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The regulation of medical work in the UK has been shaped by the post-war settlement, which lead to the creation of the National Health Service in 1948. The removal of clinical care from the market was supported over the following decades by prohibitions of the sale of human organs and gametes. That settlement is now being dismantled, with the increasing privatisation of NHS facilities. The recommodification of medicine in Britain is achieved as part of broader patterns of neoliberal globalisation. Cross-border markets in health services are realized in law through international (e.g. the General Agreement on Trade in Services) and regional trade law (e.g. European Community law).

The interaction of medicine and the common law is best understood through an examination of the epistemic properties shared (or taken to be shared) by both disciplines. One such property is represented in the ideal of evolutionary progress through a conflict of ideas, as developed in the work of Karl Popper on science and politics. This ideal also provides an orientation for judicial and theoretical reflections on the role of the dissenting judge in the development of the common law. It can be linked furthermore with broader ideologies of progress that valorize liberal political and economic arrangements. The medical negligence jurisprudence of the English courts has until recently been structured by an understanding that medicine, as a science, participates in this dynamic of progress. Consequently, the protection of medical pluralism from close judicial scrutiny has been taken to be a matter of public interest. However, this weak liability regime is now threatened by increased judicial activism, regulatory intervention and patient consumerism. The latter are in turn underpinned by a series of fundamental critiques directed at the idea of progress in medicine and science.

This article seeks to examine the status of the medical profession in Tanzania,
in the context of political and economic developments since independence.
It demonstrates that doctors have maintained a relatively privileged position
within the health care system and in the wider society from the colonial
period, through the early years of indpendence, to the present. This has been
achieved by a variety of means. During the 1970s and early 1980s the profession
was closely associated with the developmentalist project of the state.
Because of economic restructuring since then it has had to adopt the rhetoric
and techniques of accountability, to distance itself from the state and position
itself in the notional realm of civil society. Recent cases of the Medical
Council are used to demonstrate this trend. Renewed legitimation is most
significant as a means of maintaining the profession's links with its international
counterparts, and with foreign donors who support the health care
system in Tanzania.

My belief is that it is in the best short-term as well as long-term economic interests of U.S. corporations to disengage from South Africa. South African corporations are no longer profitable in most cases and there is an immediate risk that product imports, capital investment or sales will be lost or adversely affected by continued military and police action, domestic or foreign embar­ goes or government expropriation. This is in addition to normal risks of currency fluctuation and unstable commodity prices. In the long-term, a new majority-ruled government may look else­ where for investments and trade, or will extract a very high price for foreign corporate involvement. At worst, corporate support of the white-minority will rule out any access in the future to South African strategic resources and play into the hands of Jj.S. cor­ porate enemies around the world. A short-term loss may also be more than offset by substantial long-term gains if U.S. corpora­ tions disengage.