Then came print capitalism. After a while, the monopoly on print was lost by Latin, and new works were published in the vernacular. (Protestantism, and its emphasis on internal salvation was particularly important here.) Books, newspapers and novels in vernacular languages gave the idea to their readers that there existed, simultaneously in time, a group of readers like them consuming the same cultural manufactures.
These manufactures gave the readers a sense of national consciousness in three ways:
- They created unified fields of exchange below Latin and above the vernaculars
- They gave a new fixity to the language and thus helped give an idea of permanence to the nation
- They created languages of power different to the pre-existing language of Latin.
Nationalism was thus, Anderson argues, the result of the fusion between the decline of religion, human diversity, the development of capitalism and the technology of print.
Criticisms of Anderson's Theory
- Culturally reductionist
- His arguments concerning nationalism and religion do not hold in certain cases
- His thesis that nationalism was born in the Americas runs counter to available evidence
- His theory concerning anti-colonial nationalisms seems flawed
Colony :
- a body of people who settle far from home but maintain ties with their homeland; inhabitants remain nationals of their home state but are not literally under the home state's system of government
- a group of animals of the same type living together
- one of the 13 British colonies that formed the original states of the United States
- a geographical area politically controlled by a distant country
- (microbiology) a group of organisms grown from a single parent cell
- of or relating to or characteristic of or inhabiting a colony
- of animals who live in colonies, such as ants
- a resident of a colony
- composed of many distinct individuals united to form a whole or colony; "coral is a colonial organism"
postcolonial
Referring to interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized (mainly after 1800); more generally, "postcolonial" may be used to signify a position against imperialism and Eurocentrism
Imperialism:
The practice of one country extending its control over the territory, political system, or economic life of another country. Political opposition to this foreign domination is called "anti-imperialism."
a national policy of forming and maintaining an empire; it involves the struggle for the control of raw materials and world markets, the subjection and control of territories, and the establishment of colonies.
The highest, and last, stage of capitalism. As defined by Lenin, imperialism is the merging of bank capital with industrial capital to create finance capital; industry is increasingly dominated by monopolies; the export of capital becomes more important than the export of commodities; super-profits are obtained by imperialist super-exploitation of the less developed countries.
a relationship of political, and/or economic, and/or cultural domination and subordination between geographical areas.
Imperialism is a policy of extending the control or authority over foreign entities as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires, either through direct territorial or through indirect methods of exerting control on the politics and/or economy of other countries.The term is used by some to describe the policy of a country in maintaining colonies and dominance over distant lands, regardless of whether the country calls itself an empire.
Cynicism:
The belief that the worse about people or the outcome of events.
Presently the word generally describes the opinions of individuals who maintain that self-interest is the primary motive of human behavior, and who are disinclined to rely on sincerity, human , or .
NATO and US are trying to take over the world through the slow erosion of indigenous cultures. Economic groups such as the World Bank and the IMF (International Monetary Fund) are used to undermine local governments. But this is just the top of the iceberg.
As a child, I would hear people talking about the United States. In most my toys I could read: ¨MADE IN USA¨. Somehow life brought me up and little by little I had to open my eyes. And although it had forever been my ilussion to go to the country of FREEDOM and PEACE, I realised about the truth and my whole world came tumbling down... I learnt of imperialism, I learnt of war, I learnt of abuse... I learnt of black people dying, I learnt the word ¨racism¨, I heard the echoes of American ignorance. And the worst thing I had to learn, was that the people on that country called themselves ¨Americans¨... so, the rest of the people who live in Argentina, Mexico, Canada, Cuba... aren't they Americans?
Throughout these pages I wish to offer you the chance to learn about some topics we are usually prevented from reaching.
Everywhere, mysery and poverty expand as a result of American and western neocolonialism, and just for Americans to go on living the American way of life.
en·gen·der
1. To bring into existence; give rise to: "Every cloud engenders not a storm" Shakespeare.
2. To procreate; propagate.
Genomic Health gives cancer patients and physicians insight needed to help make quality treatment decisions. GenomicHealth.com is designed to help patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals understand how individualized genomic profiling of tumor tissue may help improve cancer management.
Over the last century, innovations in medicine, science and technology have resulted in improved health, quality of life and a rise in life expectancy worldwide. In light of these impressive advances it is disheartening that the benefits of modern medicine continue to elude millions of people in the poorer parts of the world. Children and adults are undernourished, live in poor housing and die from illnesses that are often preventable in the prime of their lives.
India is a developing country with a population in excess of 1 billion, the majority of which live in poverty and have poor access to modern medicine. On the other hand, it is also the 10th largest industrial country in the world, with the 3rd largest pool of scientific and technical professionals. The country has a well-established pharmaceutical industry and has made forays into the biotechnology sector, with support from the government as well as industry innovation. It also continues to be the world leader in the Information Technology sector, which has spawned a burgeoning bioinformatics industry. In order to assess the potential of these advances to address health needs in India, the Indian Council of Medical Research and the University of Toronto, Joint Centre for Bioethics jointly organized a Genomics Policy Executive Course, from January 20 - 23rd, 2003, at Kumarakom in Kerala, India. This 4-day course was conducted by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in collaboration with the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics and was sponsored by Genome Canada, the International Development Research Centre, and the Confederation of Indian Industry.
The primary objective of the Genomics Policy Executive Course was to familiarize participants with the potential of genomics and related biotechnologies to address health needs in India and to collectively address the question of how best to harness genomics to improve health. Participants included scientists from academic centres, industry executives, policy makers, legal representatives, NGO and media persons. The participants were chosen in an attempt to represent a wide range of stakeholders in the emerging area of genomics in India.
Objectives of the course
- To familiarize participants with the current status and implications of genomics and biotechnology for health in India, and to provide information relevant to public policy
- To provide frameworks for analysing and debating the policy issues and related ethical questions, and to help understand, anticipate and possibly influence the legal and regulatory frameworks which will operate, both nationally and internationally
- To begin developing an opinion leaders' network across different sectors (industry, academic, government, and voluntary organisations) by sharing perspectives and building relationships
The sessions dealt with a wide range of relevant topics, starting with recent scientific advances in genomics and stem cell research, followed by discussions on business models in genomics and biotechnology, intellectual property rights and regulatory frameworks, public engagement and internet-based opinion leader networks. The presentations were designed to be interactive and foster active discussion from the participants. Early in the course, the attendees were placed into one of 5 study groups - these groups were carefully chosen to draw upon the diverse skills of the participants. The overall task of these study groups was to draw upon the course material and their own experiences and propose a set of recommendations for genomics and biotechnology policy in India. The groups met frequently to discuss the presentations, and each participant was also provided with course reading material and additional background-reading on each session's topic.
While it was generally agreed that the country's biotechnology industry has made huge strides over the last ten years and that genomics has the potential to alleviate India's health problems, the course participants also emphasized the importance of appropriate regulatory systems, intellectual property rights and ethical and social issues related to genomics and public health. A number of recommendations emerged over the course of the discussions.
Recommendations
- Increase funding for healthcare research with appropriate emphasis on genomics
- Leverage India's assets such as traditional knowledge and genomic diversity in consultation with knowledge-holders and indigenous communities
- Prioritize strategic entry points for India
- Improve industry-academic interface with appropriate incentives to deliver knowledge, products and services to improve public health and the nation's wealth
- Develop independent, accountable, transparent regulatory systems to ensure that ethical, legal and social issues are addressed for a single entry, smart and effective system
- Engage the public and ensure broad-based input into policy setting
- Ensure equitable access of poor to genomics products and services
Action Item: Opinion Leaders' Network
The course attendees agreed for the need for an opinion leaders' network that will serve as a forum to discuss the issues mentioned above and arrive at some policy decisions, and perhaps allow for policy papers that can be presented to the Government of India for further action. The internet-based network will be moderated in order to streamline discussions. A number of short-term projects are envisioned that could be coordinated by various expert members of the network. The results of a survey administered to the participants during the course suggested that 90% of them had reliable access to internet and would be willing to spend 1-2 hours a week taking part in the discussion. Six participants were willing to take on some leadership role (such as network moderation, or leading specific projects). The network would be launched soon with an initial agenda for discussion.
In conclusion, India is uniquely poised, as a developing country with highly skilled scientists and medical professionals, to play a crucial role in closing the genomics divide. With the appropriate emphasis on its greatest health needs, incentives for public-private R&D partnerships, and a sound set of regulations India may well set an example amongst developing countries and perhaps for the rest of the world. The proposed opinion leaders' network will help to achieve the goals outlined by the participants of the Genomics and Public Policy course.
A free market is a where the of each item or service is arranged by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers (see ); the opposite is a , where supply and price are set by a . However, while a free market necessitates that government does not dictate prices, it also requires the traders themselves do not coerce or defraud each other, so that all trades are morally voluntary.
The key idea of a free market is voluntary exchange. If an exchange takes place under coercion or fraud, then that exchange is not considered a free market exchange. For example, if someone threatens someone with a gun to purchase what he is selling that is a not a free market. Or, if the government legally prevents a merchant from selling his goods at any prices he wishes and that sellers agree upon, that is not a free market. Thus, the operation of supply and demand is not sufficient for a free market if decisions on supply and demand are made under the threat of coercion.
The Benefits to State Governments from the Free Market Drug Act
Dean Baker
October 2004
Health care costs are the most rapidly growing share of state budgets. Since 1990 state and local spending on health care has risen at a 7.3 percent annual rate, far above the rate of nominal GDP growth. Health care costs are projected to rise at an even more rapid 7.9 percent annual rate over the next decade. State and local government spending on prescription drugs has increased more rapidly than health care spending in general, rising at a 13.4 percent annual rate since 1990. It is projected to rise at a 10.9 percent annual rate over the next decade. By 2013, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) projects that annual state and local government spending on prescription drugs will be $49.1 billion compared to $17.4 billion in 2003.
Such spending will impose a substantial burden on state budgets, with the growth in projected drug spending taking up nearly 3 percent of the increase in state budgets over this period. The projected increase in state and local government spending on prescription drugs (in excess of the general inflation rate) is approximately four times the present level of state and local government subsidies for child care.
Given this baseline projection for growth in drug spending, states have a substantial interest in reducing the cost of prescription drugs. In order to reduce the cost of prescription drugs, many public figures have suggested that the federal government negotiate prices with drug companies in the same way as governments in other wealthy countries. While this route will reduce drug costs, many of the problems of the current system will remain since it continues to rely on government granted patent monopolies to finance drug research. In addition, if the government is setting drug prices, it is effectively directing research (companies will invest where government set prices allow them to earn the highest profit), albeit not in a conscious manner.
An alternative method for reducing drug prices is to change the mechanism for financing drug research. Currently, approximately half of all biomedical research in the United States is financed by the federal government through the National Institutes of Health. If this spending was doubled, public funding could replace the research spending currently supported by the patent system. And, since the research was paid directly by the public sector, the resulting patents could be placed in the public domain, so that new drugs could effectively be sold as generics. If drugs are sold as generics, their prices would be a small fraction of what they are presently. Drugs are almost always cheap to produce. They are expensive only because the government grants drug companies a patent monopoly that excludes competition.
This is exactly the path proposed by the Free Market Drug Act which was recently introduced in Congress. It would appropriate approximately $25 billion a year for financing prescription drug research carried through by a series of competing research centers. (Savings from lower drug costs under the new Medicare prescription drug benefit should easily offset the cost to the federal government of additional research spending.) All research findings would be promptly made public (drug companies often conceal findings to avoid helping competitors) with the resulting patents placed in the public domain.
If this bill was passed, the cost of prescription drugs should fall rapidly through time, as the new system carries more drugs through the Food and Drug Administration's approval process, and then makes them available to be sold as generics. Competition from generics will also bring down the price of many drugs that still enjoy patent protection. In fact, the threat of competition from generics is likely to prompt drug companies to lower their prices in advance of competitive drugs actually being developed, since there would be less cause to research a new drug in an area where the existing drugs are already being sold at a reasonable price. For this reason, it is likely that the Free Market Drug Act would lower drug prices quickly after it was enacted.
We constructed a set of projections to show the potential impact that the Free Market Drug Act would have on state budgets. Table 1 shows the savings to state governments on drug expenditures compared with the baseline projections from CMS. The projections assume that states save 10 percent of their baseline spending in 2009, 20 percent in 2010, 30 percent in 2011, 40 percent in 2012 and 50 percent in 2013. (The construction of these projections is explained more fully in the appendix.) The projection of 50 percent savings for 2013 is probably still less than the full impact of having all drugs sold in a competitive market. Generic versions of drugs often sell for less than 30 percent of the brand version. And, in recent years Indian drug manufacturers have been able to profitably sell generic versions of AIDS drugs, that met the highest safety standards, for less than 5 percent of the price for which the brand drug was sold in the United States. Clearly free market competition will lead to drastically lower prices for prescription drugs
Neoliberalism
State-owned enterprises are an inadmissible intervention of the state into the economy. Therefore, another major aim of the neoliberalists is the privatization of all public and state-owned enterprises. For example in Chile every nationalized enterprise had been sold to Chilean or foreign investors or had been given back to the former owners. Within a short period of time agricultural companies have been privatized, too. The problem was that the land was not only given to big landowners but also to small farmers who could not survive without subsidies. This resulted in a huge number of bankruptcies. The governmental reaction to these breakdowns shows very clearly the "economical Darwinism" of the Chilean government and the neoliberalists. Admiral Merinos: " Let fall those who must fall. Such is the jungle of ... economic life. A jungle of savage beasts, where the one who can kill the one next to him, kills him
Underlying this is a more general neoliberal vision that every human being is an entrepreneur managing their own life, and should act as such. In terms of moral philosophy this is a “virtue ethic”, in which human beings are supposed to act in a particular way according to the ideal of the entrepreneur. Individuals who choose their friends, hobbies, sports, and partners, to maximise their status with future employers, are ethically neoliberal. This attitude is unknown in any pre-existing moral philosophy, and is also not part of early liberalism. Such actions are not necessarily monetarised: they represent an extension of the market principle into non-economic area of life, again typical for neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is a philosophy in which the existence and operation of a market are valued in themselves, separately from any previous relationship with the production of goods and services, and without any attempt to justify them in terms of their effect on the production of goods and services; and where the operation of a market or market-like structure is seen as an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action, and substituting for all previously existing ethical beliefs. The idea that everyone should be an entrepreneur is distinctly neoliberal. For neoliberals it is not sufficient that there is a market: there must be nothing which is not market.
Foucault has developed a new paradigm in which to understand the operations of power in modern society. The new paradigm does not replace the theory of disciplinary power; rather modern societies are characterised by a triangular power complex: sovereignty - discipline - government or, as Foucault puts it, Governmentality. Governmentality is Foucault’s neologism (new word) for governmental rationality. The term refers to a domain of research about the rationality of government. By Governmentality, Foucault meant something like a way or system of thinking about the nature or practice of government. Governmentality meant both governance of self and others. Foucault’s research focuses on questions such as, who can govern? what is governing? and who is governed? ‘In the one case it was in sum a matter of knowing how one ’governed’ the mad, now it is how one governs oneself. . . . (H)ere I would like to show that the government of self is integrated with the government of others. These are, in short, two inverse ways of access to the same question: how is an ’experience’ formed where the relationship of self and no others is linked?
The term "neoliberalism" is used to describe a variety of movements away from state control or protection of the economy and toward control of the market, particularly beginning in the 1970s. The term neoliberalism is not the only one for this movement, its supporters argue that it is simply "liberalism," while critics (along with some supporters) often label it (United Kingdom), (United States of America), (Australia), (New Zealand) or (India). Because of close association between this philosophy and , and confusion with the ambiguous term "," some advocate the term "neoclassical philosophy."
Commercialization
Sequence of actions necessary to achieve market entry and general market competitiveness of new innovative technologies, process and products
Commerce is the trading of something of value between two entities. That "something" may be goods, services, information, money, or anything else the two entities consider to have value. Commerce is the central mechanism from which capitalism is derived.The process of transforming something into a commercial activity is called commercialization
Genome Valley" is the first state-of-the-art biotech cluster in India for life science research, training and manufacturing activities. Advantages in Bio-pharma sector in Andhra Pradesh, enable more than hundred biotech companies to flourish in this sector, which makes Genome Valley the most fertile soil that can foster growth at a staggering pace!
Since the New York City life science technology-consulting firm Intrasphere Technologies opened an office in India, Samuel Goldman, cofounder and chief technology officer, says he works fairly bizarre hours, scheduling 6:00 A.M. meetings on a "regular basis." From the looks of it, more and more scientists should brace themselves for strange commutes, middle-of-the-night E-mails, and videoconferences with coworkers. That's right: It appears that offshoring has arrived.
Although the terms "offshoring" and "outsourcing" are often used interchangeably, they are not the same. Offshoring typically describes what happens when a company runs its own facility abroad. Outsourcing describes when a company uses another firm to work as a contractor.
Life science is already a global industry. Large pharmaceutical companies have offices on practically every shore, and researchers from both hemispheres frequently collaborate. However, as the pharmaceutical industry faces unprecedented cost pressures, experts believe that R&D and other fields in life science that previously stayed close to company headquarters are starting to move to lower-cost countries. And areas that have already begun moving offshore, such as clinical trials management and manufacturing, will increasingly do so.
Countries such as China and India that have proven themselves in the IT world are now working harder than ever to improve their science training, protect intellectual property rights, and establish facilities that pass muster for US and EU regulators. India, for one, has an estimated 20,000 pharma companies. Already, chances are that if you had a recent MRI scan done in the United States, an India-based doctor read the results and sent them to your physician. "You can be sure it's happening, and it's going to increase, like it has in other industries," says Glenn Rice, founder and CEO of Bridge Pharmaceuticals, a Menlo Park, Calif. company that helps US and EU organizations develop drugs in Asia.
This begs the question: How will life science offshoring affect jobs in traditional biotech hot spots? Experts offer a wide range of predictions, and some argue that the move could actually create jobs for US and EU life scientists by allowing companies to investigate more drugs at a cheaper cost. It's still unclear how offshoring might affect life scientists, but everyone agrees that it's time to start figuring it out. For now, forecasters still have "no idea how big or how bad" offshoring will be for the life sciences, says Norman C. Saunders of the Office of Occupational Statistics and Employment Projections at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).