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Science Report|
By Pete Dickenson
rears for air safety
THE RECENT spate of crashes arouses fears that the rigorous application of safety standards may be slipping in air transport. Pressure to cut costs is increased against a background of recession causing cut throat competition between the two big monopolies in civil aviation, Boeing and Airbus Industries.
Shortcomings in the design and repair of aircraft were revealed by the Boeing 747 crash in Japan in August, in which 520 people died. The plant crashed after part of the tail section broke off causing it to go out of con-
Collapse in
industrial research
THE DEGENERATION of the technological base of British capitalism is confirmed graphically by a recent government report. Spending on key areas of industrial research has declined dramatically since 1966. In 1983, over 50 per cent less was spent on electrical engineering — a vital industry in a modern society-compared to 1966 (see table).
Spending on research and development needs to be increased massively if the capitalists hope to make products to compete on the world market. Yet in the last 20 years there has been a collapse in spending, not a boom.
The one apparent bright spot in the table is electronics, which shows an 83 per cent increase. Most of this spending however, is by military contractors, such as Racal and Marconi. The 83 per cent rise reflects the growth in the 'defence' budget under Thatcher, where money has been 'diverted' to develop missile guidance systems etc.
As far as society as a whole is concerned even including many capitalists, money spent on military researchwhich now represents nearly one third of all spending-goes straight down the drain. Defenders of the military research budget claim that technical spin offs benefit society generally, but a recent study by the New York based Council on Economic Priorities directly contradicts this. They conclude that the Star Wars programme (see previous Science Report) will have few commercial spin offs and may divert scientific and engineering resoucres away from civilian applications.
One of the reasons for the success of Japanese big business compared to the British is that 99.7 per cent of their £17 billion research budget in 1983
trol and crash into a mountainside.
Theoretically, the loss of the tail should not cause the pilot to lose control, but in the 747 all the hydraulic lines which control the aircraft run together near the tail. When it broke off all the hydraulics were ruptured because of this clustering. The Civil Aviation Authority is re-examining the design of the 747 to pinpoint other weak spots where clustering may be a problem.
The most worrying aspect of the crash is the reason for the initial structural failure. Boeing has admitted that the jet was not properly repaired after scraping the tail on landing in 1978.
was spent on whereas nearly already paltry 'defence'
civilian applications, one third of Britain's £7 billion went on
Per cent change in industrial research and development spending 1966-83*. Selected industries.
Mechanical engineering
Electronics +
Electrical engineering -
Motor vehicles
Aerospace Other manufacturing (according to 1968 standard classification) * Economic Trends, August 1
36 83 52 24 18 45
Profiteering in health
THE MULTINATIONAL drug corporations have made fortunes overcharging and exploiting people who need tranquillisers to cope with the anxiety and despair of modern capitalist society. The Swiss based firm, Hoffman-La- Roche, which produces the leading brands of tranquillisers Librium and Valium, was fined 1.1 million DM (about £300,000) in 1976 by the EEC for abusing its dominant market position. The EEC competition office found that Roche made its customers sign "fidelity contracts', which, in effect, prevented them from buying drugs from any other manufacturer.
The information which led to the conviction of Roche came from a former employee Stanley Adams.
In 1974, while on a visit to Switzerland after he had left the company, Adams was arrested and charged with economic espionage. He was kept in 'close confinement' (isolation) for three months, and was subsequently convicted and sentenced to one year in prison suspended for three years, and fined 25,000 Swiss francs. In the meantime his wife, in despair, commit-
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When a new section of the body was rivetted on, a plate, linking the new and old part was not positioned correctly so that only two rows of rivets, instead of three, passed through it. This puts increased loading on the remaining rivets which greatly speeds up the formation of minute cracks which result from repeated loading, eventually causing fatigue failure. Increased stress on a component can also accelerate corrosion, compounding the danger.
The final conclusion on the reasons for the crash will have to wait until the official report is published, but Boeing has already asked airlines to check on previous structural repairs.
ted suicide and his family was broken up. He was not allowed out of prison to attend the funeral.
How the Swiss police came to know the identity of the person who leaked the information is not clear, but there can be little doubt that Adams was betrayed by an official in the Common Market bureaucracy. 'Justice' was finally done in November 1985, however, when the European Court ordered the European Commission to award Stanley Adams compensation, only 11 years after his life was ruined and his wife driven to her death.
Hoffman La Roche is now making its own workers suffer. Its patents on Librium and Valium have run out and the company has sacked 10 per cent of its workforce in the USA. It is also threatening to close a new vitamins plant in Scotland if the DHSS does not include Roche brand names on its approved list of drugs.
The profits of all the big drug corporations are being hit by the move to use 'generic' (ie. non brand name) drugs. Roche will have to cut its prices in half to match those of generic drugs. The drug multinationals will probably respond to this threat by switching their resources away from developing new drugs to more profitable areas. This will mean that progress in medical research will be hit, and new breakthroughs in drug treatment could become a thing of the past.
Militant's policy of nationalising the drug corporations is the only way to ensure progress in developing new drugs, to secure jobs in the pharmaceutical industries and to prevent exploitation and over-charging of sick people.
CORRECTION: In the last issue of Science Report it was incorrectly stated that the aircraft involved in the Munich air crash in 1958 was a Commet. The aircraft involved was in fact a De Havilland Elizabethan.
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