ARRESTING THE MARKET FALL
US President Bush dedicated himself to cleaning up the stock market, and charges have been laid against David Duncan at Arthur Anderson (obstruction of justice), Scott Sullivan and David Myers at Worldcom (securities fraud and conspiracy) and against executives at Adelphia Communications and Imclone Systems. Currently AOL, Enron, Qwest, Computer Associates and Global Crossing are under criminal investigation.
Ultimately, though, Bush's attempt to arrest the market fall by arresting Chief Executives is bound to fail. While there may be individual cases of fraud, these are difficult to isolate from the speculative practices that had become the norm in stock markets. Practices that made sense in the boom period, like AOL's counting a future market as a current asset, are rendered fraudulent by the stock market slide. Years ago Karl Marx mocked Louis Bonaparte for trying to outlaw poverty while leaving capitalism intact. Today George Bush is trying to outlaw speculation while sustaining the stock market.
THE WAR ON TERROR'S UNCERTAIN ADVANCE
While Europe greedily eyes an opening for its own diplomacy in the Middle East, the United States remains locked in the framework established by the War on Terror, identification with order against disorder. So while President Bush rapped the 'heavy-handed' Israeli Defence Force attack on Gaza that killed seventeen civilians, his real outrage was reserved for the following Hamas reprisal on the Hebrew University. US identification with Israelis was complete, since some of the dead were in fact American citizens: 'I'm just as angry as Israel right now - I am furious that innocent lives were lost', said President Bush. America's sympathy translates into a free hand for Israel in the re-occupied territories.
Meanwhile the real action in the War on Terror has been in South East Asia where visiting Secretary of State Colin Powell heaped praise on the Filipinos (who have restored some of the American military bases lost in the wake of the People's Power revolution of Cory Aquino). Powell also restored military aid to Indonesia, reversing previous US policy to undermine the country's authoritarian regime, after Singapore and Malaysia complained of Islamic militants operating from the country's territory.
At United Nations headquarters in New York, the preparations for an invasion of Iraq were loudly rehearsed. Europe's much-vaunted 'differences' turn out to be little more than an insistence on being consulted before the bombing begins.
WHO'S PLAYING GOD?
Three-year old Charlie Whitaker suffers from a rare disorder. His treatment involves weekly drug transfusions, a distressing drugs regime and he will still die in early adulthood. A bone marrow transplant may cure him, but he needs it within the next 18 months. A brother or sister is the most likely candidate for a donor. His parents have already had another child but her tissue was not the needed perfect match.
The good news is that there is a potential solution to the problem. Embryos can be created by IVF using his parents' gametes; the embryos can be screened to find one which will have the right tissue type (a procedure known as PGD), and that embryo can be implanted into Charlie's mother. The bad news is that their fertility clinic needs a licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) before the screening can be legally carried out and the HFEA won't issue one. The HFEA claimed on BBC TV that it could not issue the licence without a change to the law. However the legal position is not quite as straightforward as that. The HFEA was given its powers by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990. The act permits it to issue licenses which authorise: 'practices designed to secure that embryos are in a suitable condition to be placed in a woman or to determine whether embryos are suitable for that purpose' (Schedule 2 (1) (d))
It is HFEA policy to interpret this power restrictively. A licence for PGD will only be granted if screening is to ensure that an embryo is free of undesirable characteristics such as genetic disorders. As a result of this policy, the capacity of an embryo to develop into a child who could save his or her brother's life is not deemed relevant to its 'suitability to be placed' in a mother desperate for a child with exactly these characteristics. The HFEA may or may not have taken expensive legal advice as to the meaning and the limits of its statutory powers. Either way its restrictive policy certainly reflects the so-called 'ethical' concerns that motivated the original legislation. Unregulated PGD might be used by parents to select for all sorts of particular characteristics in their children. But that ought to be none of the government's business.
The HFEA is quite right to say that the law needs to be changed. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 should be repealed and the HFEA abolished in the process. Parents and medical scientists could then get on with doing what they can to relieve human misery, free from the obstruction of government agencies pushing precautionary policies - policies that would have stopped us flying because God didn't give us wings.
-- James Heartfield The 'Death of the Subject' Explained is available at GBP11.00, plus GBP1.00 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'