Foreign firms

The chemist makes an illicit pront out of the NHS, detrauding the exchequer. And the patient gets a drug which may or may not be comparable with what was originally prescribed. the rigid patent specifications Chemists are not allowed to has posed a serious problem for substitute one drug for another. the drug companies. They must hand over to the patient exactly what is written on the prescription form.

in the uniquely profitable situaThe big drug companies spend millions of pounds every year, flooding doctors with diaries, blotters, free samples, expen- restrictive rules. sively printed booklets and visits from salesmen, in order to make sure that when a doctor writes against sub-standard drugs. a prescription he writes the name of their product on the form.

Patent The drug companies can do this because, in most cases, they take pains to patent their profor drugs. ducts and are extremely sensitive to attempts at imitation.

The fact that the illicit market in substitute drugs is uncontrolled and that some of the products circulating on this 'black market' are substandard is not the point. a finger in the medical pie.

If Italian drug companies can make acceptable substitutes for the products of the big drug monopolies - and no one, not Labour governments.

perty. fits. 186a Clapham High St, SW4. of the Great Drug Fraud.

tion to a struggle for a qualitatively deeper theoretical underThe emergence of foreign firms standing of workers' needs in which were prepared to breach the present situation.

"The worst blow you can aim at the working class today is to devalue the role of theory,' said Over the years they have Cliff Slaughter. waxed extremely fat on the pro- 'When Heath says to the fits from the NHS and they are assembled political forces of tion of supplying a captive market which is hedged about by Of course, these rules do function to protect the patient The Dunlop Committee on Safety of Drugs tests the standard proprietory preparations and passes them as fit for use. This is obviously an important safeguard. But it is no safeguard against exorbitant prices many of the monopolies charge In fact, the arrangements made by the Attlee government were part of a calculated compromise which allowed the important reform of the creation of an NHS without antagonizing too much the big capitalist interests with The demand for nationalization of the drug industry has repeatedly gone before Labour Party conferences, and has repeatedly been ignored by This is not accidental. The reformist conception of the NHS stopped short in holy awe on the threshold of private proBut the demand retains all its In a situation where the Tories are systematically pruning the social services in the interests of the 'national economy', it becomes more and more clear that big capital is using the social services as perfectly ADVANCE legal means of making huge proA nationalized drug industry serving the NHS would substantially reduce its cost, allow the opération of really rigid quality NOTICE controls and standardize prescription throughout the service.

It would vastly improve and cheapen the NHS and remove all risk of abuse along the lines ALEXANDRA PALACE Wood Green London, N22 BOOK

PAGE FOUR October 29, 1970