The Saatchi Bill: Deregulating Drug Safety Testing by Stealth

What is the purpose of the Saatchi Bill? That may seem an odd question: the full name of the Bill is ‘the Medical Innovation Bill’ and that is what is usually put forward as its purpose, other than in more hyperbolic PR flourishes when it is occasionally represented as ‘a Bill to cure cancer’.

But there has been expert evidence aplenty that doctors are not prevented by innovating by the law at present – to give just one example here’s the head of professional standards at the Medical defence Union http://www.bmj.com/content/350/bmj.h531/rr . If people who really do know say the Bill is not needed why does its sponsor, Lord Saatchi, plough on with the Bill virtually unchanged? It could be down to his personality, as argued here http://www.statsguy.co.uk/the-saatchi-bill/. That piece is both well researched and well argued, but I disagree with the conclusion.

A more honest title for the Bill would be ‘the Deregulation of Medical Safety Testing Bill’. I’m quite prepared to believe that Lord Saatchi is acting partly from altruistic motives (though it would be foolish to dismiss too lightly the evidence he does stand to make a significant profit personally. See https://opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/anne-williams/maurice-saatchi-his-medical-innovation-bill-and-booming-%E2%80%98orphan-drugs%E2%80%99-mark#.VMKgBPMucv8.twitter).  If Maurice Saatchi is a free market fundamentalist, who genuinely believes that ‘the magic of the market’ will solve any problem it follows that any regulation – even testing medical drugs for safety before they can be prescribed – is holding back progress.

It is entirely possible that during his wife’s illness Lord Saatchi asked his contacts in the pharmaceutical industry why more could not be done and was told “we have lots of drugs sitting on the shelf which might be effective, but we can’t use them because it’s such a long and expensive business to get them tested and authorised for use.” Rather than get into the complex detail of how drugs are tested he hit upon a Gordian knot type of solution: if doctors could use untested drugs without any penalty if it went wrong they would use then even if they had not been tested.

Had the proposal been phrased as ‘let’s allow doctors to use untested drugs without any repercussions if they harm patients’ it would have been dismissed as ”mad” (as my GP said when I put this idea to her). Thalidomide would have been mentioned.

Interestingly the Saatchi Bill is far from alone. Across the USA various ‘Right To Try’ laws have been proposed, often sold as ‘Dallas Buyers Club’ laws. As Science Based Medicine notes http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-illusions-of-right-to-try-laws/ movies are not usually sound reasons to write laws. The US Food and Drugs Administration has long been a bête noire of the US far right and it is no great surprise that the Goldwater Institute has thrown itself behind these efforts, even helpfully drafting legislation for states to enact.

When the UK Saatchi Bill PR office started using #righttotry as a Twitter hashtag any doubt that the two campaigns were not related evaporated. No matter how queasy some of the efforts of the Saatchi Bill’s ‘media partner’, the Daily Telegraph might make one at least we’ve been spared five year old Jordan  http://www.wthr.com/story/28029775/5-year-old-lobbies-lawmakers-for-right-to-try-bill so far.

But the reality of the Saatchi Bill is far more radical than anything the Goldwater Institute have dared to try. US ‘Right to Try’ laws have been restricted to terminally ill patients. While the Saatchi Bill PR team have insisted that their Bill is primarily about terminal patients (see http://medicalinnovationbill.co.uk/about-the-medical-innovation-bill/ brilliantly corrected here https://wanderingteacake.wordpress.com/the-saatchi-bill-2/how-saatchi-actually-work/ ) and have managed to shift almost all discussion to being about terminally ill patients the reality is, and it is admitted in small print, it applies to all patients, all doctors, all conditions.

So PR has shifted most of the discussion around this Bill to become, “if I was terminally ill would shouldn't I be allowed to try an untested drug? Er, because you might die in agony? And not ‘what if a patient goes to a doctor, is promised “innovative treatment” which will cure an ingrown toenail, loses a leg and then finds they can’t sue?’

A great deal of effort has gone into pointing out that the Saatchi Bill would open the door for quackery: perhaps rather than an unintended consequence of the Bill it is part of the deliberate plan. The supporters of alternative medicine are a noisy bunch, always willing to sign petitions and lobby MPs so winning their support would help the Bill – and there is a certain irony in fans of alternative medicine lobbying frantically for Big Pharma’s right to harm patients with untested drugs and face no consequences. The free market fundamentalists are keen on the ‘consumerisation’ of health. There’s big money to be made in supplements, vitamin pills and assorted quackery so caveat emptor and the ‘magic of the market’ will decide, not doctors and regulators, and Big Pharma will rake in the profits, especially with astroturfed “patient groups” demanding untested drugs at astronomic prices. “Capitalism can save lives” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11398870/Ed-Miliband-will-never-understand-that-capitalism-can-cure-cancer.html declares the Saatchi Bill’s media partner today in a typical headline.

The advocates of the Saatchi Bill claim it will stimulate medical innovation despite the fact that the overwhelming body of expert opinion is that fear of litigation does not currently inhibit progress. No substantial changes have been made to the Bill to accommodate legitimate criticism. What this suggests to me is that while promoting medical innovation is the stated purpose of the Bill the real intention is to create a free market in health, where the quack can compete on level terms with the expert oncologist and untested drugs can be used on all patients with them having no redress if they are maimed or killed. The Saatchi Bill is a fundamental challenge to evidence-based medicine, proposing instead a free market free for all where profit is all and patient safety ignored.

Does Dr Who Cause Cannibalism?

Few of us can have failed to notice the sudden boom in cannibalism in recent weeks exemplified by stories like the the 'Gay Porn Psycho Cannibal Killer' and 'Cannibal Chews Man's Face Off'.  No-one can say for certain if this is just a fad or whether there are deeper causes, such as the decline in church attendance, rap music or Facebook, but there can be no doubt that the internet is involved.

If 'Hardcore Porn Causes 12 Year old to Rape', as no less respected a source than the Daily Mail tells us, there's no doubt it's involved somehow, along with the 'bath salts' which have now been struck off the list of suitable Mother's Day Gifts by all right-thinking individuals.

But why has no-one yet pointed the finger towards the most likely suspect:  Dr Who?  Less than thirty years before the attacks mentioned above the BBC recklessly broadcast Series 24 of the notorious "children's TV Sci-Fi" programme which featured numerous references to cannibalism. Not only did it show the infamous nappy-clad (diapers for US readers) cannibals of 'Vengance for Varos' but also 'the Two Doctors' featured punk transvestite "Shockeye"(above) killing and eating a helpless, elderly blind woman - after sampling raw rat and dismissing it as not tasty enough. If that were not enough almost the entire plot of 'Revelation of the Daleks' revolves around a planet purporting to be a cemetery which is in fact recycling corpses as food for humans!

Now there is no proof, as yet, that either of the attackers were fanatical Dr Who viewers - though it would come as no surprise if they were - but surely the mere fact that within a mere thirty years of the programmes being broadcast these attacks took place must be enough to raise concern.  And the behaviour of the BBC in not anticipating the possibility of copycat attacks must border on recklessness.  We must not jump to conclusions.  There is, as yet no concrete proof that Dr Who was the main cause of these incidents, though it would take a brave soul to deny that exposing young minds at a sensitive period of their development to Colin Baker's costume must have caused serious and lasting trauma.

Nonetheless it is surely now time to take a precautionary approach, and until it can be positively proved that Dr Who does not cause cannibal killing a moratorium on transmission of all episodes should be established and Matt Smith's encounters with aliens replaced with more wholesome fare.  Personally I would welcome repeats of 'Whacko' starring Jimmy Edwards as a replacement.  It never did me any harm!

Alderley Edge Pictures

The Devil's Grave

I should never have taken that picture of the Witches house - 'yon carrion crow' followed me around all day!

Stormy Point

View from Stormy Point

Another view of Stormy Point

The Iron Gates?

Saddlebole

The Druid Stones

A Stone Circle

The Beacon - "none but a fool would bring fire to the mound..."

View from the beacon.

The Wizard's Well

View from Castle Rock (1)

View from Castle Rock (2)

View from Castle Rock (3)

Quaint Gatehouse

Secret Entrance to...

Selina Place has abandoned discretion.

'It was strange to see an inn there...'

'A village inn without a village'

Church quarry

Thieves Hole

The Beacon

Stormy Point

Alderley Edge

View fron Castle Rock

Arrived in Alderley Edge on Sunday afternoon and couldn't resist going straight up to the Edge.  I should have known better:  not even the stunning view above could make up for what Alan Garner described  in 'the Weirdstone of Brisingamen': 

It was not often they visited the Edge.  Sometimes at the weekend they could go there, but then the woods were peopled with townsfolk who, shouting and crashing through the undergrowth, and littering the ground with food wrappings and empty bottles, completely destroyed the atmosphere of the place…Nothing remained.  This place where beauty and terror had been as opposite sides of the same coin, was now a playground of noise.  Its spirit was dead – or hidden.  There was nothing to show that svart or wizard had ever existed.

So crowded, and therefore much of the appeal of the Edge was lost.
At some stage I'll put up the other pictures if  I can ever work out how"helpful" picture sharing software works!

#I'm Off to See The wizard...#

Well, I'm going to Alderley Edge in the morning, and it's a pretty safe bet I'll spot something wizardy, as most of the town seems to be wizard-branded: the Wizard Inn, Wizards Thatch Luxury Suites, 
the Merlin, or the Wizard Tea Room to mention just a few.
All derived, of course, from  the Legend of Alderley, retold here.  Though what made the story famous to a much wider audience was its use as the inspiration for Alan Garner's classic first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.  For those who don't know the novel,  a brief summary here:  for those who do there's a lovely, brief interview with Garner talking about his writing and the Edge here.
I first read 'the Weirdstone' and its sequel, 'the Moon of Gomrath' in the mid-sixties when I was eight to ten years old.  The ideal age for those books which are a step up from the Narnia fantasies I had adored but had found the slightly patronising tone beginning to grate.  What I particularly loved about Garner's books was that his magic did not take place in a different world:  his wizards and dwarfs and elves were lurking in shadows just around the corner from where they could step, without warning, into the real world which was also vividly evoked.
And so, forty five years later, I find myself drawn to visit a place I first visited in books.  What could, if it weren't such an insufferably poncey phrase, suitable only to be spoken in a Brian Sewell drawl, as a "literary pilgrimage".  But why not?  As I child I so desperately wanted to see the places Garner described  and now I can.
Strictly above ground this time, though I would love to go to go on one of the organised trips to the mines, some pictures of which can be seen here.

Instead, if the weather holds, I intend to follow this walk  which covers most of the landmarks from Garner's books.  And, sadly, I know I'm too old to run into any wizards.  Indeed, even the big, rambling old barn of a house is more likely today to be occupied by Carlos Tevez than Selina Place.  But the edge itself, with history back to the Bronze age and the sheer physical beauty should be magical enough...

My Portrait

When I Were A Lad

Back in the 80s we had proper riots, anti-police riots.  Now after decades of Thatcher, Thatcher-lite Blair and now the coalition of cutters the ideology of the right has won and it's "nick yourself a new pair of trainers" and bugger any sense of solidarity, just take what you want and don't care who gets hurt.