5
OPINION

Thursday, May 21, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5
OPINION

A

mid the pandemic, it’s dis-
heartening to see our coun-
try’s poor response to this 

public health crisis, and daily COVID-
19 updates highlight our nation’s 
inability to separate business and poli-
tics from basic human rights. While 
most of the country has focused on 
bills like the Affordable Care Act and 
Medicare for All, this problem ulti-
mately starts with the wrath of “Big 
Pharma,” a pejorative alias given to the 
pharmaceutical industry and its heav-
ily debated motivations. Big Pharma is 
known for its notorious role in pushing 
overpriced drugs onto desperate con-
sumers with patent brand-name medi-
cation, just like in the case of America’s 
ongoing opioid crisis.

Since the early 2000s, drug com-

panies have focused their efforts on 
profits, spending 19 times more money 
on marketing than on proper research 
and development. This negligence of 
the latter is telling of their prevailing 
misaligned priorities, and there seems 
to be no sign of change amid a global 
pandemic. In fact, industry lobbyists 
have ensured that the aid package 
for coronavirus funding allows them 
to ultimately maximize profits from 
the pandemic with no limitations on 
intellectual property rights for drug 
makers and limited government inter-
vention. Take heart though, this reign-
ing power pharmaceuticals have over 
drug price controls is largely exclusive 
to the United States. Prioritizing prof-
its over basic human health is nothing 
short of outrageous, but after all, it is 
the American way. 

Biopharmaceutical company Gil-

ead recently revisited the antiviral drug 
remdesivir which was first developed to 
treat Ebola. When the first known case 
of COVID-19 in the U.S. presented esca-
lated symptoms at Providence Regional 
Medical Center in Everett, Wash., they 
turned to Gilead’s drug. After being 
approved by the Food and Drug Admin-
istration under “compassionate use,” 
the drug was administered. Compas-
sionate use allows “unapproved drugs 
to be given under select circumstances 
outside of clinical trials.” Note: unap-
proved drug. Remdesivir is still an 
unapproved drug that requires clinical 
trials to prove its efficacy, test its dosag-
es and observe any side effects. During 
a public health emergency, temporar-
ily waived standards for experimental 
drugs are often necessary for prelimi-
nary administration to assess potential 
benefits. 

Even so, the drug was used in hopes 

to ease the burden of the pandemic on 
the health system by not only reducing 
the intensity and duration of the virus, 
but also offering the tiniest sliver of 

hope to us all. However, if easing the 
burden on the health system was ever 
the true goal, abiding by strict pub-
lic health protocols and investing in 
extreme preventative measures early on 
would have been the appropriate course 
of action. While the drug did reduce 
days for recovery in its first patient, 
later trials proved the effects of remdisi-
vir to be insignificant and inconclusive. 
Why, then, was information based on 
preliminary data released to the public 
at all? The answer is disappointing yet 
unsurprising: market manipulation. 
Dr. Anthony Fauci’s, director of the 
National Institute of Allergy and Infec-
tious Diseases, spontaneous announce-
ment of the data was possibly motivated 
by concerns that leaked information 
would cause the stock market to drop, as 
are most actions taken by Big Pharma. 
While the stock for Gilead temporar-
ily rose, the minimally researched rem-
desivir dangerously raised hopes for 
patients in critical condition. The drug 
escalated in demand so much so that 
Gilead stopped accepting requests alto-
gether because they simply could not 
keep up. While the company’s released 
statement alluded to efforts focused on 
an alternative, the lack of transparency 
from both the company and the federal 
government has yet to offer satisfactory 
information as to how the administra-
tion of the drug is determined and why. 

This mess of insufficient data 

and widespread false hope stems 
from profit-oriented drug compa-
nies that are left unregulated by a 
federal government that is far more 
concerned about its administration’s 
re-electability. Within both, the bla-
tant disregard for anything but their 
self-fulfilling motives is reckless and 
irresponsible. A system that chooses 
to profit off a global pandemic — off of 
more than 300,000 deaths — is utterly 
abominable. It’s cruel to publicize a 
drug that is minimally researched, 
and like infectious disease specialist 
Dr. Andre Kalil said in an interview, 
compassionate use is “treating emo-
tion.” We are all desperate for good 
news, but releasing inconclusive data 
is nothing short of sensationalism. 
Time and time again, pharmaceutical 
profits and public health prove to be 
irreconcilable. The industry ceases to 
invest in research without financial 
incentives, but with current federally 
unregulated financial incentives, the 
industry completely neglects its con-
sumers’ needs in terms of affordabil-
ity and accessibility. 

Pandemic profiteers

EASHETA SHAH | COLUMNIST

Easheta Shah can be reached at 

shaheash@umich.edu.

KEITH JOHNSTONE | COLUMNIST

A

s my father drove to 
the California polls on 
Election Day in 1988, 

he heard the local radio broad-
caster announce that George 
Herbert Walker Bush would be 
the 41st president of the United 
States. Even though he knew 
the result, he continued on 
his 30-minute drive and cast 
his ballot for Michael Duka-
kis. When I asked him why he 
would waste his time like that, 
he indignantly replied: “Son, 
our ancestors fought with their 
lives for the right to vote. The 
least we can do is sit in traffic 
and walk into a booth.”

That statement stuck with 

me as I grew up, because it 
forced me to remember how 
much those who came before 
me sacrificed for my rights. I 
needed to make their struggle 
worthwhile by fulfilling my 
civic duty. Thus, Nov. 8, 2016 
shook me to my core — and not 
because 
Americans 
elected 

a former steak salesman to 
the presidency. I was shaken 
because, 
across 
the 
coun-

try, my brothers and sisters 
weren’t voting. Black voter 
turnout fell 7 percent nation-
ally in 2016 from 2012, but it 
fell significantly further right 
in my backyard, the industrial 
Midwest. Black turnout was 
down 7.5 percent in Ohio, 12.3 
percent in Wisconsin and 12.4 
percent in my home state of 
Michigan in 2016 — all states 
that Barack Obama had won in 
2012. While these people may 
not have believed that their 
votes mattered, they effectively 
made Donald Trump the suc-
cessor to the first Black presi-
dent. After seeing the trends in 
2016, Trump’s administration, 
court appointees and Repub-
lican 
cronies 
have 
actively 

sought to deny Black people 
the voting rights for which our 
ancestors fought. 

Since 1870, we have had the 

right to vote regardless of “race, 
color or previous condition of 
servitude,” but this did not pre-
vent state governments from 
taking away that right, through 
methods like poll taxes and 
literacy tests. These practices 
continued until the 1965 Voting 
Rights Act, which enhanced our 
right to vote but immediately 
drew the ire of judicial conser-
vatives who waged war on the 
law following its inception. 

Enter the Roberts Supreme 

Court, which in 2013’s Shelby 
County v. Holder, invalidated 
Section 4(b), which reduced the 
scope of Section 5 of the VRA, 
opening 
the 
floodgates 
for 

Republican states to suppress 
their citizens’ rights. These 
subsequent efforts have been 
met with, at best, a shoulder 
shrug from the court’s justices, 
especially 
Trump 
appointee 

Neil Gorsuch. In 2018, Gor-
such even said that the Voting 
Rights Act does not prohibit 
race-based 
gerrymandering, 

which is such an unpopular 
interpretation that it has only 
been echoed by fellow Justice 
Clarence Thomas. 

Ohio 
Secretary 
of 
State, 

Frank LaRose, a member of 
Trump’s inauguration team, 
took the Court’s decided con-
servatism and Trump’s elec-
tion as a signal to begin purging 
the voter rolls. Upon his 2018 
election, LaRose ordered the 
state’s 
88 
county 
election 

boards to begin purging more 
than 460,000 voters from the 
state’s rolls. However, once 
the flawed process garnered 
scrutiny for erroneously purg-
ing thousands of Ohioans from 
the state’s most diverse areas, 
LaRose backtracked, calling 
their system “unacceptably 
messy.” Though these voters’ 
registrations have since been 
restored, the state of Ohio 
has not taken any additional 
actions to make sure that fur-
ther such “software glitch(es)” 
will not occur.

In 2020, following Ohio’s 

lead, Wisconsin’s Board of 
Elections released a list of 
nearly 209,000 voters whom 
they will purge from the rolls, 
most of whom vote Democrat-
ic. However, the board’s Dem-
ocrats delayed those purges 
until after the 2020 election. 
Then, liking their chances in 
the court system, Republicans 
filed a suit to force Wisconsin 
to purge the rolls immediate-
ly. While actively litigated in 
the courts, the board’s Repub-
licans have ramped up the 
rhetoric, calling Democrats’ 
efforts “terribly disgusting” 
and disparaging the outra-
geous process.

Now, Republicans in these 

states have argued that these 
restrictions are necessary to 
maintain accurate voter rolls 

and prevent voter fraud in 
accordance with the National 
Voter Registration Act of 1993. 
While the law was written to 
make voter registration easi-
er, its provision empowering 
states to maintain accurate 
voter rolls has given wide dis-
cretion to Secretaries of State; 
some of whom have abused 
this vast power in the name of 
“election security.” 

Now, don’t get me wrong, 

the integrity of our elections 
is a valid concern, as they are 
core to our democracy. How-
ever, the in-person ballot fraud 
rate is between 0.0003 percent 
and 0.0025 percent, which is 
about nowhere near the level 
that could potentially affect 
a Detroit City Council race, 
nevermind a national elec-
tion. Further, restrictive voter 
ID laws have disenfranchised 
minority and young voters 
with almost surgical precision 
because these voters are less 
likely to have “valid identifica-
tion,” which somehow includes 
a gun license but not a student 
ID. 
From 
restrictive 
voter 

ID laws in Texas to blocking 
53,000 new voter registrations 
in Georgia to the aforemen-
tioned suppression in Wiscon-
sin and Ohio, Republicans in 
certain states have shown us 
all one thing — they’re scared 
of our votes, and, quite frankly, 
I understand why. 

On Jan. 20, 2009, my whole 

family gathered to watch a 
charismatic Black man with a 
wide grin and funny ears take 
the oath of office. Though I 
was only nine, I took in the 
moment and thought for the 
first time that one day I could 
be the president of the greatest 
country on Earth. As he uttered 
those famous words, the room 
erupted in applause, as did the 
National Mall because we saw 
that when Black people unite 
together to fight against the 
system, we can accomplish 
previously unimaginable feats. 
On Nov. 3, 2020, we need to 
speak strongly with our votes 
to turn the page on the Trump 
era, and we can only do that by 
actively registering ourselves 
and our neighbors to ensure 
that we can exercise the rights 
for which our ancestors died.

Voting while Black in Trump’s America

Keith Johnstone can be reached at 

keithja@umich.edu.

Read more at MichiganDaily.com

