It’s good news that the governent has been enlarging the choice of anti-cancer drugs available for “distribution” to patients. Many of these drugs will have made it quite recently to the market. The number of patients to whom they can be of benefit is limited. So they come at an extremely high price. The patient and his/her family must be prepared for a huge financial sacrifice if they are to access them.

That we have a strategy to counter this problem and that it is being implemented is an encouraging development. I have been through an ugly period when you feel like you’re a hostage to this cruel disease. So I also know the boost you get from a drug that can react strongly against the rot that has invaded you.

The decisions taken by government regarding whether it should buy or not any “new” anti-cancer drug are most delicate. They could involve signficant expense even when it is not clear that usage of a given drug would be sufficiently effective. Also involved are life and death choices for some people. But it is a good thing that these dilemmas are being faced. 

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Wine and cheeselets

Even as we deplore the great decline of agriculture in Malta – a consequence of Malta’s adherence to the EU, as could be foreseen – it is doubtful whether enough is being done, even within the space allowed by EU regulations, to enhance the potential that could still be available for farming to retain a part at least of the importance that it should have had.

For instance, if my information is correct, it seems that the plan to set up vineyards was not implemented with the required care. They were launched when Malta secured membership status, in order to produce a “Maltese” grape according to EU rules. However the plan did not envisage, as it should have, that vines would be uprooted periodically in order to renew the stock of available grapes.

Similarly, plans to provide Maltese farm products, like cheeselets, with a European certificate of Maltese origin have either been delayed or proved to be ineffective. They would supposedly have allowed farmers to sell at a price registering a higher value added for their production, thereby improving its viability.

We need an open and wideranging debate about these challenges.

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Spanish literature

I have been reading in translation Jaume Cabre’s novel “His Lordship”. It’s a very interesting work, not least because the story takes place at the end of the year 1799, on the eve of a change of century – a theme that in the past, I have also found enticing. Cabre’s style is multilayered, yet still direct and cool. The narrative uncovers the hypocrisy and corruption in the administration of Barcellona under the kingdom of the Bourbons, close to collapse.

Yet, what I found most intriguing is the fact that the original text was written in Catalan. For those of us who look at the Iberian peninsula from the outside, Spanish literature “must” all be written in Spanish; so it seems to us. But no, other languages there – like Catalan – have literary and cultural traditions as strong as those of Castillian. Now, the point appears quite obvious to me, but very very frequently I tended to forget this.