Journoblog

Pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline appears to have gone all warm and fuzzy and put thousands of potential malaria curing compounds. This means that any other pharma company can use them to create new drugs.

If this doesn't come as a surprise, it's probably because you haven't heard much about GSK. To be fair, all drugs manufacturers are in a difficult position: We want them around because their products can save lives, but they have to turn a profit to keep shareholders happy, which means they have to build a business model around making money from people in poor health. Not the easiest conundrum to get around, but perhaps this is the reason why businesses like GSK seem to have totally demagnetised their moral compasses. You can click here and read a bit about them,  but here is a handful of highlights from their history:

Hiding test results showing that anti-depressant Seroxat was causing teenagers to commit suicide or self-harm.

Putting Avandia, a diabetes treatment which also seems to raise risk of strokes and heart disease, on the market.

Releasing trichloroethylene, a carcinogenic cleaning solvent, into a local water supply.

A drugs test on 13,000 Argentinean children involving reports of poor standards of care, parents being coerced or threatened into signing consent forms and parents being unaware of their children's participation.

Testing drugs on poor and illiterate people in India in order to cut costs, despite reports that most of the Indian population will never see any resulting drugs as they will be too expensive.

Spending millions of dollars on lobbying campaigns in order to influence laws passed or denied in US Congress.

Paid $400 million to settle an investigation into their sales and marketing methods.


So, call me cynical, but as I was reading about their gesture of goodwill in The Guardian, I couldn't help thinking: "How unexpected; GSK are one of the most morally repugnant companies in the universe. This must have something to do with money."

So I continue reading Glaxo UK boss Andrew Witty's fluffy corporate babble about earning "the trust of society" and so on, looking for clues which might lead to the real reason for releasing all of that potential profit.

"It's trying to create a permissiveness around scientific research in an area where we know the marketplace isn't going to stimulate massive research".

There it is. That sentence translates precisely to: "There's not enough money in a cure for malaria".

From one point of view, as I said, GSK is a business with shareholders to please, so losing money isn't going to be an attractive idea for the bosses. On the other hand, malaria kills around three million people every year.

I'm not surprised that our friends at GlaxoSmithKline aren't exactly doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. What they've done is decided that, if they're not going to profit from curing malaria, they'll use their abandonment of the project to improve their company image (very cheaply) by offering up what they deem to be worthless assets and issuing a press release.  If malaria is cured as a result, then that can only be a good thing. But when GSK pop their heads up and tell everyone it was based on their generously donated compound, I hope enough people remind them exactly why they didn't finish the job themselves.

GlaxoSmithKline have been urged to take the same steps with their AIDS research, but that information remains secret. There's still money in AIDS.

The reporting pattern for natural disasters seems to be as follows:

1: Report nature and location of disaster.
2: Report death toll as it develops.
3: Report shambolic aid efforts.

The coverage of the earthquake in Haiti seems to be following this pattern. Sadly, the aid efforts are more disorganised than ever. According to The Times, the UN are trying to pass on as much responsibility for the mess to the shattered Haitian government as they can get away with. As they pass the buck back and forth, not much is getting done.

Barack Obama is pledging a great deal of time and money to the cause. Call me a cynic, but I can't help wondering if so much effort would be afforded if Haiti wasn't so close to the US, or if The States didn't have such a large Haitian population. Would such a disaster achieve so much attention were it to occur in East Asia, for example? Still, regardless of motive, I'm glad significant effort is being made.

Which is more than can be said for our government. £6 million? Consider that compared to the £4.5 billion spent on war in Iraq and Afghanistan by February 2009.

But then, if were are to look at aid pledges versus killing expenditure, the US doesn't look so hot either. $100 million promised in aid for Haiti, almost a trillion spent in the Middle East. I suppose the lesson to be learned here is that governments will spend a lot more money on ending lives than they will on saving them.

The Times has reported looting and lynching of looters in Haiti today. When faced with this kind of thing I can't help thinking about our discussions on a State of Nature. When law is removed, how do people respond?

You can't always blame the looters; they're sometimes only trying to provide for their families in a crisis, often risking their lives to do so. This kind of activity wouldn't surprise Hobbes, nor would the fact that military personnel need to be present when handing out bottles water to desperate people who naturally don't want to wait in a queue to receive their fair share. As for the people who lynch or behead the looters; Locke would most likely agree with their actions. Rousseau would be pleased to see that most people are helping each other in any way they can.

I suppose for us to really see who is right,  this time of desperation and lawlessness would need to go on for a lot longer: Let's hope the powers that be can get their act together quickly so that none of the philosophers are proven right.

Click here to read The Times Online report

Apologies for the lack of a recent post. It does make me realise how quickly things can slip if I leave them or allow myself to become distracted by things such as Christmas and New Year.

It strikes me how easy it is to use the end of the year as an excuse not to do anything. It's a deadly combination; the temptation to say "I won't think about that now, it's Christmas", followed by "I'll start doing that properly next year." Before you know it, you've not exercised, stuck to your diet, checked your oil or posted on your blog for several weeks. It's important to realise that even if you stop moving at year-end, time doesn't.

As Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Price on the grounds that he is not George W. Bush, I feel obliged to point out to the world that I am also not George W. Bush.

Plus, Mr Obama has recently sent 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.
I have sent fewer troops to Afghanistan than this. To date, I have sent approximately zero troops into Afghanistan. That's a difference of about 30,000.

I would also wager that Mr Obama's carbon footprint is several thousand times greater than mine. Living in a white house is supposed to be good for the environment, but i think I still have the edge.

However, I must confess that neither of us have signed the Kyoto agreement, so we're on an equal footing there.

I broke up a fight in a pub once. Barack killed a fly on telly.

It's right there in facts and figures, folks. They can't argue with it. See you in Oslo.

The Freedom of Information Act makes it mandatory for a public authority to disclose whether or not it has the information requested of it. The same is also required of privatised bodies (such as utilities companies), police and fire authorities and quangos.


Exciting piece of information: Quango is an acronym for "QUasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation."


There are some exemptions, such as security and intelligence services, Special Air Service, Special Boat Service, and GCHQ (never ask for information from someone who loves in a doughnut). Chris also mentioned NCIS (National Crime intelligence Service). It's worth mentioning that this organisation ceased to exist in 2006, when it was merged into SOCA (Serious Organised Crime Agency), amusingly on April Fools' Day. 


Information must be released unless it is judged that the public interest is not served, or if the public interest in NOT releasing the information is greater than in releasing it. See PCC Code of Conduct if you're not sure what public interest means.


The body from which the request is made must respond within 20 days:
"Do you have this information?" - 20 days
"Can I have it?" - another 20 days


What is "information"?
The act specifies that only information that is recorded or written down can be requested. "Sofa conversations" don't count. None of the information about the initiating of the war in Iraq was written down, so it remains largely secret.  Nice to know that the decision to go to war was made on a Chesterfield over a cup of tea and some French fancies.


Section 16 of the act says they must assist you and must not mislead you, but they can charge you a "reasonable" price and can also refuse information on the basis of "prohibitive expense".