How Difficult the Future
by Max Bound

1. The role of the Universities and education and Brendon Nelson’s moves to take us further back into the dark ages in terms of education policies and outcomes.
2. The mention in the reports on the recent Nobel Prize winners for medical research that their very fruitful work for people had cost the pharmaceutical companies big profit losses.
3. The Howard Government, tragically with much support from the ALP, is moving us ever closer towards becoming a police state; and faulty laws are being used by corporation chiefs to curtail democratic discussion and non-violent action by people.

"The idea of learning was right, but its current world was so deeply alienated, so deeply shut off from any actual human need, that it contradicted the intention in the very process of seeming to realize it. He could not now do what his own people had supposed he would do. He could not learn in ways that would really change their condition .......The education had dwindled to an end in itself, but was still given a quite mystical approval............ Anyone knowing the pressures of course also knew that the effort required, for the real changes, was almost beyond human strength. But there was no gaining of strength, there was only deliberate weakening, while this other pattern persisted. " (Williams 1964 *)

"Modern science may be making a fundamental mistake by looking for the single active compound. Such efforts could be doomed to failure, like opening a radio and trying to find the one component piece that produces the sound, Scientists could focus more on the whole plant and combinations of plants, with their uncounted and unidentified bioactive com- pounds that act upon each other as they interact with the human body. The study of whole plants and combinations is rare-largely because single active compounds, partic- ularly those that have been modified, are easiest to patent and because FDA regulations encourage this approach.

Furthermore, pharmaceutical companies and other research institutions have invested tens of billions of dollars in laboratories, equipment, and other facilities devoted to finding single active compounds. To them, successful research consists pri- marily of the synthesis and manipulation of individual molecules. Some scientists, however, have conducted studies that take a broader view of plants. These studies meet and maintain high standards of accuracy-including ....."

"Ah, there you have it, the very principle upon which English law is based, the right of property over the rights of the common man. (sic) Throughout the history of English law the penalties for damaging property have always been greater than those for harming people. The law has always protected the "haves" and punished those who have nothing. It is very simple, my dear, it is the "haves" who have always made the laws."