This is silly. He may have been wrong here but the arguments Owen Jones makes in his article align with how many people in society think about pharmaceutical companies and so it’s really important to have these discussions in the media. I am really glad Owen Jones wrote his article and even more pleased that Tom took him seriously enough to write this response because i now feel much better informed on this stuff.
Most people are far more intelligent than Owen Jones.
His articles are aligned with how a tiny minority of very stupid people – Guardian readers – think. Everyone else knows that everything he says or writes is garbage. Refuting him isn’t worth the time.
I wouldn’t rely on polling data to reflect what people actually think.
Most polls are not designed in a scientific matter, and the data they produce is frequently “summarised” in a subjective manner.
Much of this discussion comes down to the “supply of services” rather than “the economy” and I strongly suspect that most people would take the best supplier – regardless of whether the provider was public or private
This is silly! You’re annoyed about this poll data because it shows most people don’t agree with your view so you choose to claim the data is wrong. I’m sorry but if you’re too thin skinned that you have to believe most people agree with you before you’ll stick to an opinion then that’s your problem. I agree with you on the most part (I think) about state ownership but i choose not to bury my head in sand when i see data that shows most people don’t agree with me.
Very dissapointing that you turned this into a personal attack – partly based on your completely unfounded accusation that I’m annoyed and responding on that basis.
I won’t waste any more time trying to exchange views with you.
Rubbish! “you’re annoyed”, “you’re too thin-skinned”, accused of burying one’s head in the sand. They aren’t challenges to reasoning, they’re just personal attacks.
Most people who lived through the 70s still think we should nationalise a lot of the stuff that was nationalised then! I don’t necessary disagree with you but let’s not fool ourselves about what most people think.
Me too. If people choose to ignore history then they will repeat the mistakes of the past. It is boringly true that there isn’t much that hasn’t been tried before where democracies are concerned. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” as Santayana said. This is often paraphrased and attributed to Churchill (he never said it) in the form “Those that fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it” which is perhaps more effective.
If, as you say, most people choose to ignore history then what can we do? If it was just a few people you could belittle them but if it’s actually most people you’ll have to come up with a much better plan than that!
I’ve seen history ignored in companies such that it’s sent them on a cycle where there’s actually been people in the company say “We’ve done that before but they wouldn’t listen!”
the problem is there are folks who draw different ‘learnings’ from the past and some are hell bent for leather to repeat the learnings that gave rise to the two world wars, capitalism run amok and increasing economic disfunction.
Of course, the country held to ransom by the unions, 3 day weeks, power blackouts – all that great socialism. Nationalisation feeds the lazy and feckless.
Well not Quite ,Local authority Mandarins & Civil Service do…Unions were curtailed more by New technologies ( Offices,News print) than by thatcher, Edward heath incidentally knew Common market membership would weaken the Unions,hence Left antipathy to EU
That’s a bit unfair. Nationalisation merely wrings all gumption from every worker, making them give up.
At that point it becomes a competition between management who create forms to fill in, and workers who think up more elaborate ways to frustrate the forms, instead of say filling the potholes.
However I believe The Post (Royal Mail) should be renationalised to protect Universal delivery,it was EU directives 67./97 Pushed By David Milliband,,Lord Mandelson in 2001/2008 and Vince Cable in 2013…
it is never very long until someone trots out the “most people” canard and it is invariably a conservative with nothing of merit to add to the discussion.
Absolute tosh, unless you live in Londonistan. The state is there to provide the tools not to run the show. Your “most people” are socialist, of the champagne kind. The last election where the Tories gained a majority of 80 seats is proof that even the sensible working class are frit of a Liebour government or state ownership. Socialism / Marxism only taught us to avoid Socialist Marxism. Even the left are too dumb to see that the man boy Owen Jones is a raving capitalist. He writes a book about “Chavs” (Council House and Violence) then goes on to paid writing for the left wing rag the Graun. Completing his pure socialist hypocrisy by setting up his own website with members only, paying a fee to listen to the musings of the one trick pony. God, socialists are so thick.
This is so unnecessarily antagonistic! I’m not a socialist i just don’t stick my head in the sand when data shows that most people disagree with me. I don’t think we should nationalise all this stuff! But lots of people do! That’s just a fact! Why are you so angry at me?
Founded in 2009, Bring Back British Rail strives to popularise the commonsense idea of re-nationalising the ludicrously over-priced and over-complicated railway system, which the people of Britain have been left with as the result of privatisation in the ’90s.
unfortunately no one want to talk about the crux of the matter…
“…even though Gates was wrong on the specific case, he is bang on when he suggests that there is a market failure.”
right wing knee jerkers”High Church apologists for capitalism to the bitter end” on this thread are busily obfuscating the point of the article “MARKET FAILURE” choosing to instead fixate on Owen Jones.
Thanks for bringing the yougov data to our attention. It shows the public in favour of 9 industries being state owned but these include the Police, NHS, Armed Forces and Schools so not too revolutionary. You make a point but as someone who had his schooling disrupted in the 1970’s to the same extent as this current emergency I think they need to be careful what they wish for. As monopolies they offered no choice and no better service. I remember the waiting time for a telephone line to be installed was 3 months.
And the wait for a telephone was long even if all that had to be done was to turn a switch in the telephone exchange as you were keeping the same number as the previous occupants of a flat. And they charged a fortune to do it (£ 35 in 1974, I seem to recall).
speaking of “very stupid people”Independent, Evening Standard or Times of London readers”right wing knee jerkers get very alarmed when anyone points to the source of the rampant surge in economic disequilibrium.
Should Big Pharma profit from Covid?…you mean as opposed to profiting from every other drug US taxpayers subsidize the creation, manufacture and distribution of?
In the United States, the share of income earned by the top one percent increased from 7.7% in 1973 to 22% in 2015, while the share of the bottom 50% declined from 21% in 1980 to 13% in 2015, according to World Bank data.
Dear “Robin”, Aged just 11 years old, I concluded one evening that surely it takes roughly 3-4 years for the effects of any political policy to work its way through the economy and substantially affect unemployment, job creation etc… Sadly Trump has only been in office for 4 years so we are only just feeling the effects of his “genius”. Obama’s administration had FASTER growth and a more rapid uptick in job creation in the 3-4 years preceding the current government than the US had over the last 4 years. Unfortunately, illiterate fools like you are given air time to cherry pick statistics and display your birdbrain intellect.
“the arguments Owen Jones makes in his article align with how many people in society think about pharmaceutical companies”
I think that’s the problem. We don’t really need someone like Owen Jones, posing as some kind of an expert, while simply reinforcing the ideas of the ill informed (people like me). It’s the challenge to misguided “common sense” that we need. But how many will have read Owen Jones, and how many will have read this article?
That’s an interesting perspective! I think in general it’s better that newspapers (as a whole) publish a wide range of opinion pieces which tend to cover the breadth of public opinion and that those debates then happen in public domain. I guess your interpretation is that these views are only so common among the public because people like Owen Jones are able to communicate those views to a wide audience? But on lots of topics the general public is quite out of step with the opinions that tend to be held by newspaper columnists so this doesn’t seem to add up to me.
“I guess your interpretation is that these views are only so common among the public because people like Owen Jones are able to communicate those views to a wide audience?”
To some degree. But I would also say that people tend to use quite simple ways of understanding reality. Good v bad narratives, economy is like a household narratives etc. They act to simplify complex questions but deceive in doing so. People like Owen Jones (but right wing populists too) tend to build on these narratives.
One answer is to read widely, and to read against your own position. But how many have, or will take, the time.
Bravo David Morley. Absolutely spot on! It takes a long time to read and understand even things that one is naturally attuned to. Then, to read and understand an opposing viewpoint is tiresome. This is what they used to call ‘higher education’. Sadly, very few modern human beings feel capable in engaging in this sort of discourse or have the patience and time.
I have no real issue with pharma companies making a profit. That’s not the real issue. The free market is a reality, has been for hundreds of years. A solution to the pandemic will be found, at a cost. What I do take issue with is PPE vultures.Somebody alleged it’s the biggest money laundering scam in history…mmm..
I fear that is what Is wrong with our society, and possiblely one of the real problems with it, people are not rational, and arguments for nonsensical (romantic) thinking make them feel good, but if it’s not the truth, or a reflection of the real issues, it just a comforting fantasy, like prayer…
Charles OJ
3 years ago
Superb article. And whilst I love UnHerd, it’s a shame this isn’t in the Guardian, to help its readers understand the mechanics of capitalism.
Guardian readers will never understand the mechanics of capitalism, enterprise, or supply and demand, shielded as they all are from those realities. As such, the article would be completely wasted in the Guardian.
I agree and think this raises an issue with the idea that scientists at universities want to save or improve lives. In addition to going to work for money and kudos scientists in the modern world seem to hold near uniform political views. I had to stop reading the New Scientist due to its woke moralising, unquestioning adoption critical race theory and reduction of scientific content in favor of “cultural” and “social science” pieces. So it seems scientists want to improve and save the lives of people who meet their value judgements. The things they say on their social media accounts indicate they do not want improve or save the lives of people whose skin color, occupations or political views they don’t like.
I think it’s good for people to reach out to opinions beyond their bubble. That includes guardian readers, scientists but also you! There’s more to critical race theory than just what is portrayed in the general media, i don’t agree with some of it but it’s a big academic topic that has a lot of interesting perspectives to offer. It’s a shame you dismiss something you don’t understand so easily.
Personally I think critical race theory is more about the travails of US society and the unfinished business of their civil war and subsequent economic oppression of a significant number of their population. We see our culture through a U.S. lens… sometimes the assessment it gives us is misguided.
We are, as a species less than 250,000 years old. We have an increfibly small amount of genetic diversity Race is an illusion. The is but one race… the human race… despite what some commentators living on one small part of planet earth might say … based only on their interpretation of a tiny part of their own local history
Yes, I definitely agree with this for the most part. It is much more useful in the US context, but doesn’t mean it’s totally worthless here in Britain. I agree that we often see our society through a US lens and that causes lots of misguided analysis.
Totally agree…critical theories are faith based beliefs, not theories. If they were they would be testable. They cause damage in the same way as their siblings in faith- white supremacism and fundamentalist Wahabism. As you say they are rain drop on the window pane of human history. I think there are enough people committed to a free and open society to consign these ideas and their evangelists to the history books where they belong.
I dismiss all post modernist critical theories – in the same way as i dismiss all other theories that only ask for ontological proof of their validity – critical race theory sits well with its siblings, astrology, frenology, eugenic race theory etc etc
I dismiss all post modernist critical theories – i dismiss all other theories that only ask for ontological proof of their validity – critical race theory sits well with its siblings, astrology, frenology, eugenics etc etc. I think critical race theory is worthy of study to see how it came to be and how it moves from a theory to physical and economic action, in the same way we should study SARS-CoV2 the better to deal with it. As you say critical theories are big in academia, but only in academia. Normal people can see clean through this quackery. My business employs a broad mix of races and religions. We simply couldn’t function if we believed the Marxists’ drivel about deterministic power relations between races consigning us to a hell broth of discrimination based on skin color or other irrelevent factors.
That’s a shame. I think the world would be better if people didn’t just dismiss stuff that came from outside their bubble. I guess some people are just happier not engaging with the world at large 🙁
I’d highly recommend you read Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay for another, deeper take on critical race theory. From the sounds of things, it lies firmly outside your ‘bubble’ so could be worth a go.
The long and short of it is that CRT has no real world application. No evidence. No proof. Nor does it think it requires proof.
It advocates for using identity signals as the primary way you interact with society at large. It attacks Enlightenment values such as empirical analysis and rationality. It characterises all white people as hopelessly racist without even knowing it, and black people as homogenised, caricatured victims that need ‘levelling up’.
Essentially, think of modern day, liberal values – equality of opportunity rather than outcome, rational thought, the pursuit of objective truth, being judged on the content of your character not the colour of your skin – and flip them on their head in the most maddening, regressive way possible.
Thanks for the reading suggestion, it sounds interesting! I think from your description that i’ll find it to be a bit too dogmatic in it’s assessment of CRT but i’m often wrong!
And while you are reading Cynical Theories, edit it.
It’s far too long, and even had a typo on the cover . “and Why This Harms Everbody”
It would also have helped if they had a chapter on the motivations behind the theories – essentially Theory was invented by people that can’t add two numbers together, and wouldn’t know one end of a screwdriver from another.
See personally I’m very open to understanding new perspectives and I just don’t like this closed minded blanket dismissal. I’m glad to hear this book isn’t quite as closed minded as you’d like it to be.
Do read the book – the history of Theory is revealing. But the book could have done with a bit more editing work in my opinion.
To illustrate my second point. Here’s a quote from the famed Theorist Luce Irigare: “E=mc(squared) is a sexed equation, because it priveleges the speed of light over other, necessary, speeds”
Excuse the lack of superscript in the equation, that was my change. However, Luce only displays her closed-minded ignorance with the above quote.
Also excuse my previous rather obscure reference to Foucault, who seems to think that screwdrivers and spanners are tools for smashing things
I don’t know lots about this topic (and your comments here are insightful, thanks 🙂 ) but It’s interesting you bring up that quote because as i understand it the only English language source is from Sokal and Bricmont’s criticism of Irigaray, and it’s unclear whether this actually appears in her work anywhere. Now don’t get me wrong I don’t have much time for Irigara and in particular i think (as i understand it) I very much agree with Sokal and Bricmont’s point about how she uses language from and about physics and other hard science in ways that obfuscate rather than illuminate. But then picking on one particularly bad quote that doesn’t really appear anywhere prominently in her work also does, somewhat, obfuscate the matter at hand.
Even football Clubs have ”Unconscious bias” ie Orwellian Thought control in their Semesters..A joke as most are Greedy vulture Capitalists ie The Big 6 Chelsea,arsenal,Spurs,Manchester utd,Manchester city,Liverpool, Not owned by Britons, Oligarchs & Americans,expect their franchise,never to be relegated &would shorten the Premiership to make it a reality…
I understand where you’re coming from c no. Among the reams of CRT literature that is now being produced there’re some germs of truth, but on the whole it is to academia what scientology is to religion. I’m currently doing a doctorate and now being made to study CRT. It is not a theory, it is a belief-system, and while it criticizes everything in the dictionary, it fails to adequately critique itself. At its heart it is about transforming society and creating new social castes.
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid. — J. D. Watson _The Double Helix_
To me the problem is the shift in etymology – science was once the pursuit of the boundaries of our knowledge – theories were conjectured and refuted in a development cycle. Although subject to careerism and academic politics there was an overall forward motion. What i see coming down the line is a return to shamanism, where technocrats are awarded powers and a title that absolve them from communality, disinterestedness and organized skepticism. This has been tried before… the inquisition, witch trials, the khmer rouge etc etc and it has not ended well for anyone.
I agree with your observations about scientific journals being run by “woke” journalist stooges. But those propagandists aren’t the scientists under discussion here. I’m sure some are leftist idiots, but some are not.
“Guardian readers will never understand the mechanics of capitalism, enterprise, or supply and demand, shielded as they all are from those realities”. I find it embarrassing that people still think like this. I read The Guardian (as do lots of my friends and colleagues) and we all understand capitalism and supply and demand.
Guardian readers will never understand the mechanics of capitalism, enterprise, or supply and demand, shielded as they all are from those realities
Some Guardian readers… for sure. But the same could be said for any news site/paper these days. I read the Guardian for variety and challenge – although I often find Owen Jones a bit of a struggle…
It’s no good just insulting Guardian readers – I know they are all just middle class wish washy liberals, but they understand capitalism, enterprise, and supply and demand very well. That’s why they are middle class not working class.
I did wonder how an article pitting Owen Jones against the vaccine industry would go down here – a difficult choice for some of Unherd’s audience – but it seems to have got a good discussion going
This explanation of the way market failure occurs with vaccine and antibiotic development just wouldn’t work in the Guardian – nor would it work in the Telegraph or any other UK broadsheet. Only a minority of readers would have the background or the patience to follow it. The stereotype Guardian reader would take pretty much the Owen Jones approach whilst the stereotype Telegraph reader would harrumph about supply, demand and “fwee markets”. The intricacies of real-world markets, market failure, externalities and the like are beyond these clienteles. Even the FT would not cover it – though at least might refer to the subject and assume that the reader already understood.
Even here I wonder how many of the audience have really taken it in – a lot of the comments are the usual biff bam about how terrible socialism is – quickly getting onto the subject of CRT – which has as much to with this article as the plot of Eastenders.
But this: “Bill Gates will, I hope, be remembered as one of the great heroes of the 21st century:”
I hope not. Dorsey, Bezos, Zuckerburg, and Gates, the 4 horsemen. All are out to digitize you with permanent Social Credit scores and life tags, and mount you on the cloud like a Victorian Collector with his bugs labeled and pinned to a board.
Richard Marriott
3 years ago
It is all very well investing in drugs to keep ever more people alive, but it is quality of life which is paramount and it is population pressure which is devastating the global environment. I do wish people like Bill Gates would invest as much in family planning and education about it, as they do in remedies for disease.
He can be remembered as a villain and monopolist in the computing space in the late 20th century, but ever since he retired from microsoft, he and his wife have put their immense wealth to truly altruistic use.
Unless of course you’re a conspiracy theorist and you believe that he’s trying to microchip everyone and bring about the new world order, in which case I would have a sit down, a cup of tea, and a bit of a re-evaluation of my life…
I agree Sarah. I couldn’t believe I read this in this article. He and his wife are not what the world needs. He has loads of money and in turn, has his nose in places that he knows nothing about and many people are bowing to him when they should be skeptical. He is NOT that generous. Research some more Tom, please.
Mark H
3 years ago
Given that there are now two viable vaccines, with others still in the trial phase, it’s clear that no one company is going to take all the winnings from vaccine development. Meanwhile the public sector/state owned corporations of which Owen Jones is such a fan have developed precisely zero. I think he is offended because the capitalist system is delivering the goods.
Given that he has not been exactly honest in writing about his own patch (squalid back-stabbing in the left of the Labour party) I’d imagine that 9.6B$ is the absolute maximum Pfizer could make, in the absence of any competition, and probably without consideration of the full production and distribution costs. Not to mention the up-front cost of setting up for production at scale.
Also to be borne in mind is that technology development has more misses than hits. No one hears about the products that didn’t get to market, even though they’ve gone through the same expensive R&D process as the ones that do.
Or the fact that Pfizer’s totally notional profit which didn’t exist two weeks ago may vanish as suddenly as it appeared, when the results of other trials that don’t require that -80C cold chain come in.
I don’t think this is a fair portrayal of Jones’ view. I do think he’s wrong on this but his argument is that there isn’t a big public sector/state owned corporation which has the capacity for vaccine development and he would like there to be one (by nationalising an existing one). So you can’t use the argument that this non-existent sate owned organisation hasn’t produced a vaccine against him. Maybe I’m nit-picking but the author here has written a good article treating Jones’ view in good faith and done a very good job of explaining why he’s wrong without misrepresenting him and just I find it so sad that the comments are full of people interpreting Owen Jones’ arguments in the worst possible faith.
Surely socialist governments elsewhere in the world have state research organizations?
But you do make a good point that Jones exhibits a politics of envy, i.e. when the capitalist system is successful the socialist response is a jealous attempt to seize the product of others’ labour.
The reality is that state research organizations have great difficulty reacting to changing circumstances (I’ve worked in one) because their funding is not dependent on making usable products available in good time. A nationalised pharma company with the same funding model would descend into mediocrity for the same reasons.
“Moderna said today that taxpayer money funds 100% of its work to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to licensure, yet it announced new, higher intended prices for the prospective vaccine this morning on a call with investors. Moderna now says it will charge $32 to $37 per dose for smaller volume sales agreements, the highest price yet announced for a potential vaccine. Public Citizen and Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) wrote to the federal government Friday, noting that Moderna has been ignoring public disclosure provisions in its vaccine development funding contract. Public Citizen also found the U.S. government may co-own a vaccine candidate with Moderna.”
8-5-2020
Malcolm Webb
3 years ago
The vilification of profit is the real problem. A very large percentage of the world’s population, including, sadly, many opinion formers, seem to believe profit is simply bad, Until that misperception is confronted and shown to be false we will struggle to make the world an even better place for human beings and indeed we could even slip backwards, again.
Profit isn’t a bad thing but too many vaccines and drugs are pushed when we forget we have an immune system that is capable of overcoming some of these things. Drugs have a place but they are too widely used and therefore there’s tons of profit over sick people.
There is no authentic market for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
William Harvey
3 years ago
Its a non question. Of course they should profit. Why else would they have done it. The entire business is only there for profit. If it creates good things then that’s a great result. All corporations in a capitalist society exist to create profit for shareholders as their primary aim. It is the job of government to harness their creativity for the great good of the populace and to prevent them doing harm.
Or shod they forego profit and incentives and the innovation and creativity that drives… so that we are even less well prepared for the next medical crisis
“All corporations in a capitalist society exist to create profit for shareholders as their primary aim.”
…and the devil take the hindmost.
John Stone
3 years ago
The reality is that in 2009 the government helped rush a Swine Flu vaccine to the market, GSK’s Pandemrix, and it was disaster which only 10% of the population would have and rapidly became associated with narcolepsy, which the government won’t compensate. It is obvious why sensible people would be cautious except they are being subjected to a carefully orchestrated hate campaign led by people we shouldn’t trust, like Johnson & Hancock, who hand out the contracts to their friends. Is it going to have a happy ending? I doubt it. There is no free lunch and there is no Santa Claus.
I recall the scene in Go West – two rather sad dispossessed characters Chico and Groucho tearing up a contract (the rights to a non-existent goldmine?): the last clause is the “sanity clause” and one of them (can’t remember which) exclaims there is no “sanity clause”. Well, there is certainly no sanity clause here or all the contracts would be as void and vain as their goldmine, but we are the ones being dispossessed, and what we are looking at is fool’s gold. I don’t in principle see why pharmaceutical companies should not make money but I would like to see some kind of conventional contract rather than everyone being taken for a dangerous ride with politicians who drive soft bargains with our money (not to mention taking a cut for themselves).
Probably, you are almost right, Groucho says “That’s the sanity clause, every contract has one” and Chico with his poor English says “Eh, you can’t fool me, there ain’t no Sanity Claus!” (swift cut).
Probably Groucho says “That’s the sanity clause, every contract has one” and Chico says with his poorly understood Italian English “Eh, you can’t fool me there ain’t no Sanity Clause!” (swift cut).
Nick Whitehouse
3 years ago
I think you have missed a trick in explaining the profit made by a company. You correctly explain how a drug company can cover its costs from a successful drug, but do not add in the cost of an unsuccessful drug(s). So to allow a company to continue to survive, it must recover the loss of the unsuccessful drug from the successful ones. So your marginal cost of £1 – whilst correct in a narrow sense – is not correct with the boarder picture. Alternatively, your capital cost would need to cover the additional costs of the unsuccessful drugs. Of course, a nationalised company, could not bother about such problems as the taxpayer would just stump up the money.
David Bell
3 years ago
The first thing that is obvious is Owen Jones does not understand profit. In very simple terms profit is a surrogate for free cash flow after a business has paid all its costs. This free cash flow is used as follows:
1. To buy assets such as new machinery to improve production 2. Invest in R&D to develop new products for the future 3. Compensate investors who have taken risk with their money to help develop the business to where it is now 4. Pay tax! (something Owen really wants to see more of) 5. etc
Without profit a business closes because it can’t meet it’s operational costs never mind develop in the future.
Another bug bear of the left is dividends to investors, but who are those investors. Most of them are pension schemes. If there are no dividends pensioners won’t get their pensions and the government will not have no tax to pay them either.
Bottom line, we need profitable companies or we all lose!
Well put. Breathtaking and depressing that this needs to be laid out to people. This shit needs to be taught at school.
tomandclairemein
3 years ago
It is simply the term “company profit” that socialists hate. I once made the mistake of telling a socialist relative that I had made a £300 profit by selling some shares and the look of disgust on his face was something to behold. Yet this same person could not tell you enough times about how they had made tens of thousands of tax free pounds by constantly flipping their home.
Drahcir Nevarc
3 years ago
Good article, but far too polite about Owen Jones.
That all depends: is there a small pharma? Where were they during all this? You know, the little mom n’ pop pharmaceutical companies. The active ingredient is love.
Yes they could, they already have others in development – but they could not have got it through trials and registration so quickly nor could they ramp up production so quickly to the volumes required. Most often small pharma and biotech companies that insist on going it alone and eschewing partnerships with large pharma when their products get into late stage trials do not succeed. In fact the usual explanation turns out to be that they don’t actually have a product anyone wants to do a deal on.
stephensjpriest
3 years ago
Dear Tom
You must write to you MP and ask them to stop the Great Reset
– If you’re writing to a Labour MP call it the Great Capitalist Reset
This Is How Great Reset Will End Western Democracies Mahyar Tousi YOU TUBE watch?v=Fk2W7rOFatg
Definitely cause for concern here and will be watching the WEF closely. However, Mahyar Tousi is an absolute snake oil salesman and flypaper for conspiracy nuts. Best avoided at all costs.
Philip Connolly
3 years ago
Baldness.
Back in the day when I worked for Glaxo we had a prostate drug in development called dutasteride. Clinicians in Florida (I think) noticed that bald patients were experiencing hair regrowth.
When that was reported I discovered that interest in the drug’s efficacy against baldness was by far the biggest internet search item by a large margin for anything to do with Glaxo.
So, like Tom, I do not believe that pharma invests more in baldness than Malaria, but there are a lot of men out there who possibly wish they did.
Ian Barton
3 years ago
A well written and interesting read – thanks.
Mark Gilbert
3 years ago
This writer makes out Gates and Big Pharma have qualities that are surely rarely witnessed on this planet.
Of course Big Pharma must be incentivised to carry on with R&D and find ways of being motivated to produce and manufacture cheap and needed drugs.
…but of course there should also be a way of monitoring how Big Pharma operates generally and the real impact of that behaviour.
A few questions that immediately come to mind:
Why is it that Big Pharma – as I understand it – have something like 4 times more lobbyists in Washington than Big Oil or the arms industry?
Why is the narrative supporting vaccines – for ALL – so dominant, when so many scientists feel we should let out the relatively safe and build herd immunity whilst protecting the vulnerable?
Why is that Hydroxychloroquine has been so demonised as a prophylactic therapy, that even the mere mention of it sends people in many circles sprinting for the hills?
Bill Gates – again from what I understand – has alot of his personal wealth invested in Big Pharma. Clearly the motive stands some chance of being distinct from philanthropy?
He also is heavily invested in China. Has he been an angel when it comes to what he surely must have had some clue about i.e. the degree to which China was less than forthcoming re what it knew about the virus, since it appeared there?
Why is that Hydroxychloroquine has been so demonised as a prophylactic therapy, that even the mere mention of it sends people in many circles sprinting for the hills?
Because it’s ineffective, because people like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro latched on to it early, when it was still in the “unproven” stage, crowed about it being a cure, and whipped up their supporters to believe that they had a cure and that they were going to use it to sort everything out, and it all turned out to be bull****. And their unthinking supporters continue to bring it up, as if it was some sort of panacea that the world’s ignoring, when actually we looked, we found it lacking, we moved on.
Enough reasons?
The bigger question is – why do you continue to feel the need to bring up a treatment with no merits, which was largely promoted by people with no medical expertise?
There is only anecdotal evidence thus far. However, not one clinical trial know of has disproved the benefits of this drug as a prophylactic. We do know of at least one fraudulent study – touted by the Lancet( of all estemed journals).
The problem with so many anti Trump zealots is that they often distort and lie about what is said or written.
Many scientists are pushing back against Covid lockdown policies espoused by Gates et al:
David, I have no idea what you mean by a ” balance of opinion”. Is it not enough for you, to engender some healthy skepticism at least, that 2- 2000 scientists are expressing serious fobts abot Govt orthodoxies on Covid policy?
Im sure there are many more than 2000, but who’s counting? Certainly you don’t seem inclined to…. perhaps a tad like the vote counters in the US election?
because people like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro latched on to it early, you mean two guys who were diagnosed as having the virus but have since returned to work? And they were hardly the only ones. All across the US, doctors with no connection to one another were reporting at least anecdotal evidence of success. There was a story here of a local elected official in Michigan, a Democrat, who underwent that course of action and recovered. She went to the White House, where the media promptly ignored her because, well, because Orange McBadman.
who were diagnosed as having the virus but have since returned to work?
And you think Trump was treated using hydroxychloroquine? And you don’t think if he was then he would have shouted it from the highest rooftop on the planet?
at least anecdotal evidence of success. There was a story here of a local elected official in Michigan, a Democrat, who underwent that course of action and recovered.
All of which means nothing in the face of actual scientific studies showing a lack of efficacy. Quite contrary to your assertions, the actions of “Orange McBadman” are the only reason anybody even still bothers to talk about this busted non-treatment. If he hadn’t stuck his oar in, the studies on it could have been done quietly and the whole thing rightly dismissed. But no, people had to turn it into some sort of personal pride, partisan issue because Trump planted his flag there, and now it’s *still* being brought up because of that, regardless of the evidence. It’s now a matter of political faith, which goes to show how damned irresponsible it was for him to do that in the first place.
All of which means nothing in the face of actual scientific studies showing a lack of efficacy So we should ignore the instances in which this was used successfully because those cases don’t match up with the parameters you demand? Really? Actually, multiple practitioners reporting multiple instances of success DOES show efficacy. It’s not like HCQ is something new; the drug’s been around at least 50 years.
people had to turn it into some partisan issue because Trump planted his flag there, remind me who went partisan over this. I seem to recall the left immediately slamming what Trump said as BS, the same left that pretended the multiple reports of successful use never happened.
No, we should take those instances for what they are – poor, anecdotal evidence that doesn’t stand up in the face of the studies that have now taken place.
I’m not of “the left” but there you go, demonstrating just how much of a matter of partisan faith this is for you.
Please, do share this clear evidence. As far as I’m aware the actial scientific studies on HCQ show no utility for Covid.
I’ll take peer-reviewed medical study titles and authors, as I’m aware that UH doesn’t auto-allow posts with links. Anecdotes, however, are not strong evidence.
I’m not sure anyone’s claimed that either of those other things are cures, so much as ways to reduce transmission. Fully agree that the measures taken by governments should be up for debate and review, I very much doubt they’re gettting it right. But the topic was HydroxyChloroquine, not the general pandemic response.
Evidence of a drug that’s been in use for more than a half-century? That is evidence in its own right. I’m sorry that you think “peer reviewed” means a stamp of agreement on the research, the methodologies, and the conclusions. It doesn’t.
Clearly, all the practitioners who used it with success, the Henry Ford Health System folks who did a study, and assorted others who say it can be beneficial are making it up. Because, of course, they are.
More than a half-century of use. Does that bring to mind a drug with utility or one fraught with danger. I’ve already named one group that did such a study. You ignored that while moving the goalposts. You continue ignoring the multiple practitioners who had good results.
More than half a century of use for the current coronavirus!
I’m impressed!
No, you gave the name of a clinic, not details of a study. “Multiple practioners had good results” is not even a good anecdote.
FYI – that Henry Ford Clinic study you mention turns out to have been flawed, not randomised or run according to modern good practice, so that’s a ‘nope’.
I gave you the clinic’s name. Look it up. This site does not always handle links very well. And half a century of use, period, meaning it’s not some random drug put together last week. You are being purposely obtuse, but make for it by consistent in the application.
“Multiple practioners had good results” is not even a good anecdote. Then what is it? Doctors across the country with no connection to one another reporting similar results. That’s what anecdotal is.
I’ve looked it up, as I said above, their methods were not up to scratch, it.was.an observational study, rather than one that could determine anything, and as a result it doesn’t mean much.
Your comments about “doctors across the country” are just bland assertion.
Admit it, to yourself at least, that the only reason you give two hoots about hydroxychloroquine is political. There’s no good evidence it’s any use at all, clinging to it is ridiculous.
Hancock said the same about vitamin D but there is a lot of research out there that shows a strong correlation between vitamin d deficiency and hospitalisation or death from Covid. Vitamin D is being dismissed by people with no medical expertise (like Hancock) not long ago they were talking about adding vitamin d to our bread and milk and now all of a sudden it is not a problem.
Yes definitely true I agree with that. But in otherwise healthy individuals their bodies will deal with the virus better if they have good levels of vitamin d.
You think the Dr intervewed is some Trumpian white male fragile, white supremacist, wall-building Hitler?
I have no clue which scientists are right. Neither do you, I suspect. I am only calling for healthy skepticism about policies which are wrecking the global economy. So terrible?
“so many scientists feel we should let out the relatively safe and build herd immunity whilst protecting the vulnerable?” I don’t think this is a very popular view among scientists. Though, of course, there are a lot of scientists in the world so if even a small percentage of them thought this, the raw number of them could still vaguely be classed as “many”. Then there’s the problem of what kind of scientist. I would take an epidemiologist’s opinion on this matter much more seriously than, say, a cosmologist’s. I think in future it would help you communicate your argument better if you were more precise about your language with this sort of thing.
This is a cheap comment. Anyone can maliciously sign a online petition in such a way as to undermine its message – the false names on the GBD say more about the opponents of the declaration than about the substance of the argument.
GBD remains more in line with how the civilised world has traditionally responded to disease, and your dismissal of it is fatuous.
The claims of X number of signatories to it are also fatuous and are entirely unverified, which is the point I was making, and is the same point Dr Bananas made.
“GBD” is a minority position. There’s certainly room for debate on the correct actions to take, but to paint it as conclusive or as evidence of anything much beyond ongoing scientific debate is wrong.
I think it’s more about the balance of opinion. Do most epidemiologists agree with you? Even if it’s not a majority but a significant percentage that would be a decent enough reason to appeal to their expertise. I literally don’t know if most epidemiologists agree with that statement or not, but I think saying “many scientists” could mean anything from a few dozen people who have degrees in unrelated subjects to a majority of the experts in the field! If you mean the former it’s a bit dishonest if you mean the latter you’re doing your argument a disservice. That’s why I asked about precision.
Ok i didn’t even realise you meant the “great barrington declaration”. That firmly falls into the category of a small percentage of all scientists in the entire world. That’s good, i now understand what you mean.
It’s hard to know the true number because it takes a lot of guts at the moment for a scientist to come out with opinions that go against the narrative. That could be why so many of the scientist speaking up now are at or near retirement. They don’t fear the attempts to smear them and discredit them as much as someone with more to lose. It’s a scary situation.
Andrew Fisher
3 years ago
Actually, there needn’t be such a difficulty here. If we really care (even for reasons of ultimate self-interest) that poorer countries have good access to the vaccine, then rich countries should subsidise them to purchase the vaccines. This could be done perhaps on a sliding scale acccording to the GDP per capita or similar measure. Perhaps there should be ‘strings attached’ related to good governance and non-corrupt administration, at least in the sphere of public health. (However no doubt some critics would then call this neocolonialism). This would avoid introducing all sorts of market distortions and let the pharma companies do what they are good at, developing medicines and making money (nothing wrong with that, it keeps them in business for the long-term).
But I do tend to wonder if that very clarity would tend to show up so much ‘virtuous’ left liberal opinion, that though we care ever so much about an issue, we draw the line at actually seeing our own taxes rise to pay to address it. Hence it is easier to demand that big bad pharmaceutical companies give away their products.
We wrote basically the same reply at the same time!
Dan Martin
3 years ago
There is a solution for the COVID vaccine and many other widely used pharmaceuticals that may be too expensive for the impoverished. If the public believes these should be provided at low or no cost, the public should, through their taxes, buy what is needed from the drug companies at market rates and distribute as they see fit. In other words, everyone should share the cost.
the US taxpayers have paid upfront for the development of the Moderna vaccine.
Mark Walker
3 years ago
THREE vaccines are likely to reach the rich world by summer 2021 (four if Russia is included). Hence price competition will moderate the selling price of a Covid-19 vaccine very quickly indeed, no need to revoke patents. Most Pharma companies spending large sums on vaccine development will probably loose money because Covid-19 will possibly follow the paths of Swine Flu and SARS and ‘disappear’. In reality the human immune system will learn how to deal with Covid-19 before most Pharma companies have recovered their R&D costs.
For diseases which impact the rich world (kill many people) the market & capitalism work within the Pharma Industry.
For diseases which only impact the poor world then humankind should find a way of funding the R&D required – aid programs, academic prizes/grants etc. Expecting the Pharma Industry or Markets & Capitalism to develop these medicines is extremely foolhardy.
Not surprised Owen doesn’t understand basic economics. You can’t just force a company to give you something they spent millions developing, just as you can’t force someone to work for free. You have to decide that you want it cheap before it’s produced and then ask companies to make it- see what happens- see how many people you can get to work at something without paying them.
Companies take risks for THEIR profit….or perhaps greed…their is always “sovereign risk” …Big pharma is generally hugely after “Govt bucks” & get’s them!…..If researches are educated on the “Publics” dime why ought Big Pharma get all the fruits & not the Public? I take the view real scientific breakthroughs & innovation will generally be more driven with individuals thought & persevering than by “Big Pharmas” Board of Dirs & marketing depts….making “Committee decisions” .
Tony Taylor
3 years ago
Rather than researching a cure for baldness, Big Pharma should come up with a cure for hair – then everyone can be bald together.
Good 1! That must have been the governments thinking behind quarantining healthy people from a virus that they will likely only suffer mild symptoms or none at all.
Big Pharma is a childish canard that you would expect from the Guardian – it would be more interesting to explore: – what is the WHO for and what has its role been in pandemic preparation
John Stone
3 years ago
What we need is accountable government to make sure that public money is used in sensible ways – what one actually sees is cronyism at every level. We don’t even begin to understand how corrupt we are in this country though Kamran Abbasi in BMJ recently made a good start. There isn’t anybody in the political class, the DHSC or PHE that you can trust. The head of the JCVI, which recommends vaccines, is the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, which develops them. No conflict, what?
That is one of the many problems. There is so much conflict of interest and many people are aware of this which equals distrust.
Alex Lekas
3 years ago
It is said that the pharma industry spends more money on researching cures for baldness than it does for researching cures for malaria. Malaria was once eradicated by something called DDT. Until a shrieking environmentalist made all sorts of accusations, DDT was banned, and malaria returned. Perhaps the pharma industry noticed this, too.
Malaria was eradicated in some parts of the world, e.g. the parts of South Africa adjacent to Mozambique – and I think in a good part of Mozambique itself. If it were not for the Mozambique war of independence and the subsequent civil war it is likely that it could have been eradicated in Mozambique too.
Regarding the dangers of DDT mentioned in the OP – yes it is dangerous because of its persistence in the food chain. Its use was banned in South Africa by the National Party, a government not exactly famous for its environmental credentials.
malaria has never been eradicated anywhere. Yes, it has been.
DDT was also used to kill mosquitoes that spread malaria. By the early 1950s, the disease had essentially been eradicated in the United States. But it still had other nations in its grip, especially in Africa, making a comeback after it seemed on the verge of eradication. Jan 22, 2017
That’s from the New York Times, noting that DDT had wiped out the disease in parts of Africa, too. Then came Rachel Carson and her book that resulted in the chemical being banned, and malaria returning.
Agree that we’re going off topic here. However I’ll stand by my statement about SA because my grandparents were part of that effort and it was complete within the borders of SA. The mistake made was that at that point the malaria eradication program just packed up shop – rather than being replaced by a monitoring system. BTW malaria eradication involved many measures beyond DDT spraying.
I grew up in an area shown in the 1938 map as “milder summer epidemics”. By my childhood in the 1970s, zero malaria in the area.
The SAMJ article also counters the original assertion of, to paraphrase: “DDT is wonderful” and shows that DDT was just part of the program, and for a relatively brief time period.
Logic? I recommend you try it. DDT had succeeded in wiping out malaria. Then came a book that banned DDT. What do you suppose happens when the substance that prevents the disease is no longer available?
You can still get an analog of DDT – in a product called Mosi- Milk. Replaces the trichlorethylene with a di-ethyl chemical. My wife uses it. I think you’d need to bathe in it to get sheep dip madness, trouble is its way too costly for the average poor farmer in MEA or LATAM to afford. So many still die from malaria. Considering the attitude of so many greenies and leftists i am not convinced this an unwanted side effect from their point of view.
stephensjpriest
3 years ago
Dear Unherd
Denmark Says NO To Lockdown Law & Government Relent #PeoplePower
they are Kiling 17million mink,not because of SARS2 but they cant shift ‘The Fur”
Sean Arthur Joyce
3 years ago
Yet another wrongheaded piece from UnHerd. First of all, Chivers assumes vaccines are 100% safe, an assumption he never bothers to question. Yet in the US vaccine injury court, already $4 billion in damages have been paid out to families with children permanently damaged by adverse reactions to vaccines. And these cases only represent one third of those that exist in the US alone. This compensation is not paid for by the pharmaceutical industry but by the taxpayer, effectively granting the industry a get out of jail free card and zero liability. So what incentive do they have to even bother ensuring their vaccines are safe? It surprises me that in a country with universal medicare, Chivers would miss the obvious point that if medicine is socialized, it can be subsidized by that system, thus also managed by it. The private sector, whether in medicine or anything else, has only one goal: profit by the bucketload. Hardly a safe motivation to be encouraging where lives are at stake. And Bill Gates as “hero” and saver of lives? Please. Talk to Vandana Shiva about that one. Read her new book Oneness vs. the One Percent. His vaccine trials have ruined the lives of thousands of people in India and other countries. https://thevaccinereaction….
“The private sector, whether in medicine or anything else, has only one goal: profit by the bucketload. Hardly a safe motivation to be encouraging where lives are at stake. And Bill Gates as “hero” and saver of lives? Please.” Spot on Sean. Well noted! Research what Robert F Kennedy has been trying to say to all for decades Re Vaccines & Autism. I’ll try a link below.
Excellent piece, thanks. Also I think I’m right in saying that you found your answer regarding the government investing in the Oxford/AZ drug before peer review results 😊. I have a bit of a soft spot for Matt Hancock. He always come across to me as a sincerely nice person.
david.wm.rodgers
3 years ago
Here is an economist’s solution: have the relevant government authority pay the seller the difference between the market and the ‘fair’ price.
tkreider2030
3 years ago
“A paper by Larry Summers, the Nobel-winning economist…”
I’m sure Summers would like to win but hasn’t.
Michael Joseph
3 years ago
Great piece and nice to see a moderate and sensible approach that’s not anti pharma (Big Pharma boo!) but equally not ‘yay Big Pharma profit profit profit!’ (like this Speccie piece: https://www.spectator.co.uk…
I wish campaigning groups (like MSF’s Access Campaign) could take a more sensible approach like this when they talk about these issues.
peter.azlac
3 years ago
What is left out of this article is that much of the risk research is funded by the public purse; as we can see from the financial and patent links between NIH and Moderna, Gilead etc, but extends to other areas as well via the public funding of university research that that is done with funds from the pharmaceutical industry as well. Also, the current model gives the pharmaceutical industry a large incentive to fund negative research to produce false data on cheap generic products, as for example the false data on hydroxychlorioquine that has been produced by complicit researchers using near toxic doses and without the necessary accompanying zinc, when it has been known since 2003 that this drug acts as a zinc ionophore. They also invent medical conditions to promote profitable drugs, such as the use of statins to control the claimed relationship between cholesterol and heart disease that is, apart from a small part of he population with a genetic cause, due to diets that promote insulin resistance. This also applies to many of the other metabolic disorders that are diet based rather than diseases requiring medication.
Adrian
3 years ago
Owen Jones’ writing is of insetimabel value to the public. But I do hope he is not being paid for it, becasue that would just be greedy wouldn’t it?
He’d change his mind if he got paid a local newspaper wage, and the Guardian hired fairly, on the roll of a dice. Why shouldn’t everyone be paid minimum wage to do whatever the government tells them to do?
True, I wen’t from mis-typed, sarcastic hyperbole to cold reductio-ad absurdum, a bit of a wild swing in commenting styles.
John Stone
3 years ago
Congratulations, you are more than seven years old and you still believe in Santa Claus!
msnuttall
3 years ago
Neither Owen Jones nor the original Guardian article state Pfizer will make £9.8billion in profit. They state they will make £9.8billion in global sales, very different.
Thanks for pointing that out. It did seem an extreme number for profit, $2 per person worldwide.
Fran Martinez
3 years ago
Tom Chivers is by far the worst journalist at unherd.com.
Pharma companies will make billions from a vaccine that works dramatically worse than our own immunity once exposed to the virus. The only usefulness of the vaccine comes from the fact that the media and Gates have managed to convince everyone that the only way out is the vaccine.
If the media had advertised the true unlikeliness of catching the disease twice, or put into context the likelihood of dying from it to begin with, no one would want the vaccine.
Lerryns Hernandez
3 years ago
The real problem is that we only talk about money, investment and profit, and we leave aside what really matters, the value of life. What does it matter if more or fewer people die? How important is it if only those who live in rich countries have access to medicine, but the rest of the world dies? It is really a shame that the creation of drugs, vaccines or antibiotics, all to save lives, is a matter of money. Very sad. One more demonstration of how skewed the values are today.
It is really a shame that the creation of drugs, vaccines or antibiotics, all to save lives, is a matter of money. just imagine the creation without money. R&D isn’t cheap. The extensive regulatory process, at least in the US, is not fun to navigate. No one involved is working for free. It seems today’s “values” are fixated on people getting anything they want, anytime they want it, at no cost to themselves, and then to demand more of it.
The military budget, only in the United States, for the year 2020 was $721.5 billion ($ 721,531,000,000) There is nothing more to say. It is obvious where the value of life is.
That’s a very nice straw man you built; he’ll go nicely in the spot where you just moved the goalposts.
Freedom is not free; it requires defending and that’s not free, either. As it is, defense is less than 20% of the federal budget. It would be a lot less if some other countries would do their own heavy lifting.
“Freedom is not free; it requires defending and that’s not free, either.”
That’s one of the biggest cliches of history.
Keep spending on bullets … while your society falls ill with obesity, diabates and endless diseases. Then the pharmaceutical industry deals with its medicines, which ultimately does not cure them, on the contrary, it makes them sick from other things, which are on the list of “side effects”.
For diseases which only impact the poor world then humankind should find a way of funding the R&D required – aid programs, academic prizes/grants etc. Expecting the Pharma Industry or Markets & Capitalism to develop these medicines is extremely foolhardy.
Jules jules
3 years ago
HAHAHA “Bill Gates will, I hope, be remembered as one of the great heroes of the 21st century”, I just couldn’t keep reading after those first lines. Maybe the author should check out this excellent article in the Nation: https://www.thenation.com/a…
A person who claims to be a philanthropist, constantly cries out about the wealth gap yet becomes the second richest man in the WORLD, and people still prostate themselves to his feet as if he is some kind of hero. Wake up people.
Nun Yerbizness
3 years ago
who knew that “Owen Jones” was such a massive trigger for England’s right wing snowflakes.
blanes
3 years ago
So Gates comes to the rescue on his white charger. It was estimated Gates and Fuci would make a cool Trillion dollars out of this vaccine for the scamdemic, because of the tentacles they have in big pharma and the relevant organisations. And before you all run to get jabbed i’ll just leave this here. https://violationtracker.go…
Many experts are opposed to what seems to be “the only allowed MSM Narrative” …seems also to me too many “sheep” are easily hoodwinked or silenced or both… the silencing of debate & censorship is astonishing…& that is a huge threat to all good policy.
Tony Conrad
3 years ago
I still don’t think they have tested the vaccine with any side effects it might have. It usually takes about fours years to make sure there are no side effects. This vaccine is in danger of being rushed without looking at the long term effect.
How the hell do any of us know what it will do to folks down the line? We don’t know & I suspect THEY don’t know…but this will be a trillion dollar industry…why trust them?
Lee Jones
3 years ago
Great article, very sensible propositions, I fear that politicians will create a mess of it, and hope that people like Bill Gates continue to save real lives, but hope is all we have I fear. Poor old Owen Jones, maybe he was an only child in a small family, without hordes of bossy aunts and uncles who can be quite ferocious in their advice to think before you speak.
stephensjpriest
3 years ago
Dear HERD
YOU TUBE /watch?v=xjWpP8wTkzk
Ermmm 😕 Man Falls Of Ladder & Dies 😢 Guess What He Was Written Off With ðŸ¥..
Alex Belfield – THE VOICE OF REASON
daniel.dubbo
3 years ago
LOL he lost me in the first paragraph hoping that Bill Gates will be remembered as a hero.
Billy Fild
3 years ago
I have previously had this link put down the unHerd Memory hole…Silencing debate? Censorship or what? – Top Pathologist Claims COVID-19 Is “The Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated On An Unsuspecting Public”
This is a brilliant interview of Robert Kennedy Jnr.!! Really a must see “…biggest tool for authoritarianism…” https://www.youtube.com/wat…
charliedwek
3 years ago
Pharma companies need to make profits in order to reinvest in research.
If we want the poor to have access to medicine then the taxpayer has to pay the Pharma companies full price and give that medicine to its own poor or to poorer countries within their foreign aid budget.
charliedwek
3 years ago
The Pfizer share price is lower today than it was a year ago because investors know that they will be pressured to give the drug away for free.
Chris Milburn
3 years ago
I’m a doc in Canada, more-than-average knowledgeable about this stuff, but no immunologist. I have been involved with issues around Big Pharma from a variety of perspectives on various committees and regulatory bodies. I give that info to say that I think this article is great, and shows some very good insight into the issues at play. The shortest book ever is “Great Advancements in Pharmeceuticals from Communist Countries”. On the other hand, selling drugs is NOT the same as selling designer sunglasses. You can charge me 130 bucks for Vuarnet’s and maybe I’ll pay. Crank it up to 200 and screw you. Free markets dictate prices and are a “fair” and reasonable way of doing so. But what about my cardiac drug that keeps me alive? I can afford it at 150 bucks a month. Crank it to 200 and I skip a couple of restaurant meals. Crank it to 400 and I either stop buying it and die, or become homeless because I can’t make rent. It’s the free market, sure, but somehow feels ethically wrong at that point.
This article does a good job of talking about the difficulty in finding a balance between letting free market incentives set prices and encourage innovation, vs. making drugs affordable enough that the majority of people who need them can afford them.
Billy Fild
3 years ago
I am so tired of being put down the memory hole here at unherd…what hypocrisy!! What is really being un-Heard is, Big Pharma 9/10th of the time is a big scam & Big Brother helping folks 9/10ths of the time is also a big scam. If both of them, along with the countless folks in “The System”, were interested in “healthy people” rather than “a reason to earn their bread” they would start by teaching kids & folks if you eat “toxic processed foods” full of sugar & salt, & crap oils & god know what else in them, & you don’t eat healthy e.g. plant based whole foods & get good water & air & exercise YOU WILL GET MESSED UP VERY BADLY & pills won’t fix this!! …& you will die WELL before your time. .. How many overweight & half crippled folks do we see at the supermarket nowadays? And look at their kids?..I say wake up, it’s all about MONEY…& even Dr’s (which I love) need patients. …If they/we don’t teach kids & others to eat & drink healthy & get some exercise etc we/”the system” is a FRAUD!…And that is irrefutable!. Hello moderator, put this down the Mem. hole ..& let be it on your conscience!
‘Everybody dies’: Musk says neither he nor his family will take Covid-19 vaccine, blasts Bill Gates as ‘knucklehead’ https://www.rt.com/news/502…
Billy Fild
3 years ago
What is really being un-Heard is, Big Pharma 9/10th of the time is a big scam & Big Brother helping folks 9/10ths of the time is also a big scam. If both of them, along with the countless folks in “The System”, were interested in “healthy people” rather than “a reason to earn their bread” they would start by teaching kids & folks if you eat “toxic processed foods” full of sugar & salt, & crap oils & god know what else in them, & you don’t eat healthy e.g. plant based whole foods & get good water & air & exercise YOU WILL GET MESSED UP VERY BADLY & pills won’t fix this!! …& you will die WELL before your time. .. How many overweight & half crippled folks do we see at the supermarket nowadays? And look at their kids?..I say wake up, it’s all about MONEY…& even Dr’s (which I love) need patients. …If they/we don’t teach kids & others to eat & drink healthy & get some exercise etc we/”the system” is a FRAUD!…And that is irrefutable!
Billy Fild
3 years ago
Ron Paul & Robert F. Kennedy Jr on Vaccines Unemployment MKUltra John F.Kennedy Assassination. Some brilliant commentary by Kennedy re Vaccines here. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Billy Fild
3 years ago
This is a bunch of very experienced USA Doctors called “Americas Frontline Doctors” who have been treating Covid at the frontline..& their recent criticism of mainstream Covid Media & political “narratives”, falsehoods & propaganda. And the inherent dangers re all this. Well worth noting. Don’t miss it. https://www.americasfrontli…
John Vaughan
3 years ago
I’m building up a picture of you, Tom, and I’m not sure I like what I see. Did Summers really say “the virus … will cost the US economy $16 trillion”? or did he say the responses to the virus would cost that much? And we can bet the vaccine will be good for us??? Really? Despite our loss of liberty, the suppression of free speech, the desecration of democracy in return for Chinese-style diktat and, according to Mike Yeadon previously of Pfizer, that we are nearly all immune anyway??? I won’t abuse you personally Tom, but your analysis borders on the fascist.
I know what you mean… please Tom you are a philosophy graduate! use your skepticism and powers of reason, check the language around the claims. The $16trn came from somewhere….probably from someone’s febrile imagination. If you tell me that’s the cost of virus panic, opportunism and power hungry leaders leveraging SARS-CoV2 to their benefit i might be persuaded. But the virus itself!!! its still only the 20 something most common cause of death. If that costs us $16 trn what about the other 50 milion deaths so far this year?? if only 25% were economically active that equals $400 trn. This is c3.3 times world GDP! the saying “If it looks wrong it probably is” would be a good place to start.
Kelly Mitchell
3 years ago
Hmm – Bill Gates as hero. Stroke much? Maybe he’ll recognize your fealty, Mr. Chivers, and give you treasured position in his emergent global medi-state. You are worshipping evil.
I didn’t realise that anyone still took Owen Jones seriously.
This is silly. He may have been wrong here but the arguments Owen Jones makes in his article align with how many people in society think about pharmaceutical companies and so it’s really important to have these discussions in the media. I am really glad Owen Jones wrote his article and even more pleased that Tom took him seriously enough to write this response because i now feel much better informed on this stuff.
Most people are far more intelligent than Owen Jones.
His articles are aligned with how a tiny minority of very stupid people – Guardian readers – think. Everyone else knows that everything he says or writes is garbage. Refuting him isn’t worth the time.
Most people in the UK want a much higher level of state ownership of the economy than is currently the case. There’s solid data on that.
Really? Any sources for that statement?
here you go 🙂 https://yougov.co.uk/topics…
I can’t share a link but if you search “yougov state ownership” you should find some opinion polling data on that!
I wouldn’t rely on polling data to reflect what people actually think.
Most polls are not designed in a scientific matter, and the data they produce is frequently “summarised” in a subjective manner.
Much of this discussion comes down to the “supply of services” rather than “the economy” and I strongly suspect that most people would take the best supplier – regardless of whether the provider was public or private
This is silly! You’re annoyed about this poll data because it shows most people don’t agree with your view so you choose to claim the data is wrong. I’m sorry but if you’re too thin skinned that you have to believe most people agree with you before you’ll stick to an opinion then that’s your problem. I agree with you on the most part (I think) about state ownership but i choose not to bury my head in sand when i see data that shows most people don’t agree with me.
recent events in the US hold up the the “science” of polling to serious skepticism as to its legitimacy.
Very dissapointing that you turned this into a personal attack – partly based on your completely unfounded accusation that I’m annoyed and responding on that basis.
I won’t waste any more time trying to exchange views with you.
you really are thin skinned to interpret a challenge to your reasoning as a personal attack.
Rubbish! “you’re annoyed”, “you’re too thin-skinned”, accused of burying one’s head in the sand. They aren’t challenges to reasoning, they’re just personal attacks.
you are just annoyed, burying your head in the sand trying to protect your very thin skin.
She’s a very chippy hockey mom from half way up Mt Hood, Oregon.
Please make allowances.
Most people weren’t adults who lived through the 1970s. I did, which is why I’m hugely sceptical about nationalisation.
Most people who lived through the 70s still think we should nationalise a lot of the stuff that was nationalised then! I don’t necessary disagree with you but let’s not fool ourselves about what most people think.
“…what most people think.”
most people don’t think and those that do too often put their thought to dark purpose”the perversion of capitalism over the past century for instance.
Me too. If people choose to ignore history then they will repeat the mistakes of the past. It is boringly true that there isn’t much that hasn’t been tried before where democracies are concerned. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” as Santayana said. This is often paraphrased and attributed to Churchill (he never said it) in the form “Those that fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it” which is perhaps more effective.
If, as you say, most people choose to ignore history then what can we do? If it was just a few people you could belittle them but if it’s actually most people you’ll have to come up with a much better plan than that!
I’ve seen history ignored in companies such that it’s sent them on a cycle where there’s actually been people in the company say “We’ve done that before but they wouldn’t listen!”
the problem is there are folks who draw different ‘learnings’ from the past and some are hell bent for leather to repeat the learnings that gave rise to the two world wars, capitalism run amok and increasing economic disfunction.
any thoughts on the notion of a “market failure”?
I’ve still got my BIG petrol genny in my garage and run it up
once or twice a year. Us dinosaurs need to keep warm.
Of course, the country held to ransom by the unions, 3 day weeks, power blackouts – all that great socialism. Nationalisation feeds the lazy and feckless.
speaking of lazy and feckless…care to weigh in on “market failure” the essence of the article you and yours are busily misdirecting from?
Lots of questions no answers.
like I said…”lazy and feckless”
Well not Quite ,Local authority Mandarins & Civil Service do…Unions were curtailed more by New technologies ( Offices,News print) than by thatcher, Edward heath incidentally knew Common market membership would weaken the Unions,hence Left antipathy to EU
That’s a bit unfair. Nationalisation merely wrings all gumption from every worker, making them give up.
At that point it becomes a competition between management who create forms to fill in, and workers who think up more elaborate ways to frustrate the forms, instead of say filling the potholes.
and what are your thoughts on ‘market failure’ that the article points to?
However I believe The Post (Royal Mail) should be renationalised to protect Universal delivery,it was EU directives 67./97 Pushed By David Milliband,,Lord Mandelson in 2001/2008 and Vince Cable in 2013…
Lol. Most people in the UK think Venezuela is a state run paradise.
If this is true then we have much much bigger problems than Owen Jones being a bit wrong!
it is never very long until someone trots out the “most people” canard and it is invariably a conservative with nothing of merit to add to the discussion.
And your comment accomplishes what, precisely? Did you even read the article? Lol.
ad hominem noted
Absolute tosh, unless you live in Londonistan. The state is there to provide the tools not to run the show. Your “most people” are socialist, of the champagne kind. The last election where the Tories gained a majority of 80 seats is proof that even the sensible working class are frit of a Liebour government or state ownership. Socialism / Marxism only taught us to avoid Socialist Marxism. Even the left are too dumb to see that the man boy Owen Jones is a raving capitalist. He writes a book about “Chavs” (Council House and Violence) then goes on to paid writing for the left wing rag the Graun. Completing his pure socialist hypocrisy by setting up his own website with members only, paying a fee to listen to the musings of the one trick pony. God, socialists are so thick.
This is so unnecessarily antagonistic! I’m not a socialist i just don’t stick my head in the sand when data shows that most people disagree with me. I don’t think we should nationalise all this stuff! But lots of people do! That’s just a fact! Why are you so angry at me?
Founded in 2009, Bring Back British Rail strives to popularise the commonsense idea of re-nationalising the ludicrously over-priced and over-complicated railway system, which the people of Britain have been left with as the result of privatisation in the ’90s.
https://www.bringbackbritis…
unfortunately no one want to talk about the crux of the matter…
“…even though Gates was wrong on the specific case, he is bang on when he suggests that there is a market failure.”
right wing knee jerkers”High Church apologists for capitalism to the bitter end” on this thread are busily obfuscating the point of the article “MARKET FAILURE” choosing to instead fixate on Owen Jones.
Thanks for bringing the yougov data to our attention. It shows the public in favour of 9 industries being state owned but these include the Police, NHS, Armed Forces and Schools so not too revolutionary. You make a point but as someone who had his schooling disrupted in the 1970’s to the same extent as this current emergency I think they need to be careful what they wish for. As monopolies they offered no choice and no better service. I remember the waiting time for a telephone line to be installed was 3 months.
And the wait for a telephone was long even if all that had to be done was to turn a switch in the telephone exchange as you were keeping the same number as the previous occupants of a flat. And they charged a fortune to do it (£ 35 in 1974, I seem to recall).
speaking of “very stupid people”Independent, Evening Standard or Times of London readers”right wing knee jerkers get very alarmed when anyone points to the source of the rampant surge in economic disequilibrium.
Should Big Pharma profit from Covid?…you mean as opposed to profiting from every other drug US taxpayers subsidize the creation, manufacture and distribution of?
In the United States, the share of income earned by the top one percent increased from 7.7% in 1973 to 22% in 2015, while the share of the bottom 50% declined from 21% in 1980 to 13% in 2015, according to World Bank data.
The natural order of things. Moral of the story?
Get to the top and stop whining.
Trump Got more Hispanics,Latinos,Blacks, employed than ANY president .Fact so World Bank ,Globalists figures are out..
your willful ignorance is noted
Dear “Robin”, Aged just 11 years old, I concluded one evening that surely it takes roughly 3-4 years for the effects of any political policy to work its way through the economy and substantially affect unemployment, job creation etc… Sadly Trump has only been in office for 4 years so we are only just feeling the effects of his “genius”. Obama’s administration had FASTER growth and a more rapid uptick in job creation in the 3-4 years preceding the current government than the US had over the last 4 years. Unfortunately, illiterate fools like you are given air time to cherry pick statistics and display your birdbrain intellect.
“the arguments Owen Jones makes in his article align with how many people in society think about pharmaceutical companies”
I think that’s the problem. We don’t really need someone like Owen Jones, posing as some kind of an expert, while simply reinforcing the ideas of the ill informed (people like me). It’s the challenge to misguided “common sense” that we need. But how many will have read Owen Jones, and how many will have read this article?
That’s an interesting perspective! I think in general it’s better that newspapers (as a whole) publish a wide range of opinion pieces which tend to cover the breadth of public opinion and that those debates then happen in public domain. I guess your interpretation is that these views are only so common among the public because people like Owen Jones are able to communicate those views to a wide audience? But on lots of topics the general public is quite out of step with the opinions that tend to be held by newspaper columnists so this doesn’t seem to add up to me.
“I guess your interpretation is that these views are only so common among the public because people like Owen Jones are able to communicate those views to a wide audience?”
To some degree. But I would also say that people tend to use quite simple ways of understanding reality. Good v bad narratives, economy is like a household narratives etc. They act to simplify complex questions but deceive in doing so. People like Owen Jones (but right wing populists too) tend to build on these narratives.
One answer is to read widely, and to read against your own position. But how many have, or will take, the time.
Bravo David Morley. Absolutely spot on! It takes a long time to read and understand even things that one is naturally attuned to. Then, to read and understand an opposing viewpoint is tiresome. This is what they used to call ‘higher education’. Sadly, very few modern human beings feel capable in engaging in this sort of discourse or have the patience and time.
here in the US the question is, “How many are being gouged by BigPharma on the drugs they or loved ones need to stay alive?”
they don’t need an article authored by anyone to know who and what is the problem.
The absurdly high cost of insulin, explained
Why Americans ration a drug discovered in the 1920s
https://www.vox.com/2019/4/…
DRUG COMPANY PRICE GOUGING: THE INSULIN CASE
July 18, 2019 · by John A. Lippitt
A quintessential case of price gouging by drug companies, with serious and sometimes fatal consequences, is that of insulin.
https://lippittpolicyandpol…
The Big Drug Pricing Issues To Watch In 2020: Hep C Treatment Costs, A PBM Crackdown, And Insulin Affordability
https://khn.org/morning-bre…
I have no real issue with pharma companies making a profit. That’s not the real issue. The free market is a reality, has been for hundreds of years. A solution to the pandemic will be found, at a cost. What I do take issue with is PPE vultures.Somebody alleged it’s the biggest money laundering scam in history…mmm..
I fear that is what Is wrong with our society, and possiblely one of the real problems with it, people are not rational, and arguments for nonsensical (romantic) thinking make them feel good, but if it’s not the truth, or a reflection of the real issues, it just a comforting fantasy, like prayer…
Superb article. And whilst I love UnHerd, it’s a shame this isn’t in the Guardian, to help its readers understand the mechanics of capitalism.
Guardian readers will never understand the mechanics of capitalism, enterprise, or supply and demand, shielded as they all are from those realities. As such, the article would be completely wasted in the Guardian.
I agree and think this raises an issue with the idea that scientists at universities want to save or improve lives. In addition to going to work for money and kudos scientists in the modern world seem to hold near uniform political views. I had to stop reading the New Scientist due to its woke moralising, unquestioning adoption critical race theory and reduction of scientific content in favor of “cultural” and “social science” pieces. So it seems scientists want to improve and save the lives of people who meet their value judgements. The things they say on their social media accounts indicate they do not want improve or save the lives of people whose skin color, occupations or political views they don’t like.
I think it’s good for people to reach out to opinions beyond their bubble. That includes guardian readers, scientists but also you! There’s more to critical race theory than just what is portrayed in the general media, i don’t agree with some of it but it’s a big academic topic that has a lot of interesting perspectives to offer. It’s a shame you dismiss something you don’t understand so easily.
Personally I think critical race theory is more about the travails of US society and the unfinished business of their civil war and subsequent economic oppression of a significant number of their population. We see our culture through a U.S. lens… sometimes the assessment it gives us is misguided.
We are, as a species less than 250,000 years old. We have an increfibly small amount of genetic diversity Race is an illusion. The is but one race… the human race… despite what some commentators living on one small part of planet earth might say … based only on their interpretation of a tiny part of their own local history
Yes, I definitely agree with this for the most part. It is much more useful in the US context, but doesn’t mean it’s totally worthless here in Britain. I agree that we often see our society through a US lens and that causes lots of misguided analysis.
Totally agree…critical theories are faith based beliefs, not theories. If they were they would be testable. They cause damage in the same way as their siblings in faith- white supremacism and fundamentalist Wahabism. As you say they are rain drop on the window pane of human history. I think there are enough people committed to a free and open society to consign these ideas and their evangelists to the history books where they belong.
I dismiss all post modernist critical theories – in the same way as i dismiss all other theories that only ask for ontological proof of their validity – critical race theory sits well with its siblings, astrology, frenology, eugenic race theory etc etc
I dismiss all post modernist critical theories – i
dismiss all other theories that only ask for ontological proof of their
validity – critical race theory sits well with its siblings, astrology,
frenology, eugenics etc etc. I think critical race theory is worthy of study to see how it came to be and how it moves from a theory to physical and economic action, in the same way we should study SARS-CoV2 the better to deal with it. As you say critical theories are big in academia, but only in academia. Normal people can see clean through this quackery. My business employs a broad mix of races and religions. We simply couldn’t function if we believed the Marxists’ drivel about deterministic power relations between races consigning us to a hell broth of discrimination based on skin color or other irrelevent factors.
That’s a shame. I think the world would be better if people didn’t just dismiss stuff that came from outside their bubble. I guess some people are just happier not engaging with the world at large 🙁
Ok explain what critical race theory is and how the thery may be tested?
I’d highly recommend you read Cynical Theories by Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay for another, deeper take on critical race theory. From the sounds of things, it lies firmly outside your ‘bubble’ so could be worth a go.
The long and short of it is that CRT has no real world application. No evidence. No proof. Nor does it think it requires proof.
It advocates for using identity signals as the primary way you interact with society at large. It attacks Enlightenment values such as empirical analysis and rationality. It characterises all white people as hopelessly racist without even knowing it, and black people as homogenised, caricatured victims that need ‘levelling up’.
Essentially, think of modern day, liberal values – equality of opportunity rather than outcome, rational thought, the pursuit of objective truth, being judged on the content of your character not the colour of your skin – and flip them on their head in the most maddening, regressive way possible.
It’s toxic.
Thanks for the reading suggestion, it sounds interesting! I think from your description that i’ll find it to be a bit too dogmatic in it’s assessment of CRT but i’m often wrong!
Thanks! That sounds like an interesting read. 🙂
And while you are reading Cynical Theories, edit it.
It’s far too long, and even had a typo on the cover . “and Why This Harms Everbody”
It would also have helped if they had a chapter on the motivations behind the theories – essentially Theory was invented by people that can’t add two numbers together, and wouldn’t know one end of a screwdriver from another.
See personally I’m very open to understanding new perspectives and I just don’t like this closed minded blanket dismissal. I’m glad to hear this book isn’t quite as closed minded as you’d like it to be.
Do read the book – the history of Theory is revealing. But the book could have done with a bit more editing work in my opinion.
To illustrate my second point. Here’s a quote from the famed Theorist Luce Irigare:
“E=mc(squared) is a sexed equation, because it priveleges the speed of light over other, necessary, speeds”
Excuse the lack of superscript in the equation, that was my change.
However, Luce only displays her closed-minded ignorance with the above quote.
Also excuse my previous rather obscure reference to Foucault, who seems to think that screwdrivers and spanners are tools for smashing things
I don’t know lots about this topic (and your comments here are insightful, thanks 🙂 ) but It’s interesting you bring up that quote because as i understand it the only English language source is from Sokal and Bricmont’s criticism of Irigaray, and it’s unclear whether this actually appears in her work anywhere. Now don’t get me wrong I don’t have much time for Irigara and in particular i think (as i understand it) I very much agree with Sokal and Bricmont’s point about how she uses language from and about physics and other hard science in ways that obfuscate rather than illuminate. But then picking on one particularly bad quote that doesn’t really appear anywhere prominently in her work also does, somewhat, obfuscate the matter at hand.
Even football Clubs have ”Unconscious bias” ie Orwellian Thought control in their Semesters..A joke as most are Greedy vulture Capitalists ie The Big 6 Chelsea,arsenal,Spurs,Manchester utd,Manchester city,Liverpool, Not owned by Britons, Oligarchs & Americans,expect their franchise,never to be relegated &would shorten the Premiership to make it a reality…
I understand where you’re coming from c no. Among the reams of CRT literature that is now being produced there’re some germs of truth, but on the whole it is to academia what scientology is to religion. I’m currently doing a doctorate and now being made to study CRT. It is not a theory, it is a belief-system, and while it criticizes everything in the dictionary, it fails to adequately critique itself. At its heart it is about transforming society and creating new social castes.
One could not be a successful scientist without realizing that, in contrast to the popular conception supported by newspapers and mothers of scientists, a goodly number of scientists are not only narrow-minded and dull, but also just stupid.
— J. D. Watson _The Double Helix_
To me the problem is the shift in etymology – science was once the pursuit of the boundaries of our knowledge – theories were conjectured and refuted in a development cycle. Although subject to careerism and academic politics there was an overall forward motion. What i see coming down the line is a return to shamanism, where technocrats are awarded powers and a title that absolve them from communality, disinterestedness and organized skepticism.
This has been tried before… the inquisition, witch trials, the khmer rouge etc etc and it has not ended well for anyone.
Yes. I think it is well to remember that Josef Mengle was also engaged in science.
I agree with your observations about scientific journals being run by “woke” journalist stooges. But those propagandists aren’t the scientists under discussion here. I’m sure some are leftist idiots, but some are not.
Sadly i expect the ones who are not are too reasonable, cerebral and just plain nice to stand up to the hate-addled stooges who run the show.
“Guardian readers will never understand the mechanics of capitalism, enterprise, or supply and demand, shielded as they all are from those realities”. I find it embarrassing that people still think like this. I read The Guardian (as do lots of my friends and colleagues) and we all understand capitalism and supply and demand.
I think you have proven his point
Some Guardian readers… for sure. But the same could be said for any news site/paper these days. I read the Guardian for variety and challenge – although I often find Owen Jones a bit of a struggle…
Grauniad is Sponsored by George Soros &Bill gates of hell foundations otherwise it would go bankrupt 80,000 sales per day?..
It’s no good just insulting Guardian readers – I know they are all just middle class wish washy liberals, but they understand capitalism, enterprise, and supply and demand very well. That’s why they are middle class not working class.
I did wonder how an article pitting Owen Jones against the vaccine industry would go down here – a difficult choice for some of Unherd’s audience – but it seems to have got a good discussion going
This explanation of the way market failure occurs with vaccine and antibiotic development just wouldn’t work in the Guardian – nor would it work in the Telegraph or any other UK broadsheet. Only a minority of readers would have the background or the patience to follow it. The stereotype Guardian reader would take pretty much the Owen Jones approach whilst the stereotype Telegraph reader would harrumph about supply, demand and “fwee markets”. The intricacies of real-world markets, market failure, externalities and the like are beyond these clienteles. Even the FT would not cover it – though at least might refer to the subject and assume that the reader already understood.
Even here I wonder how many of the audience have really taken it in – a lot of the comments are the usual biff bam about how terrible socialism is – quickly getting onto the subject of CRT – which has as much to with this article as the plot of Eastenders.
But this: “Bill Gates will, I hope, be remembered as one of the great heroes of the 21st century:”
I hope not. Dorsey, Bezos, Zuckerburg, and Gates, the 4 horsemen. All are out to digitize you with permanent Social Credit scores and life tags, and mount you on the cloud like a Victorian Collector with his bugs labeled and pinned to a board.
It is all very well investing in drugs to keep ever more people alive, but it is quality of life which is paramount and it is population pressure which is devastating the global environment. I do wish people like Bill Gates would invest as much in family planning and education about it, as they do in remedies for disease.
Me too Richard!
“Bill Gates will, I hope, be remembered as one of the great heroes of the 21st century” Whaaat??? I need to go and lie down…
Why not?
He can be remembered as a villain and monopolist in the computing space in the late 20th century, but ever since he retired from microsoft, he and his wife have put their immense wealth to truly altruistic use.
Unless of course you’re a conspiracy theorist and you believe that he’s trying to microchip everyone and bring about the new world order, in which case I would have a sit down, a cup of tea, and a bit of a re-evaluation of my life…
> Unless of course you’re a conspiracy theorist and you believe that he’s trying to microchip everyone and bring about the new world order
Yep. If you click their profiles, both of the “Gates is bad” people in the thread are anti-vaxers.
Depressingly predictable, that.
I am nOT Anti-Vax its just These Corporate geniuses Dont or seemingly wont make a viable vaccine,for people allergic to certain Vaccines
I agree Sarah. I couldn’t believe I read this in this article. He and his wife are not what the world needs. He has loads of money and in turn, has his nose in places that he knows nothing about and many people are bowing to him when they should be skeptical. He is NOT that generous. Research some more Tom, please.
Given that there are now two viable vaccines, with others still in the trial phase, it’s clear that no one company is going to take all the winnings from vaccine development. Meanwhile the public sector/state owned corporations of which Owen Jones is such a fan have developed precisely zero. I think he is offended because the capitalist system is delivering the goods.
Given that he has not been exactly honest in writing about his own patch (squalid back-stabbing in the left of the Labour party) I’d imagine that 9.6B$ is the absolute maximum Pfizer could make, in the absence of any competition, and probably without consideration of the full production and distribution costs. Not to mention the up-front cost of setting up for production at scale.
Also to be borne in mind is that technology development has more misses than hits. No one hears about the products that didn’t get to market, even though they’ve gone through the same expensive R&D process as the ones that do.
Or the fact that Pfizer’s totally notional profit which didn’t exist two weeks ago may vanish as suddenly as it appeared, when the results of other trials that don’t require that -80C cold chain come in.
I don’t think this is a fair portrayal of Jones’ view. I do think he’s wrong on this but his argument is that there isn’t a big public sector/state owned corporation which has the capacity for vaccine development and he would like there to be one (by nationalising an existing one). So you can’t use the argument that this non-existent sate owned organisation hasn’t produced a vaccine against him. Maybe I’m nit-picking but the author here has written a good article treating Jones’ view in good faith and done a very good job of explaining why he’s wrong without misrepresenting him and just I find it so sad that the comments are full of people interpreting Owen Jones’ arguments in the worst possible faith.
Surely socialist governments elsewhere in the world have state research organizations?
But you do make a good point that Jones exhibits a politics of envy, i.e. when the capitalist system is successful the socialist response is a jealous attempt to seize the product of others’ labour.
The reality is that state research organizations have great difficulty reacting to changing circumstances (I’ve worked in one) because their funding is not dependent on making usable products available in good time. A nationalised pharma company with the same funding model would descend into mediocrity for the same reasons.
there are no better socialists in the world than American capitalists.
they socialize their risk and capture the reward for the exclusive benefit of those sitting in the Corporate Suite, Board members and shareholders.
“Moderna said today that taxpayer money funds 100% of its work to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to licensure, yet it announced new, higher intended prices for the prospective vaccine this morning on a call with investors. Moderna now says it will charge $32 to $37 per dose for smaller volume sales agreements, the highest price yet announced for a potential vaccine. Public Citizen and Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) wrote to the federal government Friday, noting that Moderna has been ignoring public disclosure provisions in its vaccine development funding contract. Public Citizen also found the U.S. government may co-own a vaccine candidate with Moderna.”
8-5-2020
The vilification of profit is the real problem. A very large percentage of the world’s population, including, sadly, many opinion formers, seem to believe profit is simply bad, Until that misperception is confronted and shown to be false we will struggle to make the world an even better place for human beings and indeed we could even slip backwards, again.
Profit isn’t a bad thing but too many vaccines and drugs are pushed when we forget we have an immune system that is capable of overcoming some of these things. Drugs have a place but they are too widely used and therefore there’s tons of profit over sick people.
Authentic profits require an authentic market.
There is no authentic market for a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
Its a non question. Of course they should profit. Why else would they have done it. The entire business is only there for profit. If it creates good things then that’s a great result. All corporations in a capitalist society exist to create profit for shareholders as their primary aim. It is the job of government to harness their creativity for the great good of the populace and to prevent them doing harm.
Or shod they forego profit and incentives and the innovation and creativity that drives… so that we are even less well prepared for the next medical crisis
“All corporations in a capitalist society exist to create profit for shareholders as their primary aim.”
…and the devil take the hindmost.
The reality is that in 2009 the government helped rush a Swine Flu vaccine to the market, GSK’s Pandemrix, and it was disaster which only 10% of the population would have and rapidly became associated with narcolepsy, which the government won’t compensate. It is obvious why sensible people would be cautious except they are being subjected to a carefully orchestrated hate campaign led by people we shouldn’t trust, like Johnson & Hancock, who hand out the contracts to their friends. Is it going to have a happy ending? I doubt it. There is no free lunch and there is no Santa Claus.
There is ”A Sanity Clause” Groucho told Us
I recall the scene in Go West – two rather sad dispossessed characters Chico and Groucho tearing up a contract (the rights to a non-existent goldmine?): the last clause is the “sanity clause” and one of them (can’t remember which) exclaims there is no “sanity clause”. Well, there is certainly no sanity clause here or all the contracts would be as void and vain as their goldmine, but we are the ones being dispossessed, and what we are looking at is fool’s gold. I don’t in principle see why pharmaceutical companies should not make money but I would like to see some kind of conventional contract rather than everyone being taken for a dangerous ride with politicians who drive soft bargains with our money (not to mention taking a cut for themselves).
Probably, you are almost right, Groucho says “That’s the sanity clause, every contract has one” and Chico with his poor English says “Eh, you can’t fool me, there ain’t no Sanity Claus!” (swift cut).
Probably Groucho says “That’s the sanity clause, every contract has one” and Chico says with his poorly understood Italian English “Eh, you can’t fool me there ain’t no Sanity Clause!” (swift cut).
I think you have missed a trick in explaining the profit made by a company.
You correctly explain how a drug company can cover its costs from a successful drug, but do not add in the cost of an unsuccessful drug(s).
So to allow a company to continue to survive, it must recover the loss of the unsuccessful drug from the successful ones.
So your marginal cost of £1 – whilst correct in a narrow sense – is not correct with the boarder picture. Alternatively, your capital cost would need to cover the additional costs of the unsuccessful drugs.
Of course, a nationalised company, could not bother about such problems as the taxpayer would just stump up the money.
The first thing that is obvious is Owen Jones does not understand profit. In very simple terms profit is a surrogate for free cash flow after a business has paid all its costs. This free cash flow is used as follows:
1. To buy assets such as new machinery to improve production
2. Invest in R&D to develop new products for the future
3. Compensate investors who have taken risk with their money to help develop the business to where it is now
4. Pay tax! (something Owen really wants to see more of)
5. etc
Without profit a business closes because it can’t meet it’s operational costs never mind develop in the future.
Another bug bear of the left is dividends to investors, but who are those investors. Most of them are pension schemes. If there are no dividends pensioners won’t get their pensions and the government will not have no tax to pay them either.
Bottom line, we need profitable companies or we all lose!
Well put. Breathtaking and depressing that this needs to be laid out to people. This shit needs to be taught at school.
It is simply the term “company profit” that socialists hate.
I once made the mistake of telling a socialist relative that I had made a £300 profit by selling some shares and the look of disgust on his face was something to behold.
Yet this same person could not tell you enough times about how they had made tens of thousands of tax free pounds by constantly flipping their home.
Good article, but far too polite about Owen Jones.
I reckon Tom must’ve decided Owen got enough of a kicking in the Guardian’s own comments section for that tripe.
I can’t think of any other explanation.
That all depends: is there a small pharma? Where were they during all this? You know, the little mom n’ pop pharmaceutical companies. The active ingredient is love.
Funnily enough, BioNTech is a mom’n’pop (at least, Wikipedia says that UÄŸur Åžahin and Özlem Türeci have a daughter).
Yet they could not deliver a vaccine without big pharma investment.
What’s your point? Did you even read the article?
Yes they could, they already have others in development – but they could not have got it through trials and registration so quickly nor could they ramp up production so quickly to the volumes required. Most often small pharma and biotech companies that insist on going it alone and eschewing partnerships with large pharma when their products get into late stage trials do not succeed. In fact the usual explanation turns out to be that they don’t actually have a product anyone wants to do a deal on.
Dear Tom
You must write to you MP and ask them to stop the Great Reset
– If you’re writing to a Labour MP call it the Great Capitalist Reset
This Is How Great Reset Will End Western Democracies
Mahyar Tousi
YOU TUBE watch?v=Fk2W7rOFatg
Definitely cause for concern here and will be watching the WEF closely. However, Mahyar Tousi is an absolute snake oil salesman and flypaper for conspiracy nuts. Best avoided at all costs.
Baldness.
Back in the day when I worked for Glaxo we had a prostate drug in development called dutasteride. Clinicians in Florida (I think) noticed that bald patients were experiencing hair regrowth.
When that was reported I discovered that interest in the drug’s efficacy against baldness was by far the biggest internet search item by a large margin for anything to do with Glaxo.
So, like Tom, I do not believe that pharma invests more in baldness than Malaria, but there are a lot of men out there who possibly wish they did.
A well written and interesting read – thanks.
This writer makes out Gates and Big Pharma have qualities that are surely rarely witnessed on this planet.
Of course Big Pharma must be incentivised to carry on with R&D and find ways of being motivated to produce and manufacture cheap and needed drugs.
…but of course there should also be a way of monitoring how Big Pharma operates generally and the real impact of that behaviour.
A few questions that immediately come to mind:
Why is it that Big Pharma – as I understand it – have something like 4 times more lobbyists in Washington than Big Oil or the arms industry?
Why is the narrative supporting vaccines – for ALL – so dominant, when so many scientists feel we should let out the relatively safe and build herd immunity whilst protecting the vulnerable?
Why is that Hydroxychloroquine has been so demonised as a prophylactic therapy, that even the mere mention of it sends people in many circles sprinting for the hills?
Bill Gates – again from what I understand – has alot of his personal wealth invested in Big Pharma. Clearly the motive stands some chance of being distinct from philanthropy?
He also is heavily invested in China. Has he been an angel when it comes to what he surely must have had some clue about i.e. the degree to which China was less than forthcoming re what it knew about the virus, since it appeared there?
The only angel I know is my mum….Go figure.
Because it’s ineffective, because people like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro latched on to it early, when it was still in the “unproven” stage, crowed about it being a cure, and whipped up their supporters to believe that they had a cure and that they were going to use it to sort everything out, and it all turned out to be bull****. And their unthinking supporters continue to bring it up, as if it was some sort of panacea that the world’s ignoring, when actually we looked, we found it lacking, we moved on.
Enough reasons?
The bigger question is – why do you continue to feel the need to bring up a treatment with no merits, which was largely promoted by people with no medical expertise?
Quite wrong, actually, on all points.
So not going to answer my question about why you’re wedded to something we know to be ineffective?
Perhaps you could provide the peer reviewed evidence pointing to the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus then?
Please reread my initial comment.
There is only anecdotal evidence thus far. However, not one clinical trial know of has disproved the benefits of this drug as a prophylactic. We do know of at least one fraudulent study – touted by the Lancet( of all estemed journals).
The problem with so many anti Trump zealots is that they often distort and lie about what is said or written.
Many scientists are pushing back against Covid lockdown policies espoused by Gates et al:
https://www.bbc.com/news/he…
David, I have no idea what you mean by a ” balance of opinion”. Is it not enough for you, to engender some healthy skepticism at least, that 2- 2000 scientists are expressing serious fobts abot Govt orthodoxies on Covid policy?
Im sure there are many more than 2000, but who’s counting? Certainly you don’t seem inclined to…. perhaps a tad like the vote counters in the US election?
“Balance of opinion” is not a phrase I’ve used today – meant to reply to “c no” below?
because people like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro latched on to it early,
you mean two guys who were diagnosed as having the virus but have since returned to work? And they were hardly the only ones. All across the US, doctors with no connection to one another were reporting at least anecdotal evidence of success. There was a story here of a local elected official in Michigan, a Democrat, who underwent that course of action and recovered. She went to the White House, where the media promptly ignored her because, well, because Orange McBadman.
And you think Trump was treated using hydroxychloroquine?
And you don’t think if he was then he would have shouted it from the highest rooftop on the planet?
All of which means nothing in the face of actual scientific studies showing a lack of efficacy. Quite contrary to your assertions, the actions of “Orange McBadman” are the only reason anybody even still bothers to talk about this busted non-treatment. If he hadn’t stuck his oar in, the studies on it could have been done quietly and the whole thing rightly dismissed. But no, people had to turn it into some sort of personal pride, partisan issue because Trump planted his flag there, and now it’s *still* being brought up because of that, regardless of the evidence. It’s now a matter of political faith, which goes to show how damned irresponsible it was for him to do that in the first place.
All of which means nothing in the face of actual scientific studies showing a lack of efficacy
So we should ignore the instances in which this was used successfully because those cases don’t match up with the parameters you demand? Really? Actually, multiple practitioners reporting multiple instances of success DOES show efficacy. It’s not like HCQ is something new; the drug’s been around at least 50 years.
people had to turn it into some partisan issue because Trump planted his flag there,
remind me who went partisan over this. I seem to recall the left immediately slamming what Trump said as BS, the same left that pretended the multiple reports of successful use never happened.
No, we should take those instances for what they are – poor, anecdotal evidence that doesn’t stand up in the face of the studies that have now taken place.
I’m not of “the left” but there you go, demonstrating just how much of a matter of partisan faith this is for you.
“The science” is in here. Time to leave it alone.
“The science” is in here.
how ironic that you say that when the evidence on HCQ is clear and hard to refute.
What can be refuted is govt claims that lockdowns were a cure, or that masks were. If either of those things were true, this would be done.
Please, do share this clear evidence.
As far as I’m aware the actial scientific studies on HCQ show no utility for Covid.
I’ll take peer-reviewed medical study titles and authors, as I’m aware that UH doesn’t auto-allow posts with links. Anecdotes, however, are not strong evidence.
I’m not sure anyone’s claimed that either of those other things are cures, so much as ways to reduce transmission. Fully agree that the measures taken by governments should be up for debate and review, I very much doubt they’re gettting it right. But the topic was HydroxyChloroquine, not the general pandemic response.
Evidence of a drug that’s been in use for more than a half-century? That is evidence in its own right. I’m sorry that you think “peer reviewed” means a stamp of agreement on the research, the methodologies, and the conclusions. It doesn’t.
Clearly, all the practitioners who used it with success, the Henry Ford Health System folks who did a study, and assorted others who say it can be beneficial are making it up. Because, of course, they are.
Yes, peer reviewed, scientific evidence that it is useful in relation to coronavirus. You know, the way we do medicine these days.
Not a big ask, surely, for someone so sure of it as yourself, to show your references?
More than a half-century of use. Does that bring to mind a drug with utility or one fraught with danger. I’ve already named one group that did such a study. You ignored that while moving the goalposts. You continue ignoring the multiple practitioners who had good results.
More than half a century of use for the current coronavirus!
I’m impressed!
No, you gave the name of a clinic, not details of a study. “Multiple practioners had good results” is not even a good anecdote.
FYI – that Henry Ford Clinic study you mention turns out to have been flawed, not randomised or run according to modern good practice, so that’s a ‘nope’.
I gave you the clinic’s name. Look it up. This site does not always handle links very well. And half a century of use, period, meaning it’s not some random drug put together last week. You are being purposely obtuse, but make for it by consistent in the application.
“Multiple practioners had good results” is not even a good anecdote.
Then what is it? Doctors across the country with no connection to one another reporting similar results. That’s what anecdotal is.
I’ve looked it up, as I said above, their methods were not up to scratch, it.was.an observational study, rather than one that could determine anything, and as a result it doesn’t mean much.
Your comments about “doctors across the country” are just bland assertion.
Admit it, to yourself at least, that the only reason you give two hoots about hydroxychloroquine is political. There’s no good evidence it’s any use at all, clinging to it is ridiculous.
Hancock said the same about vitamin D but there is a lot of research out there that shows a strong correlation between vitamin d deficiency and hospitalisation or death from Covid. Vitamin D is being dismissed by people with no medical expertise (like Hancock) not long ago they were talking about adding vitamin d to our bread and milk and now all of a sudden it is not a problem.
Underlying illness Kills most SARS2 patients, fACT…obesity,diabetes,dementia,Cancer,leukaemia etc……
Yes definitely true I agree with that. But in otherwise healthy individuals their bodies will deal with the virus better if they have good levels of vitamin d.
One has to wonder if you listen and read much about this or simply watch CNn…
Just heard this:
https://youtu.be/DZjtiqujql8
You think the Dr intervewed is some Trumpian white male fragile, white supremacist, wall-building Hitler?
I have no clue which scientists are right. Neither do you, I suspect. I am only calling for healthy skepticism about policies which are wrecking the global economy. So terrible?
“so many scientists feel we should let out the relatively safe and build herd immunity whilst protecting the vulnerable?”
I don’t think this is a very popular view among scientists. Though, of course, there are a lot of scientists in the world so if even a small percentage of them thought this, the raw number of them could still vaguely be classed as “many”. Then there’s the problem of what kind of scientist. I would take an epidemiologist’s opinion on this matter much more seriously than, say, a cosmologist’s. I think in future it would help you communicate your argument better if you were more precise about your language with this sort of thing.
How mainy pier teviewed scientist would you consider ‘many’ or not enough?
Just one – the word of Dr Johnny Bananas is good enough for me.
This is a cheap comment. Anyone can maliciously sign a online petition in such a way as to undermine its message – the false names on the GBD say more about the opponents of the declaration than about the substance of the argument.
GBD remains more in line with how the civilised world has traditionally responded to disease, and your dismissal of it is fatuous.
The claims of X number of signatories to it are also fatuous and are entirely unverified, which is the point I was making, and is the same point Dr Bananas made.
“GBD” is a minority position. There’s certainly room for debate on the correct actions to take, but to paint it as conclusive or as evidence of anything much beyond ongoing scientific debate is wrong.
I think it’s more about the balance of opinion. Do most epidemiologists agree with you? Even if it’s not a majority but a significant percentage that would be a decent enough reason to appeal to their expertise. I literally don’t know if most epidemiologists agree with that statement or not, but I think saying “many scientists” could mean anything from a few dozen people who have degrees in unrelated subjects to a majority of the experts in the field! If you mean the former it’s a bit dishonest if you mean the latter you’re doing your argument a disservice. That’s why I asked about precision.
Now you’re just being obtuse.
Ok i didn’t even realise you meant the “great barrington declaration”. That firmly falls into the category of a small percentage of all scientists in the entire world. That’s good, i now understand what you mean.
It’s hard to know the true number because it takes a lot of guts at the moment for a scientist to come out with opinions that go against the narrative. That could be why so many of the scientist speaking up now are at or near retirement. They don’t fear the attempts to smear them and discredit them as much as someone with more to lose. It’s a scary situation.
Actually, there needn’t be such a
difficulty here. If we really care (even for reasons of ultimate
self-interest) that poorer countries have good access to the vaccine,
then rich countries should subsidise them to purchase the vaccines. This could be done perhaps on a sliding scale acccording to the GDP
per capita or similar measure. Perhaps there should be ‘strings attached’ related to good governance and non-corrupt administration, at least in the sphere of public health. (However no doubt some critics would then call this neocolonialism). This would avoid introducing all
sorts of market distortions and let the pharma companies do what they
are good at, developing medicines and making money (nothing wrong with
that, it keeps them in business for the long-term).
But I do tend to wonder if that very clarity would tend to show up so much ‘virtuous’ left liberal opinion, that though we care ever so much about an issue, we draw the line at actually seeing our own taxes rise to pay to address it. Hence it is easier to demand that big bad pharmaceutical companies give away their products.
We wrote basically the same reply at the same time!
There is a solution for the COVID vaccine and many other widely used pharmaceuticals that may be too expensive for the impoverished. If the public believes these should be provided at low or no cost, the public should, through their taxes, buy what is needed from the drug companies at market rates and distribute as they see fit. In other words, everyone should share the cost.
the US taxpayers have paid upfront for the development of the Moderna vaccine.
THREE vaccines are likely to reach the rich world by summer 2021 (four if Russia is included). Hence price competition will moderate the selling price of a Covid-19 vaccine very quickly indeed, no need to revoke patents. Most Pharma companies spending large sums on vaccine development will probably loose money because Covid-19 will possibly follow the paths of Swine Flu and SARS and ‘disappear’. In reality the human immune system will learn how to deal with Covid-19 before most Pharma companies have recovered their R&D costs.
For diseases which impact the rich world (kill many people) the market & capitalism work within the Pharma Industry.
For diseases which only impact the poor world then humankind should find a way of funding the R&D required – aid programs, academic prizes/grants etc. Expecting the Pharma Industry or Markets & Capitalism to develop these medicines is extremely foolhardy.
Pharma greed does kill.
Yep. Just look at the opioid problem in America
Not surprised Owen doesn’t understand basic economics. You can’t just force a company to give you something they spent millions developing, just as you can’t force someone to work for free. You have to decide that you want it cheap before it’s produced and then ask companies to make it- see what happens- see how many people you can get to work at something without paying them.
Companies take risks for THEIR profit….or perhaps greed…their is always “sovereign risk” …Big pharma is generally hugely after “Govt bucks” & get’s them!…..If researches are educated on the “Publics” dime why ought Big Pharma get all the fruits & not the Public? I take the view real scientific breakthroughs & innovation will generally be more driven with individuals thought & persevering than by “Big Pharmas” Board of Dirs & marketing depts….making “Committee decisions” .
Rather than researching a cure for baldness, Big Pharma should come up with a cure for hair – then everyone can be bald together.
Good 1! That must have been the governments thinking behind quarantining healthy people from a virus that they will likely only suffer mild symptoms or none at all.
A shining suggestion 😉
Big Pharma is a childish canard that you would expect from the Guardian – it would be more interesting to explore: – what is the WHO for and what has its role been in pandemic preparation
What we need is accountable government to make sure that public money is used in sensible ways – what one actually sees is cronyism at every level. We don’t even begin to understand how corrupt we are in this country though Kamran Abbasi in BMJ recently made a good start. There isn’t anybody in the political class, the DHSC or PHE that you can trust. The head of the JCVI, which recommends vaccines, is the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, which develops them. No conflict, what?
That is one of the many problems. There is so much conflict of interest and many people are aware of this which equals distrust.
It is said that the pharma industry spends more money on researching cures for baldness than it does for researching cures for malaria.
Malaria was once eradicated by something called DDT. Until a shrieking environmentalist made all sorts of accusations, DDT was banned, and malaria returned. Perhaps the pharma industry noticed this, too.
Malaria was not eradicated. If it had been, we would not still have it.
Logic?
Malaria was eradicated in some parts of the world, e.g. the parts of South Africa adjacent to Mozambique – and I think in a good part of Mozambique itself. If it were not for the Mozambique war of independence and the subsequent civil war it is likely that it could have been eradicated in Mozambique too.
Regarding the dangers of DDT mentioned in the OP – yes it is dangerous because of its persistence in the food chain. Its use was banned in South Africa by the National Party, a government not exactly famous for its environmental credentials.
malaria has never been eradicated anywhere.
sorry but I couldn’t find an article on the subject by Owen Jones
‘Malaria will not be eradicated in near future’, warns WHO
Three-year review says new vaccines for eradicating disease are only 40% effective
Sarah Boseley Health editor
Thu 22 Aug 2019 20.01 EDT
malaria has never been eradicated anywhere.
Yes, it has been.
DDT was also used to kill mosquitoes that spread malaria. By the early 1950s, the disease had essentially been eradicated in the United States. But it still had other nations in its grip, especially in Africa, making a comeback after it seemed on the verge of eradication. Jan 22, 2017
That’s from the New York Times, noting that DDT had wiped out the disease in parts of Africa, too. Then came Rachel Carson and her book that resulted in the chemical being banned, and malaria returning.
the quote you cite is essentially demonstrating that malaria was never eradicated…perhaps you don’t know the meaning of “eradicate.”
Agree that we’re going off topic here.
However I’ll stand by my statement about SA because my grandparents were part of that effort and it was complete within the borders of SA. The mistake made was that at that point the malaria eradication program just packed up shop – rather than being replaced by a monitoring system.
BTW malaria eradication involved many measures beyond DDT spraying.
and the fact remains…malaria has never been eradicated anywhere.
Evidence of malaria extent in Zululand early 20th c. https://muse.jhu.edu/articl…
Compare with current WHO data:
https://www.who.int/malaria….
Here’s an article from the SA Medical Journal that is full of facts
http://www.samj.org.za/inde…
I grew up in an area shown in the 1938 map as “milder summer epidemics”. By my childhood in the 1970s, zero malaria in the area.
The SAMJ article also counters the original assertion of, to paraphrase: “DDT is wonderful” and shows that DDT was just part of the program, and for a relatively brief time period.
Logic?
I recommend you try it. DDT had succeeded in wiping out malaria. Then came a book that banned DDT. What do you suppose happens when the substance that prevents the disease is no longer available?
You can still get an analog of DDT – in a product called Mosi- Milk. Replaces the trichlorethylene with a di-ethyl chemical. My wife uses it. I think you’d need to bathe in it to get sheep dip madness, trouble is its way too costly for the average poor farmer in MEA or LATAM to afford. So many still die from malaria. Considering the attitude of so many greenies and leftists i am not convinced this an unwanted side effect from their point of view.
Dear Unherd
Denmark Says NO To Lockdown Law & Government Relent #PeoplePower
you tube watch?v=zadErfQ2pMY
they are Kiling 17million mink,not because of SARS2 but they cant shift ‘The Fur”
Yet another wrongheaded piece from UnHerd. First of all, Chivers assumes vaccines are 100% safe, an assumption he never bothers to question. Yet in the US vaccine injury court, already $4 billion in damages have been paid out to families with children permanently damaged by adverse reactions to vaccines. And these cases only represent one third of those that exist in the US alone. This compensation is not paid for by the pharmaceutical industry but by the taxpayer, effectively granting the industry a get out of jail free card and zero liability. So what incentive do they have to even bother ensuring their vaccines are safe? It surprises me that in a country with universal medicare, Chivers would miss the obvious point that if medicine is socialized, it can be subsidized by that system, thus also managed by it. The private sector, whether in medicine or anything else, has only one goal: profit by the bucketload. Hardly a safe motivation to be encouraging where lives are at stake. And Bill Gates as “hero” and saver of lives? Please. Talk to Vandana Shiva about that one. Read her new book Oneness vs. the One Percent. His vaccine trials have ruined the lives of thousands of people in India and other countries. https://thevaccinereaction….
antivaxxers on the march
“The private sector, whether in medicine or anything else, has only one goal: profit by the bucketload. Hardly a safe motivation to be encouraging where lives are at stake. And Bill Gates as “hero” and saver of lives? Please.” Spot on Sean. Well noted! Research what Robert F Kennedy has been trying to say to all for decades Re Vaccines & Autism. I’ll try a link below.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Excellent piece, thanks. Also I think I’m right in saying that you found your answer regarding the government investing in the Oxford/AZ drug before peer review results 😊. I have a bit of a soft spot for Matt Hancock. He always come across to me as a sincerely nice person.
Here is an economist’s solution: have the relevant government authority pay the seller the difference between the market and the ‘fair’ price.
“A paper by Larry Summers, the Nobel-winning economist…”
I’m sure Summers would like to win but hasn’t.
Great piece and nice to see a moderate and sensible approach that’s not anti pharma (Big Pharma boo!) but equally not ‘yay Big Pharma profit profit profit!’ (like this Speccie piece: https://www.spectator.co.uk…
I wish campaigning groups (like MSF’s Access Campaign) could take a more sensible approach like this when they talk about these issues.
What is left out of this article is that much of the risk research is funded by the public purse; as we can see from the financial and patent links between NIH and Moderna, Gilead etc, but extends to other areas as well via the public funding of university research that that is done with funds from the pharmaceutical industry as well. Also, the current model gives the pharmaceutical industry a large incentive to fund negative research to produce false data on cheap generic products, as for example the false data on hydroxychlorioquine that has been produced by complicit researchers using near toxic doses and without the necessary accompanying zinc, when it has been known since 2003 that this drug acts as a zinc ionophore. They also invent medical conditions to promote profitable drugs, such as the use of statins to control the claimed relationship between cholesterol and heart disease that is, apart from a small part of he population with a genetic cause, due to diets that promote insulin resistance. This also applies to many of the other metabolic disorders that are diet based rather than diseases requiring medication.
Owen Jones’ writing is of insetimabel value to the public.
But I do hope he is not being paid for it, becasue that would just be greedy wouldn’t it?
I think Owen Jones thinks everyone should be paid a fair wage for their work.
He’d change his mind if he got paid a local newspaper wage, and the Guardian hired fairly, on the roll of a dice.
Why shouldn’t everyone be paid minimum wage to do whatever the government tells them to do?
hmm, i don’t think that’s anything to do with what you said in your first comment
True, I wen’t from mis-typed, sarcastic hyperbole to cold reductio-ad absurdum, a bit of a wild swing in commenting styles.
Congratulations, you are more than seven years old and you still believe in Santa Claus!
Neither Owen Jones nor the original Guardian article state Pfizer will make £9.8billion in profit. They state they will make £9.8billion in global sales, very different.
Thanks for pointing that out. It did seem an extreme number for profit, $2 per person worldwide.
Tom Chivers is by far the worst journalist at unherd.com.
Pharma companies will make billions from a vaccine that works dramatically worse than our own immunity once exposed to the virus. The only usefulness of the vaccine comes from the fact that the media and Gates have managed to convince everyone that the only way out is the vaccine.
If the media had advertised the true unlikeliness of catching the disease twice, or put into context the likelihood of dying from it to begin with, no one would want the vaccine.
The real problem is that we only talk about money, investment and profit, and we leave aside what really matters, the value of life. What does it matter if more or fewer people die? How important is it if only those who live in rich countries have access to medicine, but the rest of the world dies?
It is really a shame that the creation of drugs, vaccines or antibiotics, all to save lives, is a matter of money. Very sad. One more demonstration of how skewed the values are today.
It is really a shame that the creation of drugs, vaccines or antibiotics, all to save lives, is a matter of money.
just imagine the creation without money. R&D isn’t cheap. The extensive regulatory process, at least in the US, is not fun to navigate. No one involved is working for free. It seems today’s “values” are fixated on people getting anything they want, anytime they want it, at no cost to themselves, and then to demand more of it.
The military budget, only in the United States, for the year 2020 was $721.5 billion ($ 721,531,000,000) There is nothing more to say. It is obvious where the value of life is.
That’s a very nice straw man you built; he’ll go nicely in the spot where you just moved the goalposts.
Freedom is not free; it requires defending and that’s not free, either. As it is, defense is less than 20% of the federal budget. It would be a lot less if some other countries would do their own heavy lifting.
“Freedom is not free; it requires defending and that’s not free, either.”
That’s one of the biggest cliches of history.
Keep spending on bullets … while your society falls ill with obesity, diabates and endless diseases. Then the pharmaceutical industry deals with its medicines, which ultimately does not cure them, on the contrary, it makes them sick from other things, which are on the list of “side effects”.
The price of “freedom”
For diseases which only impact the poor world then humankind should find a way of funding the R&D required –
aid programs, academic prizes/grants etc. Expecting the Pharma
Industry or Markets & Capitalism to develop these medicines is
extremely foolhardy.
HAHAHA “Bill Gates will, I hope, be remembered as one of the great heroes of the 21st century”, I just couldn’t keep reading after those first lines. Maybe the author should check out this excellent article in the Nation:
https://www.thenation.com/a…
A person who claims to be a philanthropist, constantly cries out about the wealth gap yet becomes the second richest man in the WORLD, and people still prostate themselves to his feet as if he is some kind of hero. Wake up people.
who knew that “Owen Jones” was such a massive trigger for England’s right wing snowflakes.
So Gates comes to the rescue on his white charger. It was estimated Gates and Fuci would make a cool Trillion dollars out of this vaccine for the scamdemic, because of the tentacles they have in big pharma and the relevant organisations. And before you all run to get jabbed i’ll just leave this here. https://violationtracker.go…
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
A UK Doc/ businessman who calls out the corona virus for the hoax it is. Please share.
Many experts are opposed to what seems to be “the only allowed MSM Narrative” …seems also to me too many “sheep” are easily hoodwinked or silenced or both… the silencing of debate & censorship is astonishing…& that is a huge threat to all good policy.
I still don’t think they have tested the vaccine with any side effects it might have. It usually takes about fours years to make sure there are no side effects. This vaccine is in danger of being rushed without looking at the long term effect.
How the hell do any of us know what it will do to folks down the line? We don’t know & I suspect THEY don’t know…but this will be a trillion dollar industry…why trust them?
Great article, very sensible propositions, I fear that politicians will create a mess of it, and hope that people like Bill Gates continue to save real lives, but hope is all we have I fear. Poor old Owen Jones, maybe he was an only child in a small family, without hordes of bossy aunts and uncles who can be quite ferocious in their advice to think before you speak.
Dear HERD
YOU TUBE /watch?v=xjWpP8wTkzk
Ermmm 😕 Man Falls Of Ladder & Dies 😢 Guess What He Was Written Off With ðŸ¥..
Alex Belfield – THE VOICE OF REASON
LOL he lost me in the first paragraph hoping that Bill Gates will be remembered as a hero.
I have previously had this link put down the unHerd Memory hole…Silencing debate? Censorship or what? – Top Pathologist Claims COVID-19 Is “The Greatest Hoax Ever Perpetrated On An Unsuspecting Public”
https://www.zerohedge.com/m…
This is a brilliant interview of Robert Kennedy Jnr.!! Really a must see “…biggest tool for authoritarianism…” https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Pharma companies need to make profits in order to reinvest in research.
If we want the poor to have access to medicine then the taxpayer has to pay the Pharma companies full price and give that medicine to its own poor or to poorer countries within their foreign aid budget.
The Pfizer share price is lower today than it was a year ago because investors know that they will be pressured to give the drug away for free.
I’m a doc in Canada, more-than-average knowledgeable about this stuff, but no immunologist. I have been involved with issues around Big Pharma from a variety of perspectives on various committees and regulatory bodies. I give that info to say that I think this article is great, and shows some very good insight into the issues at play.
The shortest book ever is “Great Advancements in Pharmeceuticals from Communist Countries”.
On the other hand, selling drugs is NOT the same as selling designer sunglasses. You can charge me 130 bucks for Vuarnet’s and maybe I’ll pay. Crank it up to 200 and screw you. Free markets dictate prices and are a “fair” and reasonable way of doing so. But what about my cardiac drug that keeps me alive? I can afford it at 150 bucks a month. Crank it to 200 and I skip a couple of restaurant meals. Crank it to 400 and I either stop buying it and die, or become homeless because I can’t make rent. It’s the free market, sure, but somehow feels ethically wrong at that point.
This article does a good job of talking about the difficulty in finding a balance between letting free market incentives set prices and encourage innovation, vs. making drugs affordable enough that the majority of people who need them can afford them.
I am so tired of being put down the memory hole here at unherd…what hypocrisy!! What is really being un-Heard is, Big Pharma 9/10th of the time is a big scam & Big Brother helping folks 9/10ths of the time is also a big scam. If both of them, along with the countless folks in “The System”, were interested in “healthy people” rather than “a reason to earn their bread” they would start by teaching kids & folks if you eat “toxic processed foods” full of sugar & salt, & crap oils & god know what else in them, & you don’t eat healthy e.g. plant based whole foods & get good water & air & exercise YOU WILL GET MESSED UP VERY BADLY & pills won’t fix this!! …& you will die WELL before your time. .. How many overweight & half crippled folks do we see at the supermarket nowadays? And look at their kids?..I say wake up, it’s all about MONEY…& even Dr’s (which I love) need patients. …If they/we don’t teach kids & others to eat & drink healthy & get some exercise etc we/”the system” is a FRAUD!…And that is irrefutable!. Hello moderator, put this down the Mem. hole ..& let be it on your conscience!
https://www.rt.com/news/502…
‘Everybody dies’: Musk says neither he nor his family will take Covid-19 vaccine, blasts Bill Gates as ‘knucklehead’
https://www.rt.com/news/502…
What is really being un-Heard is, Big Pharma 9/10th of the time is a big scam & Big Brother helping folks 9/10ths of the time is also a big scam. If both of them, along with the countless folks in “The System”, were interested in “healthy people” rather than “a reason to earn their bread” they would start by teaching kids & folks if you eat “toxic processed foods” full of sugar & salt, & crap oils & god know what else in them, & you don’t eat healthy e.g. plant based whole foods & get good water & air & exercise YOU WILL GET MESSED UP VERY BADLY & pills won’t fix this!! …& you will die WELL before your time. .. How many overweight & half crippled folks do we see at the supermarket nowadays? And look at their kids?..I say wake up, it’s all about MONEY…& even Dr’s (which I love) need patients. …If they/we don’t teach kids & others to eat & drink healthy & get some exercise etc we/”the system” is a FRAUD!…And that is irrefutable!
Ron Paul & Robert F. Kennedy Jr on Vaccines Unemployment MKUltra John F.Kennedy Assassination. Some brilliant commentary by Kennedy re Vaccines here. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
This is a bunch of very experienced USA Doctors called “Americas Frontline Doctors” who have been treating Covid at the frontline..& their recent criticism of mainstream Covid Media & political “narratives”, falsehoods & propaganda. And the inherent dangers re all this. Well worth noting. Don’t miss it. https://www.americasfrontli…
I’m building up a picture of you, Tom, and I’m not sure I like what I see. Did Summers really say “the virus … will cost the US economy $16 trillion”? or did he say the responses to the virus would cost that much? And we can bet the vaccine will be good for us??? Really? Despite our loss of liberty, the suppression of free speech, the desecration of democracy in return for Chinese-style diktat and, according to Mike Yeadon previously of Pfizer, that we are nearly all immune anyway??? I won’t abuse you personally Tom, but your analysis borders on the fascist.
I know what you mean… please Tom you are a philosophy graduate! use your skepticism and powers of reason, check the language around the claims. The $16trn came from somewhere….probably from someone’s febrile imagination. If you tell me that’s the cost of virus panic, opportunism and power hungry leaders leveraging SARS-CoV2 to their benefit i might be persuaded. But the virus itself!!! its still only the 20 something most common cause of death. If that costs us $16 trn what about the other 50 milion deaths so far this year?? if only 25% were economically active that equals $400 trn. This is c3.3 times world GDP! the saying “If it looks wrong it probably is” would be a good place to start.
Hmm – Bill Gates as hero.
Stroke much? Maybe he’ll recognize your fealty, Mr. Chivers, and give you treasured position in his emergent global medi-state.
You are worshipping evil.