Three events: The failure to pass Chile’s new constitution, Biogen’s new Alzheimer drug Aduhelm’s price gouging, & the complete corporatization of Ukraine illustrates a systemic media fail.
Alzheimer drug fraud is the symptom
Biogen’s Aduhelm’s story, the failure to pass a very progressive Chilean constitution, and Ukraine selling out to the privatization of rebuilding have a central core. These events happened because citizens are misinformed about the reality of these events & how they will ultimately hurt citizens. They are misinformed not because the media is all bad. After all, much of the information we provide has its genesis in some parts of the mainstream media. It is about which stories are highlighted and given traction. It is also about acquiescing to corporate narratives and pushback.
Russian missiles are decimating Ukraine. The United States has invested billions in buying Ukraine arms and providing logistic and humanitarian assistance. They are getting aid that many cities in the United States fail to receive. Flint, Michigan, and Jackson, Mississippi, come to mind. A fraction of Ukraine’s aid could improve the lives of millions of Americans.
Our mostly neoliberal government seems to provide infrastructure aid or social programs only in instances where the corporatocracy can make a buck. From Obamacare to the infrastructure bill to Ukraine assistance to the corporate investing sector cleaned up. One more example of wealth transfer from us to the few.
The Common Dreams story “BlackRock Accused of ‘Trying to Cash In On the Disaster’ With Ukraine Reconstruction Deal” says it all. Its byline is prescient; “‘This is going to make the neoliberalism and privatization the U.S. inflicted on post-Soviet Russia look like child’s play,’ one critic predicted.”
Investment behemoth BlackRock was accused Thursday of what author Naomi Klein termed “disaster capitalism” after war-ravaged Ukraine’s president announced he would work with the firm to coordinate foreign investment in the country’s reconstruction.
“The BlackRock team has been working for several months on a project to advise the Ukrainian government on how to structure the country’s reconstruction funds,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office said Wednesday following the president’s video conference with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
Zelenskyy’s office said that the two men “agreed to focus in the near term on coordinating the efforts of all potential investors and participants in the reconstruction of our country, channeling investment into the most relevant and impactful sectors of the Ukrainian economy.”
In language evocative of Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the peace group CodePink, tweeted that BlackRock is “already trying to cash in on the disaster in Ukraine.”
This privatization is another country in ruins selling out to corporate privatization. The Ukrainian elite and the wealthy corporations will make a killing as the citizens adopt their given tole, antiseptic slaves to the corporatocracy to enrich their investors.
Chile is probative. The dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet privatized water. Over several decades citizens continued to do without or pay high prices for a resource that should be free. It led to a revolt that resulted in Progressives drafting a new constitution that included water as a right, among other progressive values. Of course, the misinformation campaign from the oligarchy went into overdrive, including using the media to misinform. The population ultimately defeated the constitution on false premises.
And how was the defeat of Chile’s progressive constitution reported? The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace wrote an article titled “Chile’s Rejection of the New Constitution Is a Sign of Democratic Maturity.” In other words, voting against the interest of most is maturity.
And Biogen is selling a drug that has not proven to work for over $56,000 a year. The New York Times article “Congressional Inquiry into Alzheimer’s Drug Faults Its Maker and F.D.A.” is probative. Its byline, “The report said the F.D.A.’s approval process for Aduhelm was ‘rife with irregularities’ and criticized Biogen for setting an “unjustifiably high price.”
The 18-month investigation, initiated by two congressional committees after the F.D.A. approved the drug, also strongly criticized Biogen, Aduhelm’s manufacturer. Internal documents showed the company set “an unjustifiably high price” of $56,000 a year for Aduhelm because it wanted a history-making “blockbuster” to “establish Aduhelm as one of the top pharmaceutical launches of all time,” even though it knew the high price would burden Medicare and patients, the report found.
The investigation said Biogen was prepared to spend up to several billion dollars — more than two-and-a-half times what it spent developing the drug — on aggressive marketing to counter expected “pushback” over whether Aduhelm was worth its price. The report said the campaign planned to target doctors, patients, advocacy groups, insurers, policymakers and communities of color, who were drastically underrepresented in its clinical trials of the drug.
The F.D.A. is now evaluating two other Alzheimer’s drugs for possible approval early next year, including one that Biogen helped develop. The congressional report said the agency “must take swift action to ensure that its processes for reviewing future Alzheimer’s disease treatments do not lead to the same doubts about the integrity of F.D.A.’s review.”
There is a constant pilfering of citizens in our economic system. Unfortunately, we are complicit in our fleecing because of the level of information we have allowed ourselves to consume.