugs are those suggested by interpreting the results of epidemiological studies. The best estimates of drug induced disease in the population of Britain lead to a constant prevalence of two per cent, or over one million people. According to the authors the probable figure for drug-induced deaths in Britain is between 10,000 and 15,000 in an unexceptional year, at the current rate of prescribing (p. 108).

This book provides yet more evidence — if any were needed — of how the insatiable drive for profits, which is fundamental to capitalist society, damages health and destroys lives.

Grant Dixon

Drug profits (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The perverse priorities of capitalism are most clearly reflected in the market place; if harmful products can be sold easily, capital will be switched in the hope of realising this potential of larger profits. This often forces the capitalist class to pass legislation in which the interests of the minority of capitalists directly benefitting are sacrificed to the broader well-being of the class as a whole. Certain minimum standards of health and safety are laid down so that the usefulness of the working class to capitalist production is not too greatly impaired by such things as adulterated food, industrial pollution, or the side effects of so-called “wonder” drugs.

Naturally those capitalists profiting by the sale of a harmful product will play down the dangers and try to find a loophole in protective legislation. For when Chemie Gruenenthal, the original German inventor of thalidomide, discovered that they had produced a killer drug they at first tried to continue marketing the drug, while spreading confusion about it. Johann Goden, Gruenenthal’s representative in Cologne took the lead by suggesting that the drug be mixed with other sedatives so that “if it proves impossible to keep things dark . . .  any side effect could then be attributed to the other preparations. But heaven help us if this expedient turns into a boomerang”. Later he visited a clinic and reported back “I took the opportunity to explain our standpoint over the peripheral neuritis problem” [one of the side effects] “and did my best to foster confusion over the subjects [1] Goden was as clear as anyone could be that considerable further harm would result from further sales of thalidomide, yet he continued to work actively to that end. This drug, like so many others, was originally considered to be safe, and the harmful side effects were only discovered later. There is however an industry, operating within the capitalist system but in most countries outside its legal framework, the harmful longterm effects of whose products have been known for a very long time. Yet it is flourishing now as never before, despite the current recession. This is the narcotics industry, which lures the wrecks of capitalism with a transient escape from all its woes, but leaves them evermore desperate for the next dose, and for the money to buy it.

The cultivation of opium from the oriental poppy, concentrated mainly in the so-called Golden Triangle in South Fast Asia, predates capitalism by many centuries. It was discovered that smoking the petals in long pipes, or hookahs, helped to relieve the drudge of the continual struggle for existence. The sensations of dreamlike euphoria, relaxation and the absence of pain are however bought at a price. The development of tolerance by the body means that ever increasing doses are required to excite the same response, and this can lead to dire consequences. This is more particularly the case with the opium derivatives which can be more easily absorbed and therefore work faster. Laudanum and morphine have genuine medical uses in emergency cases but addiction to them, and more particularly to heroin, supplied in a form which can be injected into the veins, does nothing but harm to the victim. The symptoms include lassitude, depression, sallow complexion, jitters, loss of appetite and insomnia. There is also damage to the circulatory system, as veins become useless following repeated injections.

Also of ancient origin is the cultivation of cannabis (Indian hemp) and marijuana. The latter (similar to hashish, long associated with Arabia and the Levant), is a plant which flourishes in North America. Unlike the opium derivatives, this family of drugs are much less habit forming. In consequence there is a strong lobby in many countries in favour of legalising their use. However well meaning the protagonists on either side, this is really no more than an argument about the cheapest way, from the capitalist viewpoint, of controlling the problem. Marijuana and cannabis are usually smoked in tobacco laced with the drug, which can produce a growing intoxication and sense of well being. In the long term there can be vivid colour hallucinations and relaxation of inhibitions, accompanied by a lethargy that acts to prevent the sufferer from becoming violent. Cocaine, in contrast to the opiates, is a stimulant sometimes used by doctors to relieve fatigue. Its use can lead to over-confidence, garrulousness and unnatural euphoria, overdosing to weakness, emaciation and depression.

Drug addiction is a serious problem to the capitalist employers because the addict cannot operate as an efficient cog in the production machine, indeed is often incapable of any work effort at all. Because of this inability to find employment, the confirmed addict will turn to crime in order to pay for “shots”. It was however not until 1909 that the capitalist class were sufficiently concerned to undertake any collaborative international action in this sphere. In that year an Opium Commission met in Shanghai, involving 14 countries led by the USA, the country which had then, and still has now, the most serious addiction problem. The object was to control movement from one country to another. The first Interhational Narcotics Convention met at the Hague in 1912, and five other Conventions up to 1936 were attempts progressively to check the traffic at its source and to control opium production, importation and exportation. This Convention eventually totted up 85 signatories, but all these efforts have been almost totally ineffective. The producing countries did not take the drastic action demanded to license production and collect all the opium produced. They were unwilling for the simple reason that the trade was too profitable and the effect on their own national economics would have been too severe. Consequently cultivation has continued and efforts to illegally smuggle the drug into other countries have been intensified. Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok are the main ports involved, but there is now a growing traffic by air. In the 1950s and 1960s “Communist” China became a major source of smuggled heroin, most of the supply to Hong Kong now arriving by the overland route.

In America, the illegal cultivation of marijuana is flourishing. Both there and in the Golden Triangle record crops have been harvested in 1981. The potential profits in these bonanzas cannot of course be reaped without sales, and efforts to achieve these are now in full swing. The equivalent in the narcotics trade of the orthodox sales representative is the “pusher”. Compared to his respectable counterpart, the pusher has two big problems. The illegality of the business means that most transactions must be conducted in secret, away from the eye of the law, and that there is no legal redress against any payment defaulters. This leads to on-the-spot sanctions. A case was recently reported [2] where a lad unable to pay had his knuckles broken so that he could no longer inject himself. If an addict is unable to get drugs, he or she suffers agonising withdrawal symptom, so that this victim was put in a ghastly dilemma. In a recent court case [3] concerning the smuggling of Columbian cannabis into Britain, the smuggler had bought a £2000 computer to keep account of sales. This compelled even prosecuting counsel to remark that “the way in which the accounting was done leaves one with a degree of admiration.”

Rehabilitation of individual addicts is a long and costly process, and the success rate is low. Thus the process has been depersonalised with the main effort being spent on trying to prevent supplies reaching the country in the first place, or reaching customers if this fails. Consequently, although there are some centres attached to hospitals for the treatment of addicts, there is an inadequate number of these. Another recent court case [4] illustrates this. A Blackpool cannabis pusher who was fined £1,500, had found demand so great that he had to take his phone off the hook. “It was like feeding the 5000”, he commented. The court were told that thousands of young workers in the Fylde area were begging him to supply them with drugs. Yet the nearest treatment centre is at Prestwich Hospital in Manchester, 40 miles away and difficult to reach except by car.

Those commentators who say that the addiction problem “is no respecter of class” [2] are incorrect. They fail to see the common class position of all workers in opposition to the ruling capitalists, being confused by the subdivisions into seeing “upper” and “lower” classes, managerial classes, and so on. What they really mean is that addiction is found among all sections of the working class. If a young capitalist becomes “hooked” that presents only the relatively trivial problem of a bad example being set. The capitalist nowadays takes no part in the productive process, so it matters little whether or not he is capable of doing so. On the other hand, workers who experiment with narcotics can damage only themselves, in more senses than one. For when they come down they find that there are still no diamonds in the sky.

E. C. Edge

References

[1] “Suffer the Children”, The Story of Thalidomide. Sunday Times Insight Team, published 1979. Andre Deutsch.

[2] Nationwide. BBC1 TV, 15.10.81

[3] Daily Telegraph, 1.10.81

[4] Daily Telegraph, 25.9.81

The Age of Sedatives (1954)

From the November 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 21 years between 1918 and 1939 have been called the Aspirin Age. They were the years of jazz and the flappers’ new morality, of sensation and unemployment, when society first pressed down in earnest upon the accelerator. The years when a world in crises and turmoil turned for comfort to—the little white tablet. A future historian may likewise seek to describe the period since 1945 in terms of the problems and panaceas of the day. He might well consider calling our times the Pheno-barbitone Phase.

“This 20th Century,” said the Medical World of May, 1953, “ is an age of sedation therapy.” About one-tenth of all our prescriptions for drugs are for barbiturates; in addition 10 million aspirin tablets, commonly used as sedatives, are taken in Britain every day. These mountains of drugs are consumed largely in combat with insomnia, which is becoming one of our commonest complaints and as such cannot be disregarded by to-day’s medical investigator. Even the august British Medical Association spent much time at a recent meeting discussing it as a major recognised illness. The day may yet come when a certificate will be signed which gives insomnia as the cause of death. The widely used sedatives have many disadvantages, such as the possibility of raising an annoying skin rash. A more sinister complication is the fatal effect of an overdose, which is sometimes taken whilst the mind is dulled by the drug. We are all familiar with the story of suicide by aspirin, now the Registrar-General reports that barbiturates are responsible for more suicides than any other substance or group of substances. The number of cases of accidental poisoning by these drugs is also increasing.

Sleep is vital

The nature of the apparently elusive thing which we call sleep is uncertain. A popular view sees it as the replacement of expended energy, like the re-charging of a battery. Another opinion, which is gaining support, is that it is a state of inhibition of the senses caused by their over-stimulation during wakefulness. A fair parallel is the donkey which is beaten excessively and so becomes indifferent to the touch of the whip. However, it is a complicated business and best left alone in this article. It is indisputable that sleep is vital to the human being, since it provides the necessary protection from the dangers of exhaustion. Sound sleep is best achieved in the presence of emotional and physical relaxation—any disturbance of it can cause great distress. ,

There are many reasons for sleeplessness, from cold feet to indigestible suppers. But the growth of chronic insomnia and the increase in barbiturate consumption are not to be explained by larger sales of bedtime fish and chips. A Middlesex doctor wrote to the Manchester Guardian of August 5th, 1953 . . . “The root of the trouble which creates the enormous present demand for sleeping draughts . . . is found in men in the increasing strain of their business worries and activities, in their fear of competition, in their apprehension of losing their jobs, in the friction among those working together under high pressure in small offices day after day after arriving there in trains overcrowded to suffocation. I have in 30 years of practice had more than enough occasion to see such cases. . . .  The increasing demand for sedation is a result of the high pressure of modern life and the inability of many people to adapt themselves to it.” That is plain enough, and is a fairly representative opinion.

The Advertisers' Remedies

The cure of sleeplessness presents no problem to the wordy advertiser. “This customer said she suffered from insomnia,” says one advertisement, showing a lady in blissful slumber upon a sharply identifiable mattress. Certain pillows, blankets and bedtime drinks, we are told, have the same desirable effect. Everyone has read the strip cartoon advertisements which suggest that a particular beverage can give us". . .  real, relaxed ” sleep which can “reach down to our subconscious mind” and open the door to success in many a field, from travel-agent to trapeze-artist. (One strip which was rather nearer the mark dealt with the problems of a harassed housewife and mother—her success was managing the kids without flying off the handle.) A subtler approach is offered in America. New York City has the “World's Only Sleep Shop,” a retail establishment which provides for a bottleful of bedtime difficulties. There are firm mattresses and soft mattresses, and some half-firm and half-soft. Dust-free pillows, musical alarm-clocks, anti-snore ear plugs, window silencers and so on. The very latest books about sleep are also on sale, if you should still think that you need them. (In America, incidentally, the yearly consumption of barbiturates reaches the shocking average of 24 tablets for every man, woman and child.) There is one thing which the sleep salesmen never mention. About half of the world’s population sleep—quite soundly—on the earth or a hard mat, with no pillow or one of wood or china and with little or no covering.

The Road to Suicide

This is a world of war and destruction, noise and competition, hydrogen bombs and helicopters, speed and smog, and to live in it we must make unnatural “stop and start” demands on our bodies and nervous systems. These demands are responsible for the rising incidence of nervous disease; each man between the ages of 35 and 65 has to-day as much chance of going at least once into the overcrowded and understaffed mental hospitals as of contracting cancer of the lung, or of being knocked down on the road. And for every patient in the mental hospitals there are thousands outside who are suffering from emotional disorders and who go to their doctor asking for something to calm their nerves or to give them a good night’s rest. The doctor, often himself a victim of modem strain, and with a waiting room probably already overfull, has little time to try to unravel the causes of his patient's trouble. The cure in most cases—a long and thorough rest—is out of the question, for both patient and doctor have a living to earn. So an attempt is made to outwit the symptoms of the illness and the patient leaves the surgery gratefully clutching a prescription for a sleeping draught. Thus a nervous person may start on the road to barbiturate addiction—by far the commonest type of drug addiction—and possibly eventual suicide. For a lengthy use of barbiturates can in itself foster the very conditions—insomnia, depression, anxiety—which it is originally prescribed to cure. For this reason, many doctors try to get away with prescribing a “placebo” which is a “sugar and spice” pill designed to calm the patient in the belief that he is taking an effective drug.

An old, wise man, once said that we always proceed from the simple to the complex and ignore the obvious. The expanding use of sedatives is an example of this. It is an elaborate attempt to shelve a problem which in its bones is quite straightforward. If the tensions of modem capitalism do not relax, the human nervous system will suffer deepening harm. That is the harsh simplicity of the matter. It is worth a little cogitation. Even if it means losing a little more sleep.

Ivan

A little bit on the side (1978)

From the April 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently there has been considerable agitation, both in the press and elsewhere, regarding experiments on animals to assess the usefulness and possible side effects of new drugs. However, whereas probably a good case can be made out against the use of inoffensive animals unable to protest, it is strange that there has been no similar outcry following an article in the Sunday Times on 29th January 1978, headed “Patients put at risk as doctors aid drug firms in sales drive”. In this, two of the paper’s medical correspondents give a frightening insight into the use of human beings who, not only are not consenting, but usually are unaware of the fact that they are being used as guinea pigs.

We have heard before of the amount of ‘bumph’ pushed through doctors’ and dentists’ letterboxes, advertising and sometimes sampling, the latest offerings of the major drug companies. Indeed it could be argued that, being grossly overworked, doctors do not have time to read all the medical trade journals and this is one way in which they become aware of new treatments available. However, this is not where the matter rests.

In order to persuade doctors to prescribe their drugs, major manufacturers offer inducements—‘a little bit on the side’. This may take the form of presents— stethoscopes, digital clocks, bottles of whisky—flat cash payments of £5 or £10 per patient, or payment by results. In one case a company pays doctors £2 for recruiting a patient, £3 if the patient stays on the drug for a week and £4 if he continues for a month. Bearing in mind that if the patient stays on the drug at a prescription cost of £50 to £100 a year, it means that for an investment of, say, £100.000, a drug company has created a market of £1 million a year.

Of 39 doctors interviewed by the Sunday Times, 4 admitted they had not told patients that drugs had been changed, 27 said that taking part in the ‘trial’ had influenced their choice of drugs; some of the remainder stated they would not have prescribed the drug if they had not been asked to ‘test’ it. When questioned the medical director of one drug company said it never occurred to him that the increasing scale of payment offered might induce some doctors to keep patients on drugs for longer periods, in order to qualify for the increased payments! As far as these prescriptions are described as ‘tests’ or ‘trials’, senior medical opinion is agreed that, as minimum information (if any) is requested from doctors and they are discouraged from enquiring about efficacy or side effects, these ‘trials’ are clinically worthless.

The enormous profits made regularly by the major drug companies are consistently defended on grounds of necessity to plough back funds into development of new lines. When tragedy like the Thalidomide babies occurs the ‘ethics’ of their operation are discussed under banner headlines, but the consistent abuse of National Health patients—members of the working class—to make these profits ‘on the cheap’ goes unnoticed.

Eva Goodman

The dope pedlars (1966)

Book Review from the January 1966 of the Socialist Standard

“Planned Obsolescence"—the interesting sounding couplet that covers a multitude of sins, something which has hit the post war capitalist world like a bombshell. Briefly, it means deliberately producing poor quality goods with a severely limited lifespan, so that the market is kept going. For the market is the all important god to be worshipped at all cost, never mind who gets harmed in the process.

Nevertheless, you might perhaps have thought that there were some fields into which planned obsolescence would find it difficult to push its ugly snout —like medicine for example? Well, you would have been wrong, very wrong, and Brian Inglis in Drugs, Doctors and Disease (Deutsch 25s.) would tell you just why. This book is an excellently written survey of the pharmaceutical industry, or rather of that industry's dirty record in the promotion and sale of drugs over the past few years and after you have read it, it will not be so difficult to understand just why such tragedies as the Thalidomide affair happened. Indeed, the wonder is that there have not been many others.

Mr. Inglis points out that it has been the policy of some leading drug manufacturers to push new products onto the market at an alarmingly rapid rate, in many cases well before any adequate tests had been completed—even on animals. In fact, such a profitable market has this become that often a new drug is superseded by another before the bewildered doctor has a chance to carry out any kind of worthwhile clinical tests. The result of all this has been generally to ignore the possibilities of side effects and for the drug companies to get their project before they are discovered. And by then, anyway, they will have put a new drug on the market. 

The cynical disregard for human welfare which this involves, the incessant pressure exerted on doctors by the drug salesmen (often posing as patients), the lying claims in the publicity blurbs, all these and more are dealt with by the author in over 200 pages of searching criticism, liberally sprinkled with the most damaging quotes from the industry's apologists. For instance, John T. Connor, president of the U.S. Company Merck:—

"As in other industries, our driving force is profits. But unlike other industries, the single most effective way to earn those profits is by making existing products obsolete, including our own".

Mr. Inglis draws attention also to another harmful trend in that the general practitioner is less and less able to use his own judgement when prescribing treatment and has to rely more and more on what the drug houses choose to tell him about their products. That they mislead and often lie outright is quite clear, but the doctor has no immediate way of knowing this and by the lime the lies have been nailed and the drug withdrawn, some unfortunate has suffered side effects, some of them serious. Thalidomide (trade name “Distaval") was one of the more glaring and tragic examples, and was strongly suspected of causing peripheral neuritis long before its effects on unborn children were fully appreciated. Yet only a few days before the scandal broke, the manufacturers were still claiming its complete safety in use.

That all medical treatment must run an element of risk, we do not deny—there is no such thing as the perfect remedy after all. But having said that, it is still true to claim that the hazards have been multiplied many times as a direct result of the profit motive. Mr. Inglis makes this point very forcefully, but he is not a Socialist and he does not draw the obvious conclusion from his researches. Instead he plays around with the idea of nationalisation of the pharmaceutical industry—or parts of it despite the black record of nationalisation in other spheres.

E.T.C.

These Foolish Things . . . . (1997)

The Scavenger column from the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twice kicked

Peter Lilley’s plan to target “workshy” disabled people claiming benefit has flopped, with only half the 200,000 predicted to drop off the register failing the new stricter medical tests .. . The (National Audit Office] report reveals that millions of pounds have been spent retraining staff and upgrading computers to handle the new incapacity benefit, which replaced invalidity and sickness benefit in April, 1995. Some 800 new doctors had to be recruited to administer the stricter medical tests. But only 102,000 out of the projected 200,000 lost their benefit. Guardian, 13 February.

God is watching

The Bishop of Willesden could turn up at your factory, garage or office as part of his mission to bring God to the workplace which stalled on Monday when he visited Neasden Underground Depot. Bishop Graham Dow has declared 1997 as Faith in Work year to show that jobs should be about "more than just slaving away to scratch enough cash together to pay the mortgage and the taxman”. lie added: "Where it is safe to do so, 1 want to encourage the lighting of candles for two minutes when staff get to work as a sign that God is present " Brent Recorder, 29 January.

Money at stake

A damning report on Britain’s biggest child abuse scandal will not be presented to a public enquiry. MPs and social workers reacted angrily to the revelation, insisting that the document detailing 20 years of abuse at children’s homes in Clwyd, North Wales, must be made public. Authors of the report, which Municipal Mutual Insurance will not publish amid fears of a flood of claims from the 180 children involved or the families of victims who committed suicide, claim their work was hampered by the company. Now a tribunal, chaired by Sir Ronald Waterhouse, which began last week, has decided not to include the report by Derbyshire’s former director of social services, John Jillings. Mail an Sunday, 26 January.

A private practice

A small but growing minority of private doctors are making massive profits out of over-prescribing drugs to hard drug dealers who then resell them on the streets, according to a Home Office research report. Some doctors are making more than £100,000 a year out of this trade . . . "Large sums of money are to be made easily by issuing repeat prescriptions on a weekly basis to dependent drug users. The weekly consultation fee is usually £25, payable before the prescription is handed over." Pharmacists can charge what they like for private prescriptions and the researchers found the average cost was £75 . . . The researchers were told by two sources of doctors with lists of more than 200 dependent users and said a client list of just 75 would yield an income of £100,000 a year. Guardian,

13 February.

Well, well!

Monument (Oil & Gas) was one of the first Western oil companies to identify (Turkmenistan’s] oil potential alter it ceded from the former Soviet Union. Last week, with US oil giant Mobil, it won exclusive rights to negotiate a production-sharing contract with the Turkmenistan government in a 20,000 sq km area bordering on the Caspian sea and Iran Thanks to its head start over rivals. Monument and its partner are likely to clinch formal rights to develop most of the area’s oil fields. Monument shares surged 12½p to 81½p last week as City investors began to grasp the full import of the Turkmenistan deal. Financial Mail on Sunday, 26 January.

The Scavenger

Pathfinders: Desperate Deal in Davos (2016)

The Pathfinders Column from the February 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not many people can be unaware that there is an antibiotic crisis looming, caused by big pharma moving out of antibiotic research into more profitable fields of enquiry, like hair restoring or erectile dysfunction.  Ask most people why this is happening and they will probably tell you it's because drug companies are run by greedy psychopathic bastards who couldn't care less about public health.

Back in October 2012 this column pointed to the fact that, for a number of very good reasons, drug companies simply couldn't make any money out of antibiotic research and that this amounted to the human race being failed by its own market system.

Confirmation of this has been provided by pharmaceutical companies themselves. At the recent Economic Forum in Davos, 85 drug companies signed a joint declaration promising to invest in antibiotic research if governments would agree to develop 'transformational commercial models' (BBC Online, 21 January).

The document, signed by Pfizer, Merck, Glaxo-Smith-Kline and Johnson & Johnson among others, stated that the current economic development model had 'largely failed' and that the 'formidable' (i.e. expensive) challenges of antibiotic research were the reason most companies had pulled out of the field.

What they mean is, they're not charities and they're not going to run at a loss, and if governments won't help meet the costs, new antibiotics aren't going to be made, even if we die of bubonic plague as a result.

This is as direct from the horse's mouth as it gets. Now even capitalist companies are frustrated at the operations of the market system. Will governments work out a deal with the drug companies? Maybe.

What speaks volumes is that they have to have this discussion at all. If capitalism really worked the way its promoters and propagandists like to claim, we wouldn't need all these special fixes and deals and arrangements and restructurings and 'transformational commercial models'. It would just work. Trains would run. Houses would get built. People would get fed. Antibiotics would get made.

The fact that it doesn't work is attested by, among other things, these desperate Davos conferences. Instead of an economic powerhouse, capitalism looks more like a patient under 24 hour supervision in an intensive care unit, kept alive only by the greatest of collective will and effort.

This isn't the first time capitalism's economic logic has failed the entire human race. In 2006 the Stern Review described climate change as the 'greatest market failure the world has seen'. Well, so far, but a sudden outbreak of death by gonorrhoea, laryngitis, TB or tetanus from a minor cut might very well change people's minds about that.

One wonders what it will take to make people realise that abolishing capitalism isn't just one of several viable options, it's already an urgent survival imperative.

Either capitalism goes, or homo sapiens might. This planet isn't big enough for the both of us.

PJS

Voice from the Back: Too Poor To Live (2014)

The Voice from the Back column from the March 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Too Poor To Live

You would think that the purpose of medical research is to save lives. Think again, this is capitalism. In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers said that his company's new cancer drug, Nexavar, isn't for Indians, but ‘for western patients who can afford it’. 'The drug, which is particularly effective on late-stage kidney and liver cancer, costs approximately $69,000 per year in India, so in March 2012 an Indian court granted a license to an Indian company to produce the drug at a 97 percent discount. Bayer sued Natco Pharma Ltd, but in March of last year, the High Court in Mumbai denied its appeal. Bayer CEO called the compulsory license issued by the Indian court ‘essentially theft,’ then said ‘we did not develop this medicine for Indians we developed it for western patients who can afford it’ (Raw Story, 26 January). The purpose of medical research, like everything else inside capitalism, is to make a profit.

Dying To Work

The owning class hate to see workers not working. After all they rely on them to produce the surplus value the owners live on. In addition the owning class have got to pay out sickness benefits. Last year they reckon it cost them about £13 billion. The present government have appointed the company ATOS to overhaul the benefits system. Its findings have not been without its critics though. 'One 39-year old woman from Livingston, near Edinburgh, was judged fit to work just weeks before she died. A heart and lung transplant patient from Essex died nine days after being declared well enough for employment' (Sunday Times, 9 February). C'mon workers so you are a bit knackered ... oops dead! Sorry about that.

Business As Usual

Every year the president of the USA gives a State of the Union speech. It is usually the same old guff about how marvellous everything is inside capitalism, but this year there was a slight difference. ‘Those at the top have never done better. But average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled. The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by –let alone get ahead. And too many still aren't working at all’ (Independent, 29 January). It is indicative of how awful capitalism has become that even the president of the USA has to acknowledge it. Needless to say however he will carry on running capitalism the only way it can be run –in the interests of the owning class based on the exploitation of the working class. 

American Nightmare

The USA is often depicted as the embodiment of the virtues of modern capitalism but we are indebted to the American economist Paul Krugman for this expose of its less than perfect characteristics: 'What do we know about long-term unemployment in America? First, it's still at near-record levels. Historically, the long-term unemployed –those out of work for 27 weeks or more - have usually been between 10 and 20 percent of total unemployment. Today the number is 35.8 percent. Yet extended unemployment benefits, which went into effect in 2008, have now been allowed to lapse. As a result, few of the long-term unemployed are receiving any kind of support' (New York Times, 9 February). Hardly the American dream is it?

Knightsbridge Bargain

While many workers scrimp and save in an effort to get together a deposit for a mortgage it is worthwhile looking at how the owning class live. 'An allotted space in an underground car park has gone on sale for £400,000. The space, near the Royal Albert Hall, Knightsbridge, is large enough for a Rolls-Royce Phantom and comes with metal lockable doors' (Times, 13 February). You homeless workers will be glad to know that the agent Hobart Slater said ‘We've already had plenty of interest in the space.’