What Constitutes Reasonable Return?

Orphan diseases are perhaps the most cruel of illnesses. Frequently life threatening, they afflict only a very small percentage of the world's populations, thereby discouraging research and making any drugs that are developed prohibitively expensive. Are pharmaceutical companies that do develop treatments merely getting fair return on their investment, or are they in fact extorting governments through manipulative emotional pressures as they assist families in publicizing their plight in bids to get government approval?

These questions and others are raised in a documentary shown on The National the other night. The drug in question, Solaris, costs over $600 thousand per year to save the life of one person.

As you will see, parents and other loved ones are put into untenable positions, making them easy pawns for what some would say are unfair pharmaceutical practices. That being said, I would do exactly what they are doing to save someone close to me.

You decide the ethics here:

God, I Love The Perp Walk

Burn, Baby, Burn

Click hear to learn about pastor Rick Scarborough's plan to defend 'traditional marriage.'

Would it be wrong of me to offer this 'man of God' some waterproof matches?

Breaking With Tradition

... there were no reports of Dean Del Mastro breaking down in tears, a first for the former star of the Harper regime. Perhaps knowing that he will only serve one week in jail for his crimes lightened his mood.

Things We Are Not Supposed To Know Or Think About

While The Star's David Olive recently wrote an article extolling the economic benefits of the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership, others strongly suggest the need for extreme caution, not just because of potential job losses, but also due to the very real losses in national sovereignty that will ensue if the agreement is ever finalized.

Consider the following from The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur, who argues that the secrecy behind the negotiations is understandable, given that its benefits will redound not to the people, but to the multinational corporations. While speaking from an American perspective, his observations are equally applicable to Canada:



As well, Star readers sound these notes of caution about free trade agreements:

Trade pact coming, despite opposition, June 19

David Olive’s championing of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is so wrong-headed, I hardly know where to begin. In suggesting that state authority and power in developing countries should rather give way to corporate power, he is doubling down on the proven dysfunction of such corporate hegemony, in terms of income inequality, and the impact on workers and the environmental.

To suggest that countries will be better off in a corporate-dominated world is naive at best. His assertion that Canada has really done fine as a result of free trade so far is also an amazingly blinkered view of reality.

Even measured in that narrowest of measures, GDP, we have not done as well in the last 20 years as we did in the “protectionist” era of the 1950s through 1970s. When you look at distribution of this GDP, it is obvious that middle class families have not benefited at all.

John Simke, Toronto

Free-trade agreements are based on the premise that if every country exports what it makes most efficiently and if governments clear the way for market forces to engage in transactions, then everyone will be better off. However, in practice, only multi-national corporations have benefited from free-trade agreements as national interests are undermined.

Taxes are lowered, public services are cut, wages are downgraded, environmental protection is weakened, and regulations are abolished. In short, economic activities have taken precedent over other considerations, such as social justice and national democratic mandates.

The European and North American experiences have shown how, under free trade, governments lose the ability to be responsive to the national needs. Under NAFTA, the Chapter 11 clause has allowed investors to launch successful legal challenges against governments, undermining their efforts to enforce environmental, health or safety standards.

The free trade arrangements worked for the West in the follow up to World War II. However, in the complex 21st century world, they are no longer working. We should come up with a way to regulate the damage done by free trade without undermining its advantages.

Ali Orang, Richmond Hill

Trade deals a big threat to Medicare, Letter June 21

I sincerely hope that the Star is mustering its considerable investigative talents to check out the alarming allegations in Professor Meyer Brownstone’s letter. He claims that the new Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) “includes health among services to be shifted to the corporate sector in a wholesale global privatization process that includes education, prisons and other public services.” He also claims that “all participants are sworn to secrecy for five years even if the negotiations fail.”

Thanks in advance for your excellent service in this and so many other secretive and complex matters.

Jean Gower, Kingston

And so the world moves on, not always for the better, while we sleep.

Entitled To Her Entitlements

That seems to be the attitude of Ann Gray, another former Harper appointee, on her and her husband's lavish 'fact-finding' trips, which cost the taxpayer plenty. She regards the fuss as much ado about nothing, seeing the trips as a 'thank you' for her unpaid time sitting on the Blue Water Bridge Canada crown corporation.

Rarely has a volunteer done so little for so much, some might say.

Michael Chong And The Reform Act

Yesterday, Owen at Northern Reflections wrote a post on Michael Chong, one of the few members of Stephen Harper's caucus with real integrity, attested to by his principled resignation as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs after Harper's unilateral declaration of Quebec as a nation. A legitimate question posed is why he remains in the caucus, given the principles he seems to represent. I opined that perhaps he is biding his time, looking toward a future Conservative Party that is no longer led by Stephen Harper, when there is a real opportunity for renewal.

Another reason Chong should feel profoundly disaffected is the fact that his Reform Act has been gutted, and up to yesterday, looked likely to be killed by the Senate through an odious amendment, despite the fact that it was passed by the House. Fortunately, the bill was passed last night without the amendment.

Here is Michael Chong talking to Terry Milewski about the bill on Power and Politics yesterday that perhaps gives some insight into his thinking: