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Tonight, the US media is awash with the story of pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, fined three billion dollars for illegally promoting prescription drugs, failing to report safety data, bribing doctors (what’s new!), and pushing medicines for unlicensed purposes.

The US news media stressed that GlaxoSmithKline was a ‘British’ company, presumably in some weak attempt to take heat away from the US pharmaceutical industry. What, though, constitutes the Britishness of a company, that has operational sites in thirty-nine countries?

Its headquarters are in London, but this mega-huge multinational can hardly be termed ‘British’. Its roots go back to 1830, when American, John K Smith, opened a drugstore in Philadelphia with his younger brother, George. In 1865, they took on a bookkeeper, Mahlon Kline. Meanwhile, Joseph Nathan, a New Zealander, set up a company in Wellington, NZ, and began producing dried milk powder for babies. That company eventually became Glaxo.

Over the next hundred years, there followed a series of mergers and takeovers involving companies mostly from the US and UK, which resulted in the giant, GlaxoSmithKline.^[1].

While GSK has its global headquarters in London, its US HQ is in North Carolina, and its products division is in Pennsylvania.

The global pharmaceutical market is expected to reach a value of just under one trillion dollars ($929 billion) in 2012. GSK is now the biggest player in this field.

We all need our medicines, and GSK has grown fat by constantly reiterating that fact. Though, maybe it isn’t quite so factual after all.

As long ago as 2003, the ‘Independent’ newspaper was revealing this:

A senior executive with Britain’s biggest drugs company has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who take them.

Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most expensive drugs actually derived any benefit from them.

It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time that such a senior drugs boss has gone public […]

“The vast majority of drugs – more than 90 per cent – only work in 30 or 50 per cent of the people,” Dr Roses said. “I wouldn’t say that most drugs don’t work. I would say that most drugs work in 30 to 50 per cent of people. Drugs out there on the market work, but they don’t work in everybody.” […]

“Roses is a smart guy and what he is saying will surprise the public but not his colleagues,” said one industry scientist. “He is a pioneer of a new culture within the drugs business based on using genes to test for who can benefit from a particular drug.”

Dr Roses has a formidable reputation in the field of “pharmacogenomics” – the application of human genetics to drug development – and his comments can be seen as an attempt to make the industry realise that its future rests on being able to target drugs to a smaller number of patients with specific genes.

The idea is to identify “responders” – people who benefit from the drug – with a simple and cheap genetic test that can be used to eliminate those non-responders who might benefit from another drug.

This goes against a marketing culture within the industry that has relied on selling as many drugs as possible to the widest number of patients – a culture that has made GSK one of the most profitable pharmaceuticals companies, but which has also meant that most of its drugs are at best useless, and even possibly dangerous, for many patients.”^[2] [italics added].

It seems that the ogre of Global Capitalism continues to rear its ugly, greed-infested, head at the expense of our health and well-being.

^{[1] “Our history” GSK.com}

^{[2] “Glaxo chief: Our drugs do not work on most patients” Independent, December 8th 2003}

Given the ruling of the US Supreme Court this week on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), otherwise referred to as “Obamacare”, it would seem US President Barack Obama got his way. However, his way as president is at variance with his way as a presidential hopeful:

Both of us want to provide health care to all Americans. There’s a slight difference, and her plan is a good one. But, she mandates that everybody buy health care. She’d have the government force every individual to buy insurance and I don’t have such a mandate because I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want health insurance, it’s that they can’t afford it. So, I focus more on lowering costs. This is a modest difference. But, it’s one that she’s tried to elevate, arguing that because I don’t force people to buy health care that I’m not insuring everybody. Well, if things were that easy, I could mandate everybody to buy a house, and that would solve the problem of homelessness. It doesn’t.”

Democratic candidate, Senator Barack Obama, comparing his health care plan to that of Hilary Clinton’s on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, February 28th 2008.

Only the most hard-hearted could fail to feel sympathy for the citizens of Colorado Springs, evacuated from their homes as forest fires engulf the area.

It’s not exactly the poorest area of America. A quick glance at local realtor sites reveals a plethora of homes with price tags in the $millions.

The problem of wildfires in America is nothing new. They’re a regular occurrence, particularly in the drier, western, states. No-one ever suggests preventative measures, other than not lighting camp fires, or dropping cigarette ends, when the undergrowth is tinder-dry.

Yet, there are very effective preventative measures practiced in other countries, perhaps more prepared to spend the money on resources than rely on that good old American attitude of, ‘hope for the best and trust in God’.

^{Click to enlarge}

No, sorry, citizens of Colorado, it didn’t work for Governor Perry and the people of Texas, and it won’t work for you. In the unlikely event of rain falling in your area, it won’t be the hand of God but a quirk of Mother Nature. And, it’s no good praying to her. Her job is to look after the planet, not its inhabitants.

American firefighters, like others of that trade the world over, do an amazing job and cannot be praised enough. It’s just a pity the State of Colorado allows these fires to become so rampant in the first place.

There is a profession, largely unpracticed in America. It’s called Forest Management. Trees are living things. Like all life on Earth they shed their dead bits on a regular basis. Over time, those dead bits build up, stifling the new growth underneath. When this dry brush becomes too much, Mother Nature sets fire to it, burning it away and allowing the forests to rejuvenate.

Of course, if a tribe of Homo sapiens comes along and insists on building dwellings in the forest, they must take action to ensure they don’t get burnt along with the undergrowth.

Unfortunately, they do nothing. Instead, they hope for the best, trust in God, and get burned.

Other nations practice successful forest management. Trees are thinned, dead brush is removed on a regular basis and taken to a convenient, safe, site and burned. Wide fire breaks are constructed and kept in good condition by forestry workers. The UK, for example, rarely has a wildfire. The Forestry Commission (a government agency) is responsible for fire prevention in its one million hectares of forest throughout England, Wales, and Scotland. When a fire does occur, it’s easy to control because of the preventative measures in place. Private logging companies, common in America, are only concerned with profit and will usually leave a fire-hazard mess behind. UK logging is controlled by the Forestry Commission, and any private loggers have to clean up the site before they leave.^[1]

No doubt, the cynics would argue that American forests are much too vast for such treatment to be viable. It’s true, but dwellings would be protected if forested areas within, say, forty or fifty miles, were properly managed.

Of course, that might mean raising state taxes to pay for it, and most Americans would rather ‘hope for the best and trust in God’ than pay higher taxes. God forbid!

Remember Hurricane Katrina? Who could forget it? Instead of taking preventative action and improving the levees pre-Katrina, they hoped for the best, trusted in God, and got wet.

Nobody listens to Benjamin Franklin anymore. He coined the adage, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” At the time, 1736, he was organizing the prevention of fires in Philadelphia, so the quote is highly relevant. He was right, of course, but these days no-one wants to spend money preventing something that might happen. After all, isn’t that why sensible people have insurance?

The folks of Colorado, those who’ve lost loved ones, beloved pets, irreplaceable family heirlooms and treasures, childhood photographs, mementos, will now realize that even the best insurance doesn’t cover everything. In fact, it really doesn’t cover much at all.

Maybe a few more dollars in state tax, to pay for proper forestry management and fire prevention, would have proved the best insurance of all.

^{[1] “Forestry Commission” Wikipedia.}