Nasty Business

ABC Radio National, in its 30 June 2010 Rear Vision programme, broadcast an account of a recent enquiry into the probity of the UN WHO specifically its administration of its responsibility to monitor and issue warnings about potential pandemic disease outbreaks. It discusses accusations that a number of the people who were involved in the administration of the pandemic alert for Swine flu last year were also closely involved with and possibly paid by pharmaceutical companies who make the vaccines which have been acquired in large quantities by countries around the world. Australia purchased 21 million doses. Because the pandemic failed to materialise, Australia only used 9 million doses (and it might be argued how many of those were necessary), questions now arise over whether the alert was in response to valid concern of a likely expanded outbreak or was it simply to create a demand for pharmaceutical company product to their considerable profit? The programme does not come down one way or another, presenting both sides of the argument in a pretty balanced fashion. However, the scenario is sufficiently similar, I think, to have us nodding in agreement over the possibility of private and public sector misadventure. How often I wonder whether my local streets need more traffic islands or speed bumps, or whether the contractor is in the pocket of the local council!

For me the spectre of such public corruption raises an important question of the way in which we have structured the fabric of our society. A term in common use by the Boards of business is 'the social licence to operate', meaning the mandate from the community for the function the corporation performs. This term is being used by the top Australian Stock Exchange companies in their sustainability reporting in relation to their corporate social responsibility. If the implied accusations in the ABC RN programme are well-founded then we can characterise the actions of the pharmaceutical companies involved as deceptive in that they have acted to convince the international public of the existence of a threat requiring commercial action by them which is in fact not a threat. They have conspired to divert public money from useful social purpose to one that provides no public benefit. Their action has also consumed resources for no good social end. The profit of this wasteful action has been sequestered by the minority of the pharmaceutical company's shareholders, almost certainly a privileged group. Is this the social licence the international community has granted. Certainly not. While it is not explicitly discussed in the community, it seems to me that we would agree that a pharmaceutical company has the responsibility to attract (quite large amounts of) capital to conduct research that leads to treatments for the worst diseases we suffer, to do so in a way that maximises the public good. What does that mean? I think it means finding treatments for the worst diseases at the lowest cost to the community and distributing them as equitably as possible within it. This may not lead to the highest profit.

The behaviour of the pharmaceutical companies are accused of seems to me to be of the worst kind of individualism and exploitation. It is not the nature of community formation that is encouraged in Judeo-Christian scripture, in its most elemental form in the command to love one's neighbour. It directly contravenes the charges of the ancient prophets, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Micah and Zephaniah to seek the welfare of minorities and to protect the weak and oppressed. People question me on what role the Church can possibly have in business. I think it is pretty clear from this example that the Church indeed has a role, as a representative of a significant sector of the community, to voice its concerns over the action of business in the community and its governance by the elected authorities. The Church also has a view that is informed by revelation, its teaching and tradition that is as effective and meaningful today as it was in the time of the prophets.

(ABC Radio National is Australia's government sponsored radio broadcaster. The Rear Vision programme may be downloaded from: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/rearvision/)