CommentsVIEW FROM HERE-I am by no means a medical expert. And when it comes to disease control and public health measures, I automatically defer to Dr. Fauci and other scientists working on these enormous problems.
But I do think the American people have a right to be skeptical of drugs and vaccines manufactured and distributed by corporations. The fact is corporations have perpetrated horrific crimes and do not deserve our unconditional faith.
For example, internal tobacco industry documents released through litigation and whistleblowers uncover the industry denied and continues to deny that smoking causes lung cancer - yet it has known about the carcinogenic makeup of its products since at least the 1950s.
For decades, Johnson & Johnson has advertised its baby powder to women who have used the product in personal care. An active ingredient in baby powder is talcum powder, a soft mineral that is often contaminated by asbestos, a dangerous carcinogen that has been shown in studies to cause ovarian cancer, mesothelioma, lung cancer, and other diseases. Johnson & Johnson has known about the dangers of its baby powder products for over 40 years, but the company never outright warned women of the risk of ovarian cancer.
Even one of the COVID-19 vaccine producers has been found liable for misleading the public in a way that is criminal and negligent. Pfizer, a publicly traded global pharmaceutical company with revenues reaching $52.5 billion in 2017, makes Advil, Xanax, Depo-Provera, Neosporin, Lyrica, and Dimetapp.
In 1996, 11 children died, and dozens were left physically damaged after Pfizer gave them the experimental anti-meningitis drug, Trovan. The children were part of a group of 200 "subjects" provided the drug during a meningitis epidemic in the northern city of Kano. Although Pfizer maintained that meningitis -- not the drug -- caused the fatalities and severe injuries, after intense litigation, it reached a settlement with the Kano government in northern Nigeria.
In another dispute, a unit of Pfizer Inc. agreed to pay $10.75 million to settle Justice Department claims that the company lied to get federal approval for a mechanical heart valve that had fractured, killing hundreds of patients worldwide. Under the settlement, both Pfizer and Shiley Inc. also agreed to pay $9.25 million in coming years to care for patients who received the faulty device at Veterans Administration hospitals or supply means for its removal. "This agreement represents a landmark health care settlement," an Assistant United States Attorney General, Frank Hunger, said in a statement. "It is significant that a company accused of making false representations to the Government has been held accountable."
Listen. I am not anti-vaccination. I get vaccinated to prevent other diseases and have my two young children vaccinated without concern. When the COVID-19 vaccination is ready to go, I will step up and take it. I want to do whatever I can to help end this pandemic and get back to normal. In other words, my desire to end the pandemic surpasses my need to be 100% shielded from the irresponsibility of multibillion-dollar corporations. That is a personal calculus that every one of us will need to make for themselves.
But I would be masking my anxiety if I said I have no suspicions whatsoever about the unintended consequences of the vaccine, its equitable distribution, and the profit motives of the manufacturers who have been tasked with making it available. In a recent New Yorker interview (Dec 4), Atul Gawande, a foremost expert on public health policy and a key member of Joe Biden's COVID-19 Advisory Board, acknowledged that what is coming "will be a new kind of vaccine that hasn't been produced at this volume before." And according to Gawande and other experts, to achieve herd immunity, at least 70% of the population will need to be vaccinated, which is the only known way to stop the spread of transmission while discontinuing the use of masks and social distancing protocols.
Call me uninformed, conspiratorial, anti-social, scientifically illiterate, or selfish, but I have a solid reason to be skeptical. We all do. These corporations have lied to the American people in the past. They can easily do it again without thorough oversight by government and non-government entities alike. Although I am willing to work with the vaccine manufacturers and the government to do my part as a father, neighbor, colleague, and citizen, I do not have to give them my implicit loyalty and trust.
Nor do I believe that it is unpatriotic to question the incentives of corporations and to hold them accountable for their crimes. One can be a skeptic and take the vaccine, just as one can refuse the vaccine for personal reasons and not become a national security threat. The last thing we need as a country is another reason to be divided.
The challenge for the Biden administration is to strike a balance between the individual's right to have dominion over their personhood and the civic obligation to do what is in the public's best interest. The only way that this balance will be struck is through open and transparent communication and actively promoting differences of opinion. By any calculation, the next phase of this pandemic response is going to mark one of the most daunting logistical challenges in our nation's history.
(George Cassidy Payne is a social worker and adjunct professor of philosophy. He is a CityWatch contributor who lives and works in Rochester, NY.) Photo: solarseven/Shutterstock. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.