Jeremy Corbyn’s attempt to strike a contrast between his beliefs and those of his Labour leadership rival Owen Smith would have rather big implications or medical research in this country. The Labour leader told the launch of his campaign to hold on to his job that pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer shouldn’t take on medical research:
‘I hope Owen will fully agree with me that our NHS should be free at the point of use, should be run by publicly employed workers working for the NHS not for private contractors, and medical research shouldn’t be farmed out to big pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer and others but should be funded through the Medical Research Council.’
It would be interesting to hear how Corbyn proposes to fill the funding gap left by those pharmaceutical companies that, while being very far from perfect, do manage to produce quite a lot of drugs that save, prolong or improve lives.
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