I have just finished reading Peter Gøtzsche's 2013 book of the same title. The book is a hard-hitting vituperative attack on pharmaceutical companies, the way they trial their drugs, the way they influence the medical profession and the way they market their products. As Gøtzsche says in the introduction he concentrates on what is wrong with the industry rather than what is right ("... in a study of muggers no-one expects a 'balanced' account mentioning that many muggers are good family men").
The charges levelled by Gøtzsche are so severe that the first thing a reader will want to know is whether they are true. In a short article like this I can't address every issue confronted by Gøtzsche: he makes hundreds of allegations of illegal or unethical behaviour that span every corner of the pharmaceutical industry. But I can tell you of one or two which I think are typical and can offer my opinion on how accurate his criticisms are. So at the outset let me declare that I think he is right - or right enough - that the drug companies are completely out of control, dominated by the profit motive to such an extent that they kill hundred of thousands of patients, routinely pervert the regulatory process, and unduly influence the medical profession. I think this because the book is painstakingly referenced with sources that bear up the claims that are made.
I often declare that I am an atheist over all conspiracy theories and "The Evil of Big Pharma" has some of the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory. Internet declarations that Aunt Beatrice suffered a stroke after taking Drug X are anecdotes that one cannot check, reek of confirmation bias, and are often made by enthusiasts of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, a "discipline" that is entirely undisciplined and usually not evidence-based. So I approached the thesis of this book rather cautiously. However when I checked a good number of the sources in the book (more of this below) I came to believe that Gøtzsche has done a tremendous job of exposing the heinous practices of an industry that seems to have lost its moral compass.
But first, something about the author. Peter Gøtzsche became a physician in 1974 and is now Professor of Clinical Research Design and Analysis at the University of Copenhagen. His most telling credential is that he was a cofounder of the Cochrane Collaboration and continues to be a senior member of the Nordik Cochrane Centre. The Cochrane Collaboration is an internationally respected organisation that specialises in meta-analyses of clinical trial data and is the first port of call if you want an honest assessment of what the benefits of a particular drug treatment are. In particular, Cochrane is independent of all industrial drug producers (one of Gøtzsche's criticisms of pharmaceutical companies is that their own testing is self-interested and unreliable - a theme rammed home by Ben Goldacre in Bad Pharma).
So the serious charges levelled by Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime come from a very heavy hitter. Although that in itself is not conclusive that what Gøtzsche says is true one has to wonder why, if he is making it up, he hasn't been sued for libel.
Now let's dip into the book for some examples of the accusations it makes. There are literally hundred of accusations to choose from (and, indeed, their very density makes the book somewhat of a gruelling read).
On 15 January 2009 the US Department of Justice released a statement with the heading "Eli Lilly and Company Agrees to Pay $1.415 Billion to Resolve Allegations of Off-label Promotion of Zyprexa". Briefly, the Eli Lilly company promoted its Zyprexa drug as an effective treatment for dementia (including Alzheimer's disease) flagrantly disregarding that no approval by the US Federal Drugs Agency had been given. According to the statement the company's marketing department "created marketing materials promoting Zyprexa for off-label uses, trained its sales force to disregard the law and directed its sales personnel to promote Zyprexa for off-label uses". This appalling and cynical exploitation of a vulnerable sector of society is one of many such criminal behaviours by drug companies.
This example is very clear-cut since the company admitted its crime and paid a large fine (though still comparatively small in comparison to its profits). My second example has not as yet resulted in a prosecution: it is the marketing of the Tamiflu drug. Several countries stockpiled billions of dollars worth of Tamiflu in readiness for a flu epidemic and are now collectively realising they have wasted their money. The makers, the pharmaceutical company Roche, claimed that their trialling of the drug showed that it reduced hospital admissions by over 60%. Yet, despite a concerted campaign by the British Medical Journal and others, Roche would not release the raw data gathered in their trials. It is only now, after several years of stone-walling, that this data is becoming available and when independent experts analysed it a very different picture emerged - that Tamiflu has only marginal effects if any on flu victims. This is a complicated story and some of it is told here and here. Gøtzsche sums it up by calling it "perhaps the biggest fraud ever perpretated" and you can see why he is so blunt. It is important to note also that Roche was not the only offender in this sorry story - regulators and drug agencies were also negligent in accepting the claims made by Roche without proper scrutiny.
As I just hinted drug companies are not the sole offenders in bringing suspect treatments to market. My last example is about how academics and the medical profession behave unethically (Gøtzsche is especially critical here, possibly feeling a betrayal of the academic standards that himself strongly promotes, and my last example is one of very many similar incidents). The New York Times reported in 2006 of a routine practice by Medtronic who make devices to help with back problem; this company makes cash payments to doctors in exchange for their recommending their devices; for example, one Wisconsin surgeon was paid $400,000 for a mere 8 days of work. While the company is obviously behaving unethically the recipients of these gifts are themselves badly tainted. And this is the tip of a large ice-berg: academic and medical professionals are allowing themselves to be advocates of drug companies for their own profit. It is easy to see how this can begin ("I already think the treatment is effective; how then can it be harmful for me to receive a consultancy fee?"); but it is also easy to see how this can easily lead to whole-sale corruption of an entire group of supposedly unbiased professionals.
To end I think it is worth reflecting on the relationship between academy and commercial interests more generally. It does seem clear that parts of medical academia have become badly corrupted. But Schools of Medicine are particularly at risk from financial manipulation because they interact with an industry which makes huge profits. My colleagues in philosophy or in Ancient Hebrew are probably not at risk. But my colleagues in, say, Computer Science or Food Science perhaps ought to be watchful. There are sensitive moral dilemmas to face here: for example, should a CS department seek or accept sponsorship from MicroSoft or Apple for running a conference? We do it routinely but the example of how drug companies buy endorsement from medical academia makes me think this has the potential to be rather dangerous.
Thursday, 3 July 2014
Tuesday, 22 April 2014
Harding: The Snowden Files
Less than a year has passed since Edward Snowden passed his sensational material to Glenn Greenwald. In that time the governing establishments of the Five Eyes alliance, particularly the USA and the UK, have been regularly embarrassed by a series of disclosures that reveal how extensive is their scooping up of data from phone calls, email, and other web traffic in a manner that historically we might associate with the KGB or the East German Stasi. Unquestionably these events and their ramifications for our supposedly democratic societies will be raked over for many years and there will be accounts from all quarters, each giving their own spin, of the rights and wrongs of state surveillance.
The first comprehensive such account has just been published. Unsurprisingly the author is a Guardian reporter Luke Harding who has written the very readable book The Snowden Files. Harding has a track record in writing books based on award-winning Guardian exposés (most recently with David Leigh a book about Wikileaks and Julian Assange) and knows how to write a rattling good yarn. Expect other accounts to come thick and fast very soon. Indeed Greenwald himself will soon be publishing No Place to Hide (maybe this explains why he was critical of the Harding book on the grounds that Harding had not met Snowden). It will be interesting to see the inevitable books that will take a more hostile view towards Snowden but Harding and Greenwald treat him as the hero he is.
Even if you have followed all the Snowden revelations you will value that the whole extraordinary story is collected in one place. But, for me, an interesting section was the description of Snowden's life as an online libertarian geek and the insights this gives into how he came to his decision to become a whistle-blower. A picture emerges of a politically aware and brilliant techno-geek; and his journey from defender of his country's security, through a dawning realisation that the US and the UK were trampling on civil liberties, to a personal compulsion to let the world know what was happening. He knew what he was in for, knew that the safeguards for whistle-blowers were effectively worthless, but nevertheless sacrificed his comfortable existence for the life of a fugitive.
We all know the aftermath. The Guardian and the Washington Post received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Yet many senior members of the US/UK establishments have publicly called Snowden a traitor. One of these critics is Senator Dianne Feinstein who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. She has strenuously defended the NSA's intelligence gathering - although she took a very different view when it emerged that the CIA had been eaves-dropping on her Committee's staffers. Another critic is former Vice-President Dick Cheney and British PM David Cameron has also weighed in. Cameron's House of Commons statement about the forced destruction of Guardian laptops is breath-taking and worth quoting at length:
The result has been a meltdown in the way that citizens trust their government. For many years we might have suspected it, for many years we had tantalising hints of it; but now we know for certain that our rulers lie to us on a routine basis. We have to thank Edward Snowden for exposing this once and for all.
The first comprehensive such account has just been published. Unsurprisingly the author is a Guardian reporter Luke Harding who has written the very readable book The Snowden Files. Harding has a track record in writing books based on award-winning Guardian exposés (most recently with David Leigh a book about Wikileaks and Julian Assange) and knows how to write a rattling good yarn. Expect other accounts to come thick and fast very soon. Indeed Greenwald himself will soon be publishing No Place to Hide (maybe this explains why he was critical of the Harding book on the grounds that Harding had not met Snowden). It will be interesting to see the inevitable books that will take a more hostile view towards Snowden but Harding and Greenwald treat him as the hero he is.
Even if you have followed all the Snowden revelations you will value that the whole extraordinary story is collected in one place. But, for me, an interesting section was the description of Snowden's life as an online libertarian geek and the insights this gives into how he came to his decision to become a whistle-blower. A picture emerges of a politically aware and brilliant techno-geek; and his journey from defender of his country's security, through a dawning realisation that the US and the UK were trampling on civil liberties, to a personal compulsion to let the world know what was happening. He knew what he was in for, knew that the safeguards for whistle-blowers were effectively worthless, but nevertheless sacrificed his comfortable existence for the life of a fugitive.
We all know the aftermath. The Guardian and the Washington Post received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Yet many senior members of the US/UK establishments have publicly called Snowden a traitor. One of these critics is Senator Dianne Feinstein who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. She has strenuously defended the NSA's intelligence gathering - although she took a very different view when it emerged that the CIA had been eaves-dropping on her Committee's staffers. Another critic is former Vice-President Dick Cheney and British PM David Cameron has also weighed in. Cameron's House of Commons statement about the forced destruction of Guardian laptops is breath-taking and worth quoting at length:
I think the plain fact is that what has happened has damaged national security, and in many ways the Guardian themselves admitted that when they agreed, when asked politely by my national security adviser and Cabinet Secretary [Sir Jeremy Heywood] to destroy the files they had, they went ahead and destroyed those files."Politely asked to destroy the files"! That typifies the eyewash that is spewing from the mouths and pens of our embarrassed politicians. One of the most bizarre aspects of the whole drama has been the schizophrenic reaction of our governors. President Obama has been forced to admit that the NSA's activities have gone beyond their remit and that we know this only because of Edward Snowden; at the same time the US Department of Justice has charged him with treason.
The result has been a meltdown in the way that citizens trust their government. For many years we might have suspected it, for many years we had tantalising hints of it; but now we know for certain that our rulers lie to us on a routine basis. We have to thank Edward Snowden for exposing this once and for all.
Wednesday, 26 March 2014
Why Nations Fail
The intellectuals I admire the most are those whose horizons are the widest. Peter Watson is one such intellectual because of his book Ideas from Fire to Freud which majestically surveys all the major ideas from neolithic times to the present day. Another of my icons is Jared Diamond on account of Guns, Germs and Steel, a book that offers a number of very original ideas to explain why some parts of the world have been more prosperous over the ages since farming replaced hunter-gathering.
Now I have met two more giants: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. They are the authors of Why Nations Fail which was published in 2012; I have only just read it but, better late than never, it was breath-taking in its explanatory power.
The topic of the book is captured in the title: it explains why some nations are less successful than others and indeed why some fail altogether. The one sentence explanation is that failing states have political and economic institutions that allow an elite minority to dominate the remaining citizenry. This simple idea is developed in great detail. The authors make a distinction between extractive institutions (bad) and inclusive institutions (good). At the political level this distinction is between systems that allow all citizens equality of voting rights and equality before the law and systems that don't. At the economic level the distinction is between systems that allow elites to amass great wealth at the expense of the others (by giving them monopolies or exclusive access to natural resources for example) and systems that protect the financial resources of everyone (by enforcing property rights for example).
The remarkable aspect of the book is how much evidence the authors bring to justify their hypotheses. They give detailed analyses of dozens of countries at various points on the inclusive-extractive spectrum which convincingly demonstrate the validity of their ideas. In most cases these examples trace the historical causes of a country's institutional practices and this perspective is a brilliant look at history through a particular lens.
I'll give two contrasting summary examples: the countries of South America compared with the USA and Canada. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in South America they found a land rich in both material and human resources. In several brutal centuries they enslaved the population in order to loot the gold and other precious materials for the Spanish crown. Obviously this was a very extractive system. But it remained extractive when the various South American countries gained their independence since the new rulers took over the institutional practices set up by the Spanish.
In contrast something rather different unfolded when North America was colonized (although the authors are clear to point out that this was in no way due to any more noble motives of the colonizers). Things were rather different for several reasons. One reason was that the British were already moving towards a more inclusive system in their own country (because of the monarchy losing much of its power in the Civil War and the resulting Glorious Revolution of 1688). Another reason was that North America was not rich in precious metals. Instead tobacco was the cash cow but tobacco required intensive farming and, there being insufficient or unwilling natives to enslave, the colonists had to furnish the labour themselves. This gave them economic leverage with the British government and, of course, the War of Independence allowed the Americans to set up a relatively inclusive state apparatus.
Why some countries followed a historical path towards inclusive institutions while others didn't cannot be explained by some simple mechanism. The authors refer to "critical junctures" which set countries travelling along particular trajectories. Often it seems to be accidental what happens on these occasions. For example, a plausible consequence of the 1688 invitation to William of Orange might have been that the Stuart Royalists might have won the day and firmly entrenched James II back on the throne to roll back the reforms following the Civil War. Or, a century earlier, bad weather might not have sunk the Spanish Armada and Philip II might have established a Catholic stranglehold on England.
The book explains why, once a direction has been set, either to an extractive state or an inclusive state, vicious or virtuous circles tend to preserve that direction. This is certainly seen today among the former colonies of Great Britain where often the extractive apparatus they established has been inherited by the new rulers after independence who have found it comfortable to enjoy getting rich just as their former British overlords did.
I ended the book reflecting on two things. The first was a comparison with Guns, Germs and Steel which is another attempt to explain why different countries nowadays enjoy very different levels of prosperity. Diamond's explanations are rather different (and, intriguing though they are, are more speculative) but they reach back much further to the time before nation states developed. Acemoglu and Robinson believe that their institutional explanations would apply to these much earlier societies. Here they are on weaker ground because there is less evidence in the historical record. I find many of Diamond's explanations plausible about why agriculture took off more quickly in some parts of the world than others but we shall probably never know with certainty.
The other thought I was left with is that, despite the tendency of inclusive systems to be self-correcting, we cannot be complacent. I look at the recent track record of the USA with some anxiety: the great income and opportunity inequity in that country shows some of the signs of an extractive system. If this book sets more alarm bells ringing it will have done the whole world a service.
Now I have met two more giants: Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. They are the authors of Why Nations Fail which was published in 2012; I have only just read it but, better late than never, it was breath-taking in its explanatory power.
The topic of the book is captured in the title: it explains why some nations are less successful than others and indeed why some fail altogether. The one sentence explanation is that failing states have political and economic institutions that allow an elite minority to dominate the remaining citizenry. This simple idea is developed in great detail. The authors make a distinction between extractive institutions (bad) and inclusive institutions (good). At the political level this distinction is between systems that allow all citizens equality of voting rights and equality before the law and systems that don't. At the economic level the distinction is between systems that allow elites to amass great wealth at the expense of the others (by giving them monopolies or exclusive access to natural resources for example) and systems that protect the financial resources of everyone (by enforcing property rights for example).
The remarkable aspect of the book is how much evidence the authors bring to justify their hypotheses. They give detailed analyses of dozens of countries at various points on the inclusive-extractive spectrum which convincingly demonstrate the validity of their ideas. In most cases these examples trace the historical causes of a country's institutional practices and this perspective is a brilliant look at history through a particular lens.
I'll give two contrasting summary examples: the countries of South America compared with the USA and Canada. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in South America they found a land rich in both material and human resources. In several brutal centuries they enslaved the population in order to loot the gold and other precious materials for the Spanish crown. Obviously this was a very extractive system. But it remained extractive when the various South American countries gained their independence since the new rulers took over the institutional practices set up by the Spanish.
In contrast something rather different unfolded when North America was colonized (although the authors are clear to point out that this was in no way due to any more noble motives of the colonizers). Things were rather different for several reasons. One reason was that the British were already moving towards a more inclusive system in their own country (because of the monarchy losing much of its power in the Civil War and the resulting Glorious Revolution of 1688). Another reason was that North America was not rich in precious metals. Instead tobacco was the cash cow but tobacco required intensive farming and, there being insufficient or unwilling natives to enslave, the colonists had to furnish the labour themselves. This gave them economic leverage with the British government and, of course, the War of Independence allowed the Americans to set up a relatively inclusive state apparatus.
Why some countries followed a historical path towards inclusive institutions while others didn't cannot be explained by some simple mechanism. The authors refer to "critical junctures" which set countries travelling along particular trajectories. Often it seems to be accidental what happens on these occasions. For example, a plausible consequence of the 1688 invitation to William of Orange might have been that the Stuart Royalists might have won the day and firmly entrenched James II back on the throne to roll back the reforms following the Civil War. Or, a century earlier, bad weather might not have sunk the Spanish Armada and Philip II might have established a Catholic stranglehold on England.
The book explains why, once a direction has been set, either to an extractive state or an inclusive state, vicious or virtuous circles tend to preserve that direction. This is certainly seen today among the former colonies of Great Britain where often the extractive apparatus they established has been inherited by the new rulers after independence who have found it comfortable to enjoy getting rich just as their former British overlords did.
I ended the book reflecting on two things. The first was a comparison with Guns, Germs and Steel which is another attempt to explain why different countries nowadays enjoy very different levels of prosperity. Diamond's explanations are rather different (and, intriguing though they are, are more speculative) but they reach back much further to the time before nation states developed. Acemoglu and Robinson believe that their institutional explanations would apply to these much earlier societies. Here they are on weaker ground because there is less evidence in the historical record. I find many of Diamond's explanations plausible about why agriculture took off more quickly in some parts of the world than others but we shall probably never know with certainty.
The other thought I was left with is that, despite the tendency of inclusive systems to be self-correcting, we cannot be complacent. I look at the recent track record of the USA with some anxiety: the great income and opportunity inequity in that country shows some of the signs of an extractive system. If this book sets more alarm bells ringing it will have done the whole world a service.
Monday, 17 March 2014
The forgotten American shame of Vietnam
It is almost 40 years since the Fall of Saigon and the end of the US war in Vietnam. Memories of that traumatic war are dimming as veterans, politicians and journalists who lived in that period die off. It is therefore easier to mythologize the war and cast the US defeat in a more positive light. Nevertheless the US psyche remains deeply scarred. A new book Kill Anything That Moves by Nick Turse picks the scab (Turse would most likely claim "lances the boil") of possibly the most shameful aspect of that conflict.
Written over a 10 year period the book is a meticulously researched exposé of systematic institutionalized abuse of Vietnamese civilians. The narrative that most Americans accept is that, while there may have been occasional excesses carried out in the blood-lust of the moment, the war was prosecuted honorably and within the rules of the Geneva Convention. Turse demonstrates that this narrative is completely fictitious. He has interviewed hundreds of US veterans and Vietnamese survivors, pored through numerous written records and built a consistent and compelling picture of the army culture in Vietnam. What he has discovered is chilling.
American troops faced a guerilla war where the enemy was a shadowy figure often indistinguishable from a civilian. This produced more endemic anxiety in the average American soldier than in a more conventional war where a small number of pitched battles are separated by long periods of tedium. Not knowing who was friend or foe cannot have been easy for the raw recruits many of whom were unwilling draftees. The army's response to this very stressful environment was very often to turn a blind eye to the over-reaction of trigger-happy soldiers. At least it perhaps started like that but very soon, as Turse demonstrates in a multitude of case histories, the ease with which troops could get away with murder bred a callousness that quickly got out of control. Very soon civilians (including women and children) were being killed for sport and their deaths were reported as the deaths of enemy combatants. Significant quarters of the army turned a blind eye to atrocity after atrocity - all that mattered was body count. A few men in a US unit could level an entire village in minutes, leaving no-one left alive, merely because they were looking for a lone sniper; that power is too corrosive to be left unchecked.
Obviously this new narrative is so explosive that one would be tempted to reject it out of hand. But Turse has amassed a mountain of supporting evidence for his claims and it is time that the United States confronts its past with honesty. It is no longer credible to believe that the US war crimes began and ended with the My Lai massacre. The truth is that there were hundreds of My Lai's.
Possibly it is too late to bring the war criminals to justice (although, of course, there is no statute of limitations of war crimes). But the guilty parties are not simply the young men who raped and murdered Vietnamese civilians, all the time demonizing them as "Gooks" or "Charlie". The guilt should be borne by those senior officers in the US army who were aware that the men on the ground were out of control but either did nothing or tacitly encouraged their behaviour.
Retribution would not only represent justice for the survivors of the indiscriminate killings but would remind the most powerful (and therefore most dangerous) nation in the world that their military might can hardly be used without being abused. Shining the torch on their Vietnamese atrocities would ignite a debate about the very society they stand for - a debate that currently is not happening because the establishment has been so successful in hiding the facts.
Written over a 10 year period the book is a meticulously researched exposé of systematic institutionalized abuse of Vietnamese civilians. The narrative that most Americans accept is that, while there may have been occasional excesses carried out in the blood-lust of the moment, the war was prosecuted honorably and within the rules of the Geneva Convention. Turse demonstrates that this narrative is completely fictitious. He has interviewed hundreds of US veterans and Vietnamese survivors, pored through numerous written records and built a consistent and compelling picture of the army culture in Vietnam. What he has discovered is chilling.
American troops faced a guerilla war where the enemy was a shadowy figure often indistinguishable from a civilian. This produced more endemic anxiety in the average American soldier than in a more conventional war where a small number of pitched battles are separated by long periods of tedium. Not knowing who was friend or foe cannot have been easy for the raw recruits many of whom were unwilling draftees. The army's response to this very stressful environment was very often to turn a blind eye to the over-reaction of trigger-happy soldiers. At least it perhaps started like that but very soon, as Turse demonstrates in a multitude of case histories, the ease with which troops could get away with murder bred a callousness that quickly got out of control. Very soon civilians (including women and children) were being killed for sport and their deaths were reported as the deaths of enemy combatants. Significant quarters of the army turned a blind eye to atrocity after atrocity - all that mattered was body count. A few men in a US unit could level an entire village in minutes, leaving no-one left alive, merely because they were looking for a lone sniper; that power is too corrosive to be left unchecked.
Obviously this new narrative is so explosive that one would be tempted to reject it out of hand. But Turse has amassed a mountain of supporting evidence for his claims and it is time that the United States confronts its past with honesty. It is no longer credible to believe that the US war crimes began and ended with the My Lai massacre. The truth is that there were hundreds of My Lai's.
Possibly it is too late to bring the war criminals to justice (although, of course, there is no statute of limitations of war crimes). But the guilty parties are not simply the young men who raped and murdered Vietnamese civilians, all the time demonizing them as "Gooks" or "Charlie". The guilt should be borne by those senior officers in the US army who were aware that the men on the ground were out of control but either did nothing or tacitly encouraged their behaviour.
Retribution would not only represent justice for the survivors of the indiscriminate killings but would remind the most powerful (and therefore most dangerous) nation in the world that their military might can hardly be used without being abused. Shining the torch on their Vietnamese atrocities would ignite a debate about the very society they stand for - a debate that currently is not happening because the establishment has been so successful in hiding the facts.
Sunday, 26 January 2014
Blair: the religious terrorist
Tony Blair, writing in the Observer, offers us his thoughts on war and and religion. He writes "religious extremism has become the biggest source of conflict around the world". Can he possibly be right?
Let's take the war he knows most about: Iraq v. US/UK. As we know, this was a unilateral attack in 2003 by the US and the UK led by Bush and Blair. This war caused between 600,000 and one million Iraqis to die (estimates vary wildly - the BBC's More or Less podcast explains why). We also know (see, for example, The Downing Street memo) that both these men lied to their people about the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (their justification for the war). No doubt then that this war was a horrible example of aggression and that the BB leadership has to take full blame. Where though does religion enter into the equation?
Blair himself is Roman Catholic and has admitted to praying to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops to Iraq. Presumably God gave him the go-ahead. Bush, a born-again Christian when he was 40, is one of the most overtly religious presidents the USA has ever had. There are very many examples of him claiming divine guidance during his presidency and at least one plausible claim that he believed he was charged by God to invade Iraq.
So maybe Blair has a point.
It could be, of course, that he doesn't see it quite in the way that I have presented it. In his article he goes on to say "acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion. It is a perversion of faith". Oh, that's all right then. As long as you commit acts of war not acts of terrorism, as long as you don't "abuse" your religion and as long as your faith is not "perverted" everything is fine and dandy. Can Blair really subscribe to that sophistry? At this very moment his own church is suppressing women throughout the world by doctrines that deny them access to manage their reproductive systems and thereby keep them in poverty.
No, Tony. The Campaign to arrest Blair has got it spot on. You are personally responsible for your actions. You should face justice and you should stop hiding behind the cloak of your God. Your article is self-serving hyprocisy and quite likely an attempt to begin the damage control that the Chilton inquiry is going to inflict on you when its report is made public this year.
But on a positive note: you are right in accusing religion as a cause of many wars. Where you got it wrong was assuming that religions you don't subscribe to, and wars you are opposed to are because the religions became "perverted" or were "abused". Christianity, Islam and Judaism (to name but three) have all done more than their fair share to deal out death, torture and destruction. Would you care to widen your target and argue for their wholesale culpability? And if you did that would you like to go the extra mile and denounce and renounce faith altogether?
Sunday, 19 January 2014
Why does the world exist
I have just finished reading "Why does the exist" by Jim Holt. It is account of Holt's quest to find an answer to the question "Why is there something rather than nothing?", possibly the hoariest philosophical chestnut of them all. Holt's research methodology is quite simple: he interviews a number of philosophers, scientists and other thinkers, listens to what they say, offers his slant on what each great mind has told him, and then hops off to the next guru on his list. It's an interesting read as a survey of the very different answers to this great existential question and Holt presents the ideas in an engaging manner often lacing the details with personal anecdotes. Despite this I was left with a bemused feeling that Holt's greatest achievement was to expose the uselessness of philosophical thought at least in this particular area.
I do not accuse the great thinkers interviewed by Holt as intellectual con-men. However, I cannot help comparing them with thinkers and practitioners in the much narrower domain of theism. In the latter domain we have a myriad of mutually contradictory faiths defended by their advocates with an impressive array of intellectual fire-power. But of course we cannot take any of them seriously: if you are a Mormon your beliefs are totally at odds with a Sunni Moslem. And for any other two religious faiths you will find a huge amount of disagreement. And all this despite the lengthy education of their most notable exponents at esteemed centres of learning.
As Holt's book makes very clear this level of disagreement is present when the domain of discourse is existential philosophy. The difference is that the individuals that feature in Holt's book are heavyweight intellectuals: they are clever enough to marshall an argument to build complex structures to explain our existence but none of them come up with the same structure.
I know that many of those interviewed by Holt's have reputations that they justly deserve. But, cor blimey gov'ner, so far as throwing light on Holt's main question they are a load of posturing charlatans.
I do not accuse the great thinkers interviewed by Holt as intellectual con-men. However, I cannot help comparing them with thinkers and practitioners in the much narrower domain of theism. In the latter domain we have a myriad of mutually contradictory faiths defended by their advocates with an impressive array of intellectual fire-power. But of course we cannot take any of them seriously: if you are a Mormon your beliefs are totally at odds with a Sunni Moslem. And for any other two religious faiths you will find a huge amount of disagreement. And all this despite the lengthy education of their most notable exponents at esteemed centres of learning.
As Holt's book makes very clear this level of disagreement is present when the domain of discourse is existential philosophy. The difference is that the individuals that feature in Holt's book are heavyweight intellectuals: they are clever enough to marshall an argument to build complex structures to explain our existence but none of them come up with the same structure.
I know that many of those interviewed by Holt's have reputations that they justly deserve. But, cor blimey gov'ner, so far as throwing light on Holt's main question they are a load of posturing charlatans.
Friday, 3 January 2014
The Spirit Level: consequences of inequality
Over the last several years a very troubling social issue has boiled to the top of the political cauldron: the increasing income inequality in many countries of the world. President Obama recently gave a speech in which he stated that reversing the growing gap between rich and poor was "the defining challenge of our time". His speech did not, by any means, meet with universal approval. For example, columns in the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic were sharply critical of the idea that inequality in itself was a problem, and also challenged that it was a growing condition.
Nevertheless it does seem to be established that income inequality has become much more pronounced since the Reagan-Thatcher years. If you doubt this have a look at this very compelling presentation of the US situation. There are many other statistical analyses and I think that you have to be completely blinkered not to accept that income inequality is a growing phenomenon.
But is it a "problem" that we should be working to solve? Maybe income inequality is a motivator to make societies stronger or more efficient. And how can we judge the arguments for and against when clearly this is an issue that is likely to be politically polarised with the left arguing on the basis of social equality and the right arguing on the basis of rewarding the most industrious?
I have just finished reading "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Theirs is not a political text but they do come down completely on the "Income inequality is harmful" side of the question. They demonstrate, by a large number of statistical analyses, that income inequality is correlated with a host of societal evils (poor social relations, poor mental health and drug abuse, poor physical health and lower life expectancy, obesity, low educational performance to name just some). They display their results in graphs that plot, country by country (or US state by US state) how income inequality is correlated with particular social evils.
Now correlation is not necessarily the same as causation but the authors do consider in depth whether some other causal agent than income inequality might be present. Coupled with arguments for how income inequality can be so pernicious they come to the very strong conclusion that very many societal evils stem directly from income inequality.
This part of their book - the case for income inequality having such negative effects - is the main take-home message. I found it entirely convincing, so convincing in fact that I believe every honest politician should acknowledge its validity. The remainder of the book begins a discussion about what to do. Of course this is much less clear-cut but I found it valuable for two main reasons. The first one is that we should be aware that there are multiple types of solution not all of which would be unpalatable to those on the political right.
The second one brings in the other flagship problem of our age: to come to terms with our now rapidly changing climate and the inevitable adjustments it will being to our way of life. It turns out that yet another strong correlation (arguably causal) is that nations with greater income equality are more seriously inclined to pursue vigorous policies to address climate change.
So to underline the principal message of the book: every nation should be aware that most of their social problems will be alleviated if they can institute measures to distribute their national wealth more equitably. This is not the politics of envy - it is the politics of our very survival as a species.
Nevertheless it does seem to be established that income inequality has become much more pronounced since the Reagan-Thatcher years. If you doubt this have a look at this very compelling presentation of the US situation. There are many other statistical analyses and I think that you have to be completely blinkered not to accept that income inequality is a growing phenomenon.
But is it a "problem" that we should be working to solve? Maybe income inequality is a motivator to make societies stronger or more efficient. And how can we judge the arguments for and against when clearly this is an issue that is likely to be politically polarised with the left arguing on the basis of social equality and the right arguing on the basis of rewarding the most industrious?
I have just finished reading "The Spirit Level" by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. Theirs is not a political text but they do come down completely on the "Income inequality is harmful" side of the question. They demonstrate, by a large number of statistical analyses, that income inequality is correlated with a host of societal evils (poor social relations, poor mental health and drug abuse, poor physical health and lower life expectancy, obesity, low educational performance to name just some). They display their results in graphs that plot, country by country (or US state by US state) how income inequality is correlated with particular social evils.
Now correlation is not necessarily the same as causation but the authors do consider in depth whether some other causal agent than income inequality might be present. Coupled with arguments for how income inequality can be so pernicious they come to the very strong conclusion that very many societal evils stem directly from income inequality.
This part of their book - the case for income inequality having such negative effects - is the main take-home message. I found it entirely convincing, so convincing in fact that I believe every honest politician should acknowledge its validity. The remainder of the book begins a discussion about what to do. Of course this is much less clear-cut but I found it valuable for two main reasons. The first one is that we should be aware that there are multiple types of solution not all of which would be unpalatable to those on the political right.
The second one brings in the other flagship problem of our age: to come to terms with our now rapidly changing climate and the inevitable adjustments it will being to our way of life. It turns out that yet another strong correlation (arguably causal) is that nations with greater income equality are more seriously inclined to pursue vigorous policies to address climate change.
So to underline the principal message of the book: every nation should be aware that most of their social problems will be alleviated if they can institute measures to distribute their national wealth more equitably. This is not the politics of envy - it is the politics of our very survival as a species.
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