Mexican painter Frida Kahlo's superstardom continues unabated. Since her death in 1954 at age 47, she has become an ubiquitous cultural figure. Her imagery - bold, sensuous, immediate yet fabulously intricate - inspires modern artists and activists. "Fridamania" is in full force, and I have succumbed to it.
I must admit I am dying to travel to London and visit the Tate Modern's exhibition "Frida: The Making of an Icon," which features 55 self-portraits she painted. A significant majority of them also feature animals, a life-long love of the artist. They include the stunning 1940 masterwork, "Untitled Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird."
Everybody knows about Kahlo's tumultuous life story -her catastrophic injury, lifelong disability, her rocky marriage to painter Diego Rivera, and her many affairs with men and women. In her powerful self-portraits, she revolutionised the genre, "transforming the self-portrait from formal pose to fluid expression, revealing unapologetic beauty, raw trauma, and defiant desires," as the Tate's curatorial statement says.
Kahlo surrounded herself with a variety of pets, including monkeys, parrots, dogs, turkeys, deer, and an eagle in the Blue House in Coyoacán. These animals were not just companions; on the contrary, they were integral to her identity. Kahlo painted them often to symbolise love, resilience, and connection to nature.
The decision to include them as her constant companions was not arbitrary. Her monkeys, she once said, symbolised the children that she was never able to bear because of the horrific injuries she had suffered in a bus accident in 1925, which led to medical complications, an abortion, and several miscarriages.
Of course, in the Aztec world, monkeys were recognised as gods of fertility. They were noted for their cheeky lasciviousness and uninhibited sexuality and were also intimately linked to dance and the arts. As Frida's admirers well know, her public profile rested heavily on carefully constructed performances and costuming. There was no better symbol of her transgressive sexuality and her yearning for (but never realised) fecundity than the monkeys.
Wasted public funds
A plethora of national and international organisations have appealed to the Government to rein in recurrent expenditure and concentrate rare public resources on projects that improve the economy's sustainability and long-term development. It's music to my ears since the government spends too much.
For most of the post-Independence era, our governments have run fiscal deficits. The instances where we have had some fiscal surpluses are all too rare. As a result, our public debt has ballooned. Now I know that I myself have written that the size of the public debt is not necessarily worrying if GDP is growing, but that is not a reason to spend public funds on absurd, bizarre, or ridiculous goods and services.
The U.S.'s National Institutes for Health spent $335,525 on a study which determined that "marriages that were the happiest were the ones in which the wives were able to calm down quickly during marital conflict." Really? I suppose that the husbands can get away with wearing them down or even beating them.
Even more bizarre was federal government-funded research to build a $6.9 million smart toilet that analyses "anal prints." A scan of one's anus produces a biometric that turns out to be like fingerprints or iris prints. I would faint if I were to be stopped at an airport because of something wrong with my anal print.
Arlington County in the USA spent $1m to build a luxury "SuperStop" bus stop complete with Wi-Fi, heated benches and sidewalks, and a steel-frame roof; unfortunately, it didn't stop the rain and snow from coming in or provide shade in summer.
You'd be wrong to think that Malta is immune from bizarre public fund spending. I am reminded of the highly controversial €20,000 bus stop installed by the Sta Venera local council, which also provided no shelter from sun or rain, let alone internet access.
Now, the Birkirkara Local Council is giving out vouchers and cat food to registered stray cat feeders. But not only. The stray cats will also get a dedicated cat lane. The announcement did not say whether stray cats will be obliged to attend classes where they will learn to walk along the lane and use zebra crossings.
Cat lovers might be jumping with joy, but whether they will give a thought to the plight of homeless people who are arrested for sleeping out is another matter. Empathy for cats and animals apparently trumps that for homeless humans, who unlike animals, do not get a Parliamentary Secretary and a Commissioner to advance their welfare and rights.
Cutting edge
One can never read a paper without seeing some kind of reference to GDP growth, employment rates, inflation, productivity, and income levels. We are continuously being bombarded by the message that sustained growth, low unemployment, stable prices, and an equitable distribution of wealth are key to a healthy economy.
Yet, we don't hear enough about innovation and Research and Development (R&D), which are essential drivers of economic growth, the development of new industries, the enhancement of productivity, and the creation of new opportunities for businesses and individuals.
Why? Because it does not suit the politicians to admit that Malta spends just 0.6% of its GDP on R&D, significantly lagging behind the European Union average of 2.24%. While Malta's GDP has experienced robust growth, its R&D investment falls far short of the bloc's 3% target.
It was therefore good to read a few weeks ago that a Maltese private company has been conducting cutting-edge research with potential for industrial partnerships and market-deployable outcomes, from smart agriculture to defence and dual-use technologies. The projects are being developed with the support of Xjenza Malta and the Malta Digital Innovation Authority.
The private company concerned, edQuanta, has grown into the largest R&D private company in Malta, employing numerous PhDs and research specialists. The company also operates a full prototyping laboratory in Malta, where research concepts are transformed into demonstrable products and applied technologies.
At an event in Bighi, edQuanta showcased three projects: one focusing on resilient very-low-frequency communication and telemetry; one exploring real and perceived values among Middle School students, contributing to a better understanding of young people's social and educational development; and one addressing post-quantum encryption ̶ a field expected to become increasingly important as quantum computing advances and existing cybersecurity models come under future pressure.
We badly need more companies fostering innovation. The much-talked-about 'new economic model' will remain a dead letter unless we ramp up innovation and R&D fast and massively. Rather than wasting money on quick and populist initiatives, we should be spending it on science and research.
Health at any cost?
A cancer-fighting association recently reminded Prime Minister of his electoral promise to pay for all cancer treatments, some of which are still not covered by the state. The Multiple Myeloma and Amyloidosis Group said that "Cancer patients, especially those facing rare malignancies such as MM, have been subjected to an unjust, two-tiered healthcare lottery." This was a reference to patients requiring costly treatments being redirected to the Malta Community Chest Fund (MCCF) to obtain funding.
According to the association, patients must apply to the MCCF and undergo means testing to access funding of approximately €7,081 per dose, raising questions about whether similar procedures apply to other urgently needed medicines. During this process, applicants who are not considered "sufficiently needy" may be required to fund part or all of their treatment themselves.
The association claimed that Malta reimburses just 16% of cancer medicine biosimilars, the lowest rate in the EU, compared to the EU average of 65% and 56% among comparable economies, according to the EU Country Cancer Profile: Malta 2025 by the OECD and the European Commission. The figures have not been disputed.
The question is not simply one of opening the public purse wide open to all possible health treatments. In fact, one of the challenges in the 21st century is how welfare states should tackle the rising costs of healthcare while delivering a sustainable, high‐quality, and equitable healthcare system.
New medical treatments are being developed that are tailored to individual patients' needs by targeting unique genetic or biological characteristics of their disease. These personalised medicines are increasingly prevalent in treating many diseases but are often associated with high costs that put pressure on universal healthcare systems.
One example is CAR‐T cell therapy ̶ an oncological approach in which patients' immune cells are genetically modified so that they recognise and attack cancer cells ̶ which costs up to €440,000per patient. CAR‐T cell therapy cost per Quality-Adjusted- Life‐Years (QALY's) strongly depends on its long‐term effectiveness, which, for most indications, is still unclear. In optimistic scenarios, the estimated Incremental Cost‐Effectiveness Ratio (ICER) is around €113,000 per QALY gained.
One might well argue that there is a gap between Malta's economic performance and its cancer care, or that its public funding is not being prioritised in line with European standards of cancer care. Fair enough, but I would also argue that the government faces major concerns about the persistent growth of public spending on health and about the long-term sustainability of health financing.
Health policymakers are finding it increasingly challenging to make the case for adequate health budgets as price growth, demographic shifts, and other factors put significant pressure on health spending. These might be offset by removing institutional rigidities and political economy factors to reap efficiency gains, though reallocation of funding from one priority area to another is not always possible.
Quote of the week
"Is it not enough that the entire island is already plastered with commercial billboards? Must we now project advertising onto the magnificent bastion walls of Valletta, a UNESCO World Heritage Site?" - Din l-Art Ħelwa