![]() |
||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Volume 54 Number 27, October 29, 2024 | ARCHIVE | HOME | JBCENTRE | SUBSCRIBE |
On October 14, a government press release [1] announced that at its "International Investment Summit" at the Guild Hall, London, it had achieved a "landmark collaboration" with US pharmaceutical company Lilly, "the world's largest pharmaceutical company, to invest in the UK as part of a collaborative partnership with UK government". The announcement said that the "UK's world-leading life sciences sector will receive a £279 million boost to tackle significant health challenges, with an intent expressed by Lilly" even though it is not a UK company. At the same time, amongst other announcements it was said that "the collaboration with Lilly aims to set the stage for government to work with industry to trial innovative approaches to treating obesity as part of a rounded package of care".
Then a day later, on October 15, Prime Minister Keir Starmer revealed the sinister truth in their dealings with Lilly when he told the BBC News [2] that he supported the proposals of Health Secretary Wes Streeting that "giving weight loss jabs to unemployed people living with obesity could be very important for our economy and health" and said that "the jabs could be given to help people get back into work". However, far from being at the level of proposals, it immediately emerged that even before Parliament, let alone health professionals, could discuss it the "government is partnering with the pharmaceutical giant Lilly who are running a five-year trial in Greater Manchester [3] to test if the weight-loss drug Mounjaro can help get more people back to work" and "prevent obesity-related diseases to ease the strain on the NHS in England."
The report said that the "announcement prompted a backlash, with accusations that the government was stigmatising unemployed individuals and reducing people to their economic value". Adam Green, chief executive of unemployment charity Yes Manchester, said that "obesity was low on the list of reasons why some people were struggling to get a job". Also, expressing his horror at Wes Streeting's plan to give weight loss jabs to the unemployed, Craig Murray, former British diplomat, said in his blog [4]: "The unemployed are more likely to be underweight than the population average, and this attempt to portray the unemployed as lazy couch potatoes is vile in many ways. Its masking as an 'investment' in the economy by Big Pharma is chilling. If it goes ahead, how many years do you think we are away from those who refuse to have the drug injected into their veins, having their benefits stopped? How are we to view this attempt to use the 'unproductive' as lab rats for Big Pharma?"
He also raised his concerns. Writing: "It has also been announced that the government is to send employment advisers into mental health wards to try to get sick people back into work. This is astonishing. It is extremely difficult to access any mental health care at all on the NHS. To get residential (acute) care requires in truth a level of mental health crisis that indicates a threat to life of yourself or others. Yet people from mental health wards are going to be got into work, when there are hundreds of thousands of perfectly well people desperate for a good job who cannot find one? What is the purpose of this nonsense other than propaganda and stigmatisation of the unemployed?"
Indeed the purpose of this move by government is indeed to stigmatise the unemployed who are going to be "lab rats" for Big Pharma. A spokesman for Health Innovation Manchester, which is running the study for US Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, claimed, "This is not about getting unemployed people back to work," but then said there was a "clear link" between conditions like obesity that cause people to be too ill to work or stay in a job and a fall in overall productivity. About 3,000 people across Greater Manchester are set to be involved in the study, but the exact details of how it will be run have yet to be revealed. It is claimed that its primary aim is to analyse how tirzepatide, sold by Eli Lilly under the brand name Mounjaro, reduces obesity and other health-related illnesses in the "real world". It is said that the five-year clinical trial will measure the "health effects, alongside other metrics like changes in job status and sick days".
In other words, the premise that "unemployment" and an "unproductive" workforces can be cured by these drugs is a big lie that will make huge profits for Big Pharma. It will not "release pressure on the NHS" as claimed by government but will further be used to reduce funding for health and social care. It is also off the scale in terms of violating the rights of all, the right to life and inviolability of the human person. The programme has no intention of providing more productive employment to communities, especially the poorest. It has no intention of "motivating" those in work. It has every intention of stigmatising the unemployed and those with obesity problems at work and out of work.
Streeting claims that he is "not interested in some dystopian future where I involuntarily jab unemployed people who are overweight". But that is exactly what it is. It is a programme in the making of mass imposition of these injections amidst mass unemployment, food poverty and other measures like it, so that the government can ignore the real problems that their system has caused whether it be forcing people to starve themselves or eat bad diets. On the contrary, the government's real aim is making themselves and Big Pharma richer out of public services at the expense of all in society. It is indeed a horror scenario that is being imposed by the same warmongering Cabinet ministers in government that also support and arm Israeli genocide against Palestinians and support the arming and escalation of war in Ukraine, Lebanon and elsewhere.
Today, workers are getting organised to resist these conditions forced upon them by the successive governments in the cartel party system. This striving for change is the order of the day that upholds the rights of all to a livelihood and food security whether able to work, or not, and a human centred health and mental health service that cares to all. Such moves by government to stigmatise the unemployed and for the "unproductive" to have medical trials imposed on them by Big Pharma must be condemned and opposed by all.
Notes
1. Landmark collaboration with largest pharmaceutical company - Press
Release
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-collaboration-with-largest-pharmaceutical-company
2. Unemployed could get weight loss jabs to return to work - BBC News,
October 15
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cjd54zd0ezjo
3. Weight loss jabs for jobless not dystopian - BBC News October 20
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgk7l30egjeo
4. The Notional Health Service - Craig Murray, October 17
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2024/10/the-notional-health-service/