* NHS BADNESS.

The cost of drugs has been rising at about 7% every year compared with the rest of the costs of the NHS at about 3%. Big pharma has the NHS over a barrel and uses every trick in the book to get its products purchased(influencing patient groups, doctors and the media being the main ones).

Headlines such as 'NHS refuses to treat alzheimers patients'
are a clear example - perhaps it is because the new drug is unproven, unreliable, ineffective , and therefore pointless - so why waste money on it?

They also like to revise drugs to make them more powerful and less toxic and they end up with things like Vioxx...

Big pharma have been running away with this and there are no easy solutions (see current Green Party policy for those that could work!!!).

For greedy corporate capitalists it must be heaven to work in a sector with a guarenteed 7% year on year increase.