Tories are using the poor for medical experimentation

Mike draws a further conclusion here about the passage of recent legislation allowing the use of experimental drugs before they have completed proper pharmaceutical trials, and the absolutely Tory contempt for the poor. It has been the Tory and Tory Democrat Coalition that have forced members of the unemployed to take jobs as medical research subjects. Even if this is not a premeditated plan to use the poor as test subjects for the drug companies, I doubt that the Coalition will find the testing of drugs on them at all unwelcome or remotely inconvenient. Unlike the rich, the poor have difficulty affording legal counsel. They have fewer options with regard to their health care, and, unlike the aristos making up the Tory front bench, they most certainly will not cause economic or political embarrassment to the country if something goes wrong. By which I mean, they won’t withdraw all their money from the economy, causing a run on the pound, which is what one foreign billionaire threatened would happen back in the 1980s after his son was thrown out of Eton.

This is also much cheaper, and much more profitable, from actually having to do something expensive and potentially electorally embarrassing, like tackling the environment causes contributing to sickness or disability. Social Darwinism and eugenics became fashionable in the 19th century because they allowed rapacious and exploitative employers to avoid having to submit to health and safety legislation on behalf of workers left diseased through their industries. Finding ways to stop your workers getting, say, lead poising, ‘fossy jaw’ from the phosphorous they absorbed when making matches, asbestosis or any of the other industrial diseases can be expensive and means further government interfering in business. It’s far preferable for irresponsible big businesses to argue against ‘health and safety’ legislation, and the try and excuse the number of mentally, intellectually and physically damaged people springing up around their factories as all due to genetic faults. Nothing to do with us, Sir! It’s the poor – they’re genetically predisposed to disease. Best if they were sterilised to prevent ’em breeding. This is the attitude on which this bill is partly based, and to which it may ultimately lead.

Mike Sivier's blog

Seal of approval: We asked TV doctor House MD whether he foresaw any problems with the Early Access to Medicines scheme. “Nuh-uhrr,” he replied.

Concern has been raised over a plan announced by Health Secretary (and misprint) Jeremy Hunt to give new medicines to people who are severely ill, years before they are licensed.

In comparison, little has been said about findings by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showing that people in deprived areas live shorter lives and spend more of those lives in poor health.

There is an obvious conclusion to be drawn from this:

If poorer people spend more time in ill health, then they are more likely to be given experimental drugs before those treatments are clinically proven.

In other words, the Conservative-led government is using the poor as guinea pigs for drug trials.

The BBC quoted Mr Hunt: “What patients want is sometimes to…

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