Our 20-page policy document was created with people involved hands-on every day in care, medicine, pharmacies, research and development, and pharmaceutical production.
First, it introduces the issues for the general reader and shows how, like science in general, medicine has immense potential to free people but is untapped under capitalism.
All workers can relate to class nature of access to medical care and treatment. The need to build trust in both science and vaccines is a challenge because of the experience of workers under capitalism. The second section Building Trust in Science and Vaccines shows how capitalism has instrumentalised both science generally, and medicine specifically with clear examples like the Opioid Crisis in the US and the disgusting links between the Mother and Baby Homes and Glaxo here. These reflect workers' own experience of poor access to treatment and medicine.
The five sections that follow show the backward structural issues that make the profit-led production system cost trillions and kill millions leading working people to dangerous divisions through the Covid crisis:
- Medical Extortion: The Crisis of Drug Pricing and Access
- Making Academic Research Work in the Public Interest
- Tax Dodging in the Pharmaceutical Industry
- Patent Protections and Corporate Secrecy
- Accelerating Vaccine Production*
After this we present our Alternatives for the Future which would mean better outcomes for all of us living here, with more job security in the Pharma sector under a National Pharmaceutical Agency.
Alternatives for the Future shows our policy could create vastly better outcomes for workers under pressure from capitalism's deadly grip on global pharmaceutical production.