Health Care/Joan Retsinas

To the Pharmaceutical Industry: Thank You

This past decade it has been so easy to lambast Big Pharma for soaring price hikes, for extensive research into “me too” drugs rather than drugs for rarer illnesses, for aggressive advertising that downplays side effects (to the scenes of people cavorting on dance floors, the message about “possible risks” fades).

But today, in the midst of a pandemic where COVID-19 morphs into COVID-20, thank you, Big Pharma, for standing firm against a president desperate to shore up the optimism of a desperate base. Nine pharmaceutical companies made a public pledge not to seek government authorization and approval until the vaccines have met standards for safety and efficacy.

Ordinarily, this pledge wouldn’t make the news. Nobody wants a vaccine that hasn’t proved both safe and effective — least of all the company and their shareholders. Nobody wants to see the government roll out a vaccine that won’t work. Nobody except this president. He wants to announce a vaccine by Nov. 1 — an October surprise that will assure Americans that good times are here again. Scientists have steadily downplayed that promise, with all the dreary details about stage 2, then stage 3 trials that researchers cannot rush. How long to wait for side effects? A month? three? How long to judge efficacy? Certainly longer than two months.

And, ordinarily, the FDA acts as a “guardrail” against iffy treatments, the ones that might work, but haven’t been fully tested. Sadly, though, today’s FDA is “politically influenced” — no longer a firm guardrail. Remember hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine? The FDA green-lighted them as treatments for COVID, then reneged. Then there was the infusion of antibody-rich blood plasma from patients who recovered from COVID. The FDA touted it. Later the FDA chief apologized.

Now, in Operation Warp Speed, the president has promised a virus sooner than soon. In August the Department of Defense issued a statement that Operation Warp Speed is on track to deliver 300,000 doses of a vaccine by the end of the year.

But the caution from scores of scientists remains: the development of a vaccines takes time. Yet the president, and the minions circling him, peddle dangerous lies. To the long-ago question, “Have you no shame?” The answer is: none.

Big Pharma, though, has stepped outside that circle of shame.

It has vowed, political muscling aside, to stand firm.

Recently, AstraZeneca stopped the trial of one vaccine because a participant developed neurological symptoms that suggested a spinal inflammatory disorder. AstraZeneca’s trial was more advanced than others, more promising. A scientist called it one of the few that were “close to the authorization finish line.” Yet the patient’s malady might — maybe might — relate to the vaccine. So AstraZeneca heeded the protocol of scientists: it stopped the trial.

This administration wants a “victory,” even an illusory one to bolster the commitment of his base.

We know now that even when he recognized the dangers of the virus, he downplayed it as a flu, a Democratic hoax, a springtime ailment that would fade in the summer. He gave us a greenlight to socialize, to play sports, to eat in restaurants, to go maskless — and, most of all, to attend his mega-rallies. If we think good times are upon us, we will believe the myth, and him.

More recently, he stymies the physicians and scientists within his Administration from telling us, the possible victims and family members of possible victims, the “true” data. Each week the Centers for Disease Control published the “Morbidity and Mortality” reports.” Public relations experts have fought to massage, twist, obscure those numbers.

In this strange new world, thank you, Big Pharma, for holding firm against the steamrolling that would plunge us further into misery, if we rolled out a vaccine that proved neither safe not effective, all to bolster the lies of the Liar-in-Chief.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2020

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