Guest post by Joseph Harker

Ross features a guest-post by Johann Hari, so not to be outdone, I've invited Comment is Free's Joseph Harker to guest-post here:

"Two of the big stories of the week were that Dr Conrad Murray is to be charged in connection with Michael Jackson's death, and the locum, Dr Daniel Ubani, who gave a patient a lethal overdose of morphine.

Were these doctors negligent? Possibly. Charges are to be filed against Conrad Murray, but we do not know how serious those charges will be; let alone whether he is guilty. Much as we must sympathise with David Gray and his family, we have to ask who is the real victim here: charges were brought against Daniel Ubani in his native Germany, and he has served a nine-month suspended sentence.

How many cases of medical negligence are there in the Western Hemisphere every year? Hundreds? Thousands? And how many of them receive this blanket coverage in the media? Very, very few. So what is so unique about these two cases? Is it a coincidence that both doctors are are of African descent?

So let's face up to facts. The Western health system has systematically plundered African nations of their qualified medical personnel - African and West Indian nurses make up the backbone of the NHS, as do doctors of Indian descent. Big Pharma makes obscene profits by selling drugs at above cost to African nations, which they can ill afford. And despite the fact that coloured staff are the norm in our health service and medical negligence is rife, usually covered up by self-serving cartels like the British Medical Association or the General Medical Council; cases where a doctor of African descent is shown to be negligent are few and far between.

Because that is what makes these cases unique. Ethnic doctors work far harder than their white counterparts - they have to, because the bar is set so much higher if a non-Westerner is to succeed in the Western hemisphere - and are on the whole better qualified and more motivated, so cases where they are (possibly) guilt of negligence (as yet unproven in Dr Murray's case) are very seldom. Is there any comparison between the one death with which either of these hard-working and selfless medical practitioners were involved and the three hundred murders of which the (white) Dr Harold Shipman was found guilty?

But when there is even a whiff of suspicion, the white establishment will be only too quick to make scapegoats of them and subject them to trial by media, if for no other reason that to divert the public's attention from their own far more serious failings."