There have been penalties for those who looked the other way when Epstein was convicted of child sex offences and decided to maintain relationships with the financier — but not for the British ambassador to Washington, reveals SOLOMON HUGHES
Getting Orkambi on the NHS is a bittersweet victory, but the fight goes on
Labour’s new Treasury unit will ‘challenge unnecessary regulation’ by forcing nominally independent bodies like Ofwat to bend to business demands — exactly what Iain Anderson’s corporate clients wanted, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
DR DYLAN MURPHY looks at a Big Brother Watch report which exposes the government as an enabler of DWP secret spying on benefit claimants
The EU faces a critical choice: will it remain in the shadow of an increasingly unreliable US ally, or will it forge its own path in a multilateral world where co-operation with China is essential, asks MARC VANDEPITTE as leaders meet for the EU-China Summit
A lot of discussion about how the left should currently organise – including debate on whether the Green Party is a useful vehicle for advance – runs the risk of refusing to engage with or learn from the reasons the left was defeated previously, argues KEVIN OVENDEN
For Egypt trade trumps the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians, but how long can the country’s ‘misleaders’ – and others in the region – continue their indifference against the popular will of their own people, asks ROGER McKENZIE
AFTER a long and fraught four years, an agreement between Pharma company Vertex and the NHS has finally resulted in Orkambi and Symkevi, the “game-changing” cystic fibrosis drugs, being made available on the NHS.
Vertex were originally asking £100,000 per patient, per year for Orkambi, which the NHS couldn’t afford, resulting in a protracted price negotiation that above anything else illustrates a system which requires fundamental change.
This conflict between private companies and their need to give returns to their shareholders operating in the medical arena where much more is at stake was highlighted by Just Treatment patient leader Emily Birchall who said: “This is absolutely brilliant news for patients and for all the families who have fought so hard to access Orkambi and other medicines for cystic fibrosis over the last four years.
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