It is hard to destroy your own cause and feel righteous while doing so, yet the American left has done it. After more than two centuries at the vanguard of the struggle for freedom, the American left, broadly defined, executed a volte face and embraced anti-working-class policies marketed as purely technical public health measures.
by Christian Parenti
Part 3 - Captured Agencies
Large segments of the left are afflicted with an astounding case of political amnesia. The central fact forgotten is that Big Pharma has thoroughly captured our public health agencies.
All US Government public health agency budgets are heavily dependent on fee-for-service research work contracted directly by the pharmaceutical industry in exchange for “user fees.”
The FDA website, as if mimicking the satirical film Idiocracy (in which the FDA is purchased by a sports drink “Brawndo – the thirst mutilator”) states that, “About 54 percent, or $3.3 billion, of FDA’s budget is provided by federal budget authorization. The remaining 46 percent, or $2.8 billion, is paid for by industry user fees.” Meanwhile, the FDA’s drug approval testing program has 75 percent of its budget paid for directly by pharmaceutical companies.
In addition, government scientists are allowed to own patents derived from the research they do for private corporations. Government scientists can receive royalties of up to $150,000 per patent on top of their salaries. For example, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief Medical Advisor to the President, co-owns six HIV related patents. This sort of direct financial entanglement constitutes a very dangerous conflict of interest.
Before Covid, the left led the critique of captured agencies, but now even the likes of Chomsky take the official pronouncements at face value; even as those pronouncements change to the point of self-contradiction, as in: Do not wear masks, do wear masks. The vaccines stop the disease, no the vaccines merely blunt its lethal edge.
Before Covid, the left led the critique of captured agencies, but now even the likes of Chomsky take the official pronouncements at face value; even as those pronouncements change to the point of self-contradiction, as in: Do not wear masks, do wear masks. The vaccines stop the disease, no the vaccines merely blunt its lethal edge.
Asked by Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman why people should trust large pharmaceutical companies like Moderna and Pfizer, Chomsky waved away the issue with, “If the information came from Pfizer and Moderna, there would be no reason to trust it.” But of course much of the most important information does come directly from these companies. More on that later on.
Comments
Post a Comment