3

Talking of chemicals, I believe you wrote a paper about the epidemiologist, Sir Richard Doll and his work on the (lack of a) link between cancer and the vinyl chloride industry, while he was a consultant for Monsanto, at that time one of the major producers of vinyl chloride?

 

Yes, it is one of two papers I wrote over the last couple of years about the contemporary role of medical epidemiologists. I am very interested in writing about the connection between the life of the professional and those larger agencies in society which have power and which determine power and the direction of society. One of the best works on asbestos for example, is the book by Geoffrey Tweedale, called From Magic Mineral to Killer Dust. It isn't just about the company that manufactured asbestos or about the scientists who agreed the toxic and regulatory levels for asbestos fibre. It's about a whole nexus of social, scientific and economic factors.

 

There is a real problem with much contemporary writing about health, in that it is over-simplistic, written by people who are trying to push a particular theory or aspect of health. Sociologically or in relation to campaigns, such work is useless because it don't take into account the whole of the social structure that surrounds that illness or therapy.

 

Can you tell us about companies and organisations that are set up to allay the fears of the public on health and environmental issues but are really working for the benefit of chemical and pharmaceutical industries?

 

Up until the end of the'80s, if a company wanted to deflect public criticism, in the area of health, it would set up its own propaganda arm, creating an institute or some kind of lobby organisation that was probably part of a PR company. Towards the mid-1990s, a lot of critics, commentators and journalists began to see these organisations for what they were. You couldn't just run a fake institute that published good news about your industry without somebody finding out the financial links between the industry and that institute.

 

So in the mid-1990s, a number of companies came into being which were problem solving companies. A part of these companies' briefs entailed finding technical, scientific or mechanical solutions to industry or company problems. Another part of their work however, involved solving problems of 'consumer perception' faced by a particular industry, company or product. So if the waste disposal industry had a problem with the public perception of Dioxin, for example, then the 'problem solving' company would take this on.

 

Their role is clearly similar to the one taken by PR companies in the past. The difference is that their approach is more integrated. These companies have their own epidemiologists, their own scientists, their own smaller agency companies. They have managed to integrate all of these areas into government structures as well. They receive government grants for various projects and are represented on peer review panels, etc. They carry on a more authoritative and aggressive protection of harmful products and a more determined attack on consumer and citizens' lobbies. These organisations are much more dangerous in terms of their defence of bad health products because you can't track them down easily.

 

Are you concerned about situations like Shaken Baby Syndrome and MMR court cases?

 

One idea that has come into focus for me recently, is to do with the intrusion of the State and medicine into the life of the family. I want to write more about this. The State and the medical profession these days seem to be taking great leaps and bounds into the previously accepted private area of the family. Ironically a direction which the British Conservative establishment was accusing communists, socialists and Labour followers of in the early part of the last century.

 

And, there is for example the HIV baby test case about whether the baby should be tested for HIV. And of course the whole trend in North America of legislating for pre-birth or even pre-pregnancy testing for possible hereditary illnesses. At the end of this continuum there is the overshadowing question of legislating for various kinds of genetic testing.

 

There are examples too in another of my books, SKEWED, regarding ME and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Cases are described where psychiatrists put children with ME in closed mental hospital facilities. In some cases the parents are arrested and in one case imprisoned because they were said to be inflicting false illness beliefs on their children. Some of the mothers were accused of having Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy.

 

It appears that we are entering an area where abuse becomes defined by doctors, not simply in criminal terms or in terms of violence or even mental cruelty but on the grounds that the parent disagrees with orthodox medicine. This is going in the wrong direction and appears to be part of a much larger plan for the medical profession, science and pharmaceutical interests to gain a greater hegemony over the family.

 

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Like most writers and journalists, I have written other things besides books. Most of my essays, articles and papers are included in the two Volumes of In Vested Interest. Amongst those which have been published in other forms those Chapters, essays or booklets which I like best include:

 

Paper Trials in Causes for Concern: British Criminal Justice on Trial (ed) Phil Scraton and Paul Gordon.

Loic Le Ribault’s Resistance: The creation of a treatment for athritis and the persecution of its author France’s foremost forensic scientist. Slingshot Publications, London (1998)

Raising the Past: Toynbee Today, in Settlements, Social Change & Community Action (ed) Ruth Gilchrist and Tony Jeffs. Jessica Kingsley. London (2001)

 

Books which refer to art work by Martin Walker

The Power of the Poster. Margaret Timmers (ed) V&A Publications. 1998.

Images of Aspiration, Huub Saunders. International Institute of Social History. 2005.

Emma Holister’s Art Margins, a small gallery of 20 posters, collages and woodcuts by Martin Walker (2005) http://www.artmargin.com

 

 

Collections in Museums and art Galleries

Collection of Posters in the prints and Drawings Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Collection of Theatre Posters in the University of London Theatre Museum.

Collection of Posters, prints and drawings, in the International Institute of Social History. Amsterdam

In 2001, I had an exhibition of black and white photographs taken in Manchester in the 1960s, in Salford Museum and Art Gallery.

 

Other biographical material about Martin Walker,

Archives Hub: Martin Walker Papers relating to the Miners’ Strike.

www.archiveshub.ac.uk/news/0403mw.html

Martin Walker – Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Walker