Scientology still awful.

John Sweeney has performed another investigation into scientology three years after his first expose that was accompanied by an extensive campaign of harassment that culminated in a public outburst Scientology spread far and wide in an effort to discredit him. I don't think it succeeded particularly, it brought more attention to Scientology, something they don't want. Regardless his first investigation was interesting and got some of the unpleasant stuff Scientology does into the open.

Maybe he is a glutton for punishment but it is interesting the man who was in charge of harassing him the first time around, Mike Rinder, is now talking to Sweeney about the negatives of the cult. He was disgraced within the organisation for failing to undermine the first documentary and chose to leave rather than accept the severe punishment he was given for this. So his criticisms could be rooted in bitterness, nonetheless they are corroborated by more credible and long term critics such as Xenu.net.

Certainly Sweeney deserves credit for his perseverance.

A final thing I'd like to point out is a detail from this part of the BBC article.

That is why I was somewhat grateful to Scientology's UK lawyers at Carter-Ruck when they sent the BBC photographs of me hugging Amy Scobee at the end of a long and at times harrowing series of interviews about her experiences.
[...]
This was, oddly enough, welcome proof that the people who had been following and filming us in the States were indeed working for the Church of Scientology.

Scientology's favoured law firm in the UK is Carter Ruck, known to the excellent Private Eye as Carter Fuck. They are embody the awful culture of libel tourism to the nth term and love to help powerful entities cover up the truth. Perhaps the most famous suppression of free speech they were involved with was attempting to gag reports of the Trafigura toxic waste dumping in Côte_d'Ivoire. Truly delightful people.

Global problem of biased medical research

One of the more trumpeted argument against UHC in America was that without gouging the sick and needy there wouldn't be enough money for research. This was proven to be wholly false with Pharmaceutical companies pending twice as much on advertising as they do research but it seems pharam companies shouldn't be involved in research at all. Not I imagine a especially surprising to anyone but it seems over 50% of drug trial results aren't published so as to make drugs seem much more effective than they are. When filthy lucre is involved it seems reality takes a distant second place in drug company's considerations.

Doesn't capitalism own?