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(Opinion) Afghanistan: despair would be a good thing

There is much to be said about Afghanistan, from its culture to its recent history of turmoil, grief, and political-economic dysfunction but what can't be said is that Afghanistan, for all the efforts of NATO and the UN, will come out from the other side, if such a side exists. What it would take to get Afghanistan on its feet would mean more blood and treasure for the occupying forces as Afghanistan has been on its knees for a long time.

From the British Empire, to the Soviets, and now the United States, Afghanistan has been in a state of constant conflict with foreign powers and local warlords all scrambling for their share of Afghanistan future with normal Afghans trying to survive the carnage in the middle. The violence in Afghanistan is still rampant, death prevalent, hope dimming and reality damning.

 To see the full article, follow this link to filmannex.com

http://www.filmannex.com/posts/blog_show_post/opinion-afghanistan-despair-would-be-a-good-thing/56659

(sports) Cricket:Twenty20 World Cup Pay Difference Highlights Gender Inequality

It only received very brief headlines, but the recent controversy over the living allowance disparity between male and female cricketers at the twenty20 world cup highlights some continuing worrying trends in the world of sport as a whole.

England captain Charlotte Edwards started the ‘controversy’ when she suggested that World Twenty20 chiefs would need to review the pay divide in the daily living allowance offered to women and men. Female cricketers at the 2012 Twenty20 world cup in Sri Lanka receive a daily allowance of £37 per day. Male cricketers at the 2012 Twenty20 world cup in the same country playing in an event organised by the same governing body have been receiving a daily living allowance of £61 per day. It was also noted that female cricketers were flown out to the subcontinent in economy class, while male cricketers travelled business class.

The first striking thing about these numbers might actually be the sheer quantity of money that cricketers receive for a living allowance. £259 per week isn’t a small amount when all of your basic expenses are handled for you. Male cricketers at the Twenty20 world cup have over £400 per week to spend on food and for entertainment purposes. That isn’t a bad perk for an already very good job.

It should also be mentioned that female cricketers are probably not overly concerned about having to survive off of ‘only’ £37 per day. Edwards was quick to state that ‘Our focus is on the cricket at the moment and not on how much money we get’. Of course there is more to playing cricket for your country then how much money you make. 

However, there are also some pretty clear principles that it would be pretty sensible to follow. There is absolutely no reason that men would need a living allowance worth £24 more per day than women. It can be argued that the discrepancy in the prize money is a result of their simply being a lot more money in the men’s game in general (the winning men’s team takes home £616,000, while the women’s winner collect £40,000). That is still a questionable issue, but a more complex one at least. The difference in daily living allowances at the Twenty20 world cup can only be put down to sexual discrimination. Logistically speaking it might actually have been a lot easier to split the money up more evenly.

 So, what’s the point? A difference in living allowances doesn’t seem to be a major issue compared to some of the other problems of sexism in sport, which are present at both a professional and recreational level, and start at a very young age.

Neither will simply evening up the living allowances fix these bigger problems. The point is rather that this difference is symptomatic and representative of the wider problems. It really shows a complete disregard for the equality that the sport should be striving for. If the game’s own governing bodies have sat down and produced a difference in budgeting that is a complete insult to the idea of equality, then what hope is there for improved gender equality in cricket in general?

Cricket isn’t the only sport that has this problem. Women’s football is the third largest team sport in the UK, but this is not at all represented in terms of sponsorship deals or in terms of television rights. Surveys including both genders suggest that the publicising of women’s sport via television is something that the majority of people would welcome.

The evidence from the few sports that have offered stronger support to the women’s game is that this is correct. At Wimbledon, the prize money for women and men is the same. Women’s tennis draws in comparable sized audiences both in the stands and on television to the men’s game. Does this mean that sexism is absent from tennis? Of course not, there are still problems with the perception of female tennis stars and with the general culture surrounding the sport. But the sport’s governing bodies do at least seem to be taking the issue of improving gender equality seriously.

Another example is women’s basketball in the United States. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) runs its league throughout the summer and receives prime television time on ESPN. While there are still some serious issues with the size of contracts, especially compared with the staggering figures made by NBA players, the WNBA has forged itself as an independent and effective sports league. It is widely recognised as such and generally popular. This is mirrored in college basketball, where the women’s tournament takes place alongside the men’s tournament and is a key component in helping the period maintain its name ‘March Madness’.

The daily living allowance handed out at the Twenty20 world cup may seem like a minor micro issue that just needs to be fixed behind closed doors, but the reality is that it is a part of some far larger institutional problems. The claim here is not that the problems with gender equality in sports can be magically fixed, or that there are models of gender equality that need to be followed.

There is a huge amount of work that needs to be done to improve this situation, and a lot of it will need to be ‘bottom up’. However, it is also incredibly important that the top governing bodies take the issue of gender equality seriously, and engage with it. It’s very hard to find the evidence to suggest that they have done that so far and the difference in the daily living allowance at the Twenty20 world cup, and in fact the complete lack of real scandal surrounding it, are just further proof that serious engagement is just not happening at this time.

(Opinion) Pharmaceutical Industry Controversy: You Can’t Trust Your Medicine

The truth is out about medically prescribed drugs. If you were hoping that the drugs prescribed to help cure your illnesses by your doctors were thoroughly and transparently tested by responsible and unbiased professionals, then I am afraid you will be disappointed. The good news is that you can still trust your local doctor as much as you did before. Your physicians are not acting maliciously towards you at all. The bad news is that the legal framework of the pharmaceutical industry appears to be specifically constructed to allow the pharmaceutical industry to put drugs into the marketplace regardless of their effectiveness and regardless of their potential negative side effects.

Okay, so let’s talk this through. Medical professionals will tell you that very few if any medical drugs are perfect and that drugs have varying degrees of success with different people and even drugs that are extremely helpful can have negative side effects. However, there is a very basic expectation that when you are prescribed medicine, it will be have been proven that that medicine can have some sort of positive effect on your health, and that the doctor prescribing you that medicine will have enough information to decide whether the benefits outweigh the side effects of the drug they are prescribing.

This article will contest that the recent controversies surrounding the pharmaceutical industry show that not only is this basic expectation not being met, but that legal and systematic processes are insuring that it isn’t. Recent findings paint a picture of an industry that prioritises its own financial gain over any concern for health or even a basic sense of morality.

Ben Goldacre recently published some absolutely incredible data in his recent book that demonstrates the pharmaceutical industry actively deceiving physicians and the general population. Reboxetine is marketed as an antidepressant used to treat clinical depression, panic disorder and ADHD. If you read up on the drug it will show you a convincing list of seemingly well-designed tests with positive results. The drug is reported as performing better in trials both against a placebo and other antidepressants.

 However, in October 2010 the full picture of Reboxetine was finally revealed by a group of researchers. Seven trials had been conducted with only one showing positive results, but the company elected to publish the only positive results. It should be made clear at this point that there is no legal requirement for all trial results to be revealed. However, once the other six trials were brought to light, they showed a shocking tale of deceit. In all six trials it was shown that Reboxetine was no better than a dummy sugar pill. 

The trials showed 507 patients benefitted more from Reboxetine over other drugs with all of those results being published. A further 1,657 patients worth of data clearly demonstrated without question that Reboxetine was no better than other drugs. It seems that the current structures allow the pharmaceutical industry to actively discount three quarters of the data from their trials.Even more worrying is that Reboxetine actually displayed several negative side effects on certain trial subjects. This was not reported because the trials were simply discounted. Officially, they were never conducted.

               

 An even more horrific example is the case of paroxetine in children. Paroxetine is another anti-depressant drug. GlaxoSmithKline conducted trials of the drug on children with no benefits shown. The company decided not to reveal this information and internal documents actually revealed a deliberate cover up of the trial results to protect the company’s interests. During that time 32,000 prescriptions were given to children by doctors believing the pharmaceutical industry’s claim that the drug worked. 

Not only did GSK withhold the fact that the drugs were ineffective, but they also withheld much more serious information about its side effects. A legal loophole meant that GSK did not have to inform the regulator of the side effects on children from Parexotine. Parexotine’s safety data was not revealed to the regulator because the drug doesn’t have specific market authorisation for use on children. The side effect that wasn’t reported was that Parexotine increased the risk of suicide in children.

 GSK were not legally obligated to report the findings of their safety tests. The pharmaceutical industry, an industry responsible for producing medicine, prioritised their reputation and financial gain over the health and safety of children; children whose doctors had judged needed to be treated with anti-depressants. It might be worth dwelling on that point. Children who needed treatment for issues like depression and panic disorder were prescribed a drug that not only wouldn’t help them, but could increase the risk of their committing suicide, and there were people who knew this, people who could have prevented it.

There are no mysteries surrounding the people who are perpetrating these travesties. In 2010, academics in Toronto and Harvard researched a huge range of drug trials and found that 85% of industry funded drug trials turned up positive results, while government funded trials produced a success rate of just 50%. This is far too large of a gulf to be anything besides manipulation. Besides the fact that researchers are free to bury any negative results and at times academics and researchers are even contractually obliged to maintain secrecy, there are also other ways in which these trials can be manipulated. Researchers can watch results as they come in, intervene at any point and even test their drug against other drugs that they know do not work. This isn’t the way in which science or medicine production is supposed to work.

The pharmaceutical industry can only be trusted to act in its own financial interest. This is a fact about businesses that is generally accepted in society, but there has always been an implicit assumption that the production of medical drugs was regulated and designed to ensure the health and safety of the patients that will eventually be prescribed them. Private industry cannot even be trusted to inform doctors of an extremely harmful side effect for a drug being prescribed to children. The case of the pharmaceutical industry would seem to be yet another argument against the privatisation of NHS services. The consequences for allowing market and capital to take priority over social responsibility can be truly catastrophic. 

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