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