File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0102, message 70


From: "Neil (practical history)" <practicalhistory-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: AUT: William Blake takes on GlaxoSmithKline
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 2001 21:39:08 -0000


On the final day (11 February 2001) of the William Blake exhibition at the 
Tate Britain Gallery in London, 30 people gathered on the steps outside to 
reclaim Blake from 'the dead hand of capital, empire and state' and to 
denounce the corporate sponsors of the Blake exhibition, GlaxoSmithKline 
(full report with pictures at www.geocities.com/pract_history)

People dressed up as angels, tigers, chimney sweeps and in other suitably 
Blakean costumes, with a child’s pushchair converted into a ‘chariot of 
fire’. We banged drums, played music, and read out work from the 18th 
century radical poet, artist and visionary. The following text was handed 
out:

Blake vs. GlaxoSmithKline (text of leaflet given out at the action)

“Is this a holy thing to see / In a rich and fruitful land/ Babes reduced to 
misery… And so many children poor? / It is a land of poverty!” (Blake, Holy 
Thursday)

‘Imagine witnessing devastating plague and sitting on a cure for fear of 
incurring shareholder revolt. That essentially is the position of drug 
companies’ (Ben Jackson of Action for South Africa)

The William Blake exhibition at the Tate Britain gallery makes it clear that 
Blake was a revolutionary as well as a visionary – yet bizarrely it is 
sponsored by one of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies, 
GlaxoSmithKline (formerly Glaxo Wellcome).

While Blake railed against poverty and oppression, GlaxoSmithKline is 
denying millions of African people with HIV access to drugs that could save 
their lives. In Britain and the USA, combination therapy with 
anti-retroviral drugs has transformed the life chances of people with HIV. 
But of the world's 34 million people infected with HIV, 25 million live in 
sub-Saharan Africa: and only 25,000 Africans (0.001 per cent of those 
infected) receive the drugs. The reason is that that they and their 
governments cannot afford to pay the market price for them.

Anti-retroviral drugs can be manufactured for a fraction of the price they 
are sold by GlaxoSmithKline but this would undermine profits. That is why 
Glaxo and other drugs companies are taking the South African government to 
court to defend their ‘intellectual property rights’, i.e. to prevent South 
Africa from making or buying abroad cheap, generic copies of anti-HIV drugs 
to treat patients. Similar threats have been made against other African 
countries.

Glaxo and the British government claim that companies have a right to 
protection for the drugs they sell at high prices in order to recoup 
research and development costs. Glaxo have already made millions from AZT 
and 3TC, the two drugs in Combivir,  and in any case they were developed 
with the help of public funds in the United States.

The problem isn’t just GlaxoSmithKline – other drugs companies like Pfizer 
act in the same way. It isn’t even just the drugs industry or multinational 
corporations. They are backed up by the British state and by the World Trade 
Organisation’s TRIPS agreement (Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual 
Property Rights) which allows owners of ‘intellectual property ’to control 
the exploitation of their inventions worldwide, determining the price at 
which they can be sold and the royalties they receive. They are backed up by 
the whole logic of capitalism which decrees that ideas, objects, fields, 
buildings, even genes, can be the sole property of companies and wealthy 
individuals to be financially exploited at will.

In placing their logo on the art exhibitions, corporations like Glaxo 
Wellcome are laying claim to the creative energies of the past. In denying 
lifesaving drug treatments, they are demonstrating how the creative energies 
of all of us, including medical knowledge, are subordinated to the creation 
of wealth rather than the meeting of our needs.

“Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field/ Let him look up 
into the heavens & laugh in the bright air; / Let the inchained soul shut up 
in darkness and in sighing,/ Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty 
weary years,/ Rise and look out; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are 
open/ And let his wife and children return from the oppressor's scourge./ 
They look behind at every step & believe it is a dream,/ Singing, 'The Sun 
has left his blackness, & has found a fresher morning / And the fair Moon 
rejoices in the clear & cloudless night;/ For Empire is no more, and now the 
Lion & Wolf shall cease” (Blake, America)


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