Yes, once again, it's time to play "Name That TechCentralStation Client!"
TCS, for the uninitiated, is a pay-for-play rightwing webzine/astroturf operation of GOP lobbying shop DCI Group that specializes in bromides against environmentalists and other do-gooder wack-jobs, written from a "pro-business" perspective (on behalf of the site's corporate "sponsors") and faxed to news outlets for repackaging by lazy or gullible editors. And it's quite a racket. Past sponsors include ExxonMobil, GM, NASDAQ, Mickey D's and the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
Continued...
Today's muckraking (or, if you prefer, muck-slinging)
screed, by TCS founder, AEI flack and Washington Post columnist
James Glassman, launches broadsides against the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and that old TCS bete noir, the World Health Organization (WHO). Turns out these shadowy, sinister organizations want to force AIDS drugs made in India (and therefore not approved by the FDA) on poor, unsuspecting AIDS sufferers in India and Africa!
In an interview with TechCentralStation Wednesday, Richard Feachem, executive director of the Global Fund, said that recent de-listings of questionable Indian-made medicines that had earlier been "pre-qualified" by the World Health Organization were "obviously a setback to the global effort" to fight AIDS.
But he said he stood by his policy of allowing distribution of AIDS drugs given a green light by the WHO -- even if they are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or an equivalent regulatory agency in a developed country.
Sinister stuff! Why do the socialist liberals hate Africa? Good thing Dubya has triambulated these weasels by promising AIDS assistance to the Dark Continent!
By contrast, the U.S., through its own agency, the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) -- the largest such effort in the world, with $15 billion scheduled to be spent over five years -- has made it clear that it will not spend money on AIDS drugs in Africa or the rest of the developing world unless the drugs are as safe as those given Americans.
The U.S. policy is that people sick with AIDS in Kampala and Kinshasa deserve medicines just as good as those given patients in Chicago and Copenhagen -- especially since such drugs are available and affordable.
Well, they dispense Vioxx in Chicago and Copenhagen, don't they? Or they used to, anyway. Later in his piece, to drive home his point, Glassman notes that "Africans have complained in recent months about being used as `guinea pigs' for inferior products." That would be South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, and he was talking about this:
Washington (AP) - Federal officials involved in a U.S.-funded research project in Uganda were more interested in promoting an AIDS drug than patient safety, says a government whistlebower. The research was aimed at finding ways to protect babies in Africa from HIV infection.
In prepared remarks for a hearing Tuesday, Dr. Jonathan Fishbein charged that the study in Uganda was "so poorly conducted that its data must be rendered invalid as a matter of law, policy, and human health." .... Fishbein, who is fighting a decision by NIH to fire him, is one of several employees at the government's premier health research agency to question the Uganda study. It involved giving the AIDS drug, nevirapine, to pregnant women to prevent HIV transmission to their babies .... Documents show NIH knew of problems with the study in early 2002, but did not tell the White House before President Bush launched a $500 million plan that summer to use nevirapine throughout Africa.
Whoops. So that was actually us using Africans as Guinea pigs for dangerous drugs, not the WHO. Our bad. But surely, we all appreciate Glassman's point: only expensive FDA-approved drugs from big Western pharmaceutical companies should be used to alleviate the AIDS pandemic in India and Africa. Unless, of course, they can't pay - in which case, let nature take its course.
This can only mean that the TCS client is... PhRMA! Or perhaps Boehringer-Ingelheim, the maker of nevirapine, or another one of PhRMA's member companies with big antiretroviral franchises, like, say, GSK.
Fortunately, Glassman's prose is as thick and convoluted as its author, so I doubt he'll be enlightening many Americans with the wisdom of Big Pharma's approach to the AIDS pandemic. But it isn't only rightwing tabloids like the New York Post and the New Hampshire Union Leader that publish his tripe. In recent days, Glassman's editorials on the insolubility of Social Security have appeared in the Dallas Morning News and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, among many others. Maybe they had last-minute holes to fill, but there's really no excuse for editors to be taken in by TCS. Remember the name James K. Glassman, and if he pops up on the editorial page of your local newspaper, tell the publisher to ask Glassman's clients to buy an ad instead next time.