Daniel Hannan is a writer and journalist, and has been Conservative MEP for South East England since 1999. He speaks French and Spanish and loves Europe, but believes that the EU is making its constituent nations poorer, less democratic and less free. He is the winner of the Bastiat Award for online journalism.
Swine ’flu and Big Pharma: why is there no scandal?
By Daniel Hannan Politics Last updated: June 5th, 2010
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During the swine ‘flu hysteria, this blog kept insisting that the threat was overblown: that a coalition of drugs manufacturers, panicky journalists and cowardly politicians was conniving to talk up the danger.
When it emerged that a billion pounds had been wasted in this outrageous boondoggle, no one apologised. Now we learn that some of the scientists who drew up the guidelines had been in the pay of the pharmaceutical corporations that stood to gain from the stockpiling.
This revelation has received less than a thousandth of the media coverage that attended the original “epidemic”. Why is there not more sense of scandal? Are health correspondents embarrassed about the role they played in stoking the panic? Or is it simply that health scares sell more newspapers than government bungling?
