I intended to write something about the closure of Darley Oaks Farm, near Newchurch in Staffordshire (UK), at the time it was announced a couple of weeks ago, but other events crowded the intention out. On the 12th, though, I received the latest issue of The Scientist magazine where Richard Gallagher's editorial opinion piece "Combating Malevolence", together with references therein to the Animal Crackers blog, prompted me to sit down and write now.
Putting aside Darley Oak and Animal Crackers for a moment, though, I'll take things in the same order as The Scientist by starting with John Le Carré's novel The Constant Gardener and its film adaptation. I haven't seen this film, but I have the book and Richard Gallagher has written a moving review which sounds, on the basis of the novel, fair minded. I do also share in general terms his concern that films which are only fictions are taken by many viewers as fact; I am often irritated by films on this basis, especially when they purport to describe real historical events. But I feel that he has allowed an understandable sense of injustice to tip him too far in the direction of blanket defence for the pharma industry.
I'll agree with him when he says that "To paint the pharmaceutical business as wholly evil ... is ludicrous." So far, OK; but I'd like to put the brakes on before using that as an emotional spring board to anything further. First, the fact that the industry "is the major source of new medicines and the main hope for the conversion of basic research advances into practical applications", while true, does not make it 'good'. All industries produce their products; this is their market function, not a moral action whether good or bad. Second, beware of false dichotomy: not being "wholly evil" does not equate to being wholly saintly either. The fictitious pharma company depicted in The Constant Gardener is certainly a cardboard cut out villain, designed to serve a purpose within the novel; but it serves that purpose by embodying in one entity characteristics which are genuinely to be found in different places by anyone who cares to look for them.
Richard Gallagher rightly observes that this is an industry which produces medicines which we need, and is the best hope of turning research into products. But that doesn't make the industry "good" – it is simply a morally neutral fact, and beyond that a source of power. Some clichés exist because they economically and elegantly encapsulate truths which need to be frequently said. One such is Acton's "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". Large companies do not have absolute power, but they do have power in varying degrees – and those in the pharma industry are no more immune than in any other sector. Power is a relative thing, and any large company in a developing country is quite a lot of it, which regularly and frequently leads to some degree of corruption.
The practice of using vulnerable groups with no voice as unwitting guinea pigs is a real one which resurfaces in different places at different times. To pretend that it is not so doesn't help to combat malevolence. Le Carré isn't even a particularly shrill voice proclaiming this fact – it's a recurent book and cinema theme, with novelist Robin Cook making a whole career out of it. Rather than bewail the voicing of the fact it is better, surely, to acknowledge it, be seen to oppose it, and thus isolate it.
And so to Darley Oaks farm and the Animal Crackers blog. But, I don't want to get this very different case mixed up with my respectful disagreement from Richard Gallagher. The only connection is reference to it in The Scientist's editorial, so I will split it out to a separate entry: Combating Malevolence (2).
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