Part One:
Sharon Lerner is an investigative reporter for The Intercept, covering health and the environment. Her Intercept series, The Teflon Toxin, was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. We speak with her about two articles she’s written for The Intercept.
DRUG COMPANIES CONTINUE TO AVOID LIABILITY FOR RUSHED CORONAVIRUS TREATMENTS
At least 120 vaccines for Covid-19 are in development around the world. And each one holds its own potential for causing injury. We ask what, if any, recourse, does a person have if she suffers harm as a result of having taken a new medication?
For most producers of defective or damaging products, traditional tort law makes the producer liable for damage caused by the producer’s own negligence, i.e., if they’ve failed to take “reasonable” precautions to avoid “foreseeable” adverse consequences. Many companies – ranging from Big Pharma to automobiles to toxic chemicals to gun manufacturers – have sought to avoid any such liability. They’ve appealed to Congress to pass laws granting them *immunity* and they’ve asked courts to create exceptions to the traditional liability rules.
Pharmaceutical companies are now lobbying Congress to grant them immunity from liability, even for actions that would normally be considered their own “fault,” i.e., where the company’s actions or failures to act contributed to the vaccine or medication making people sick or even killing them.
The potential medical countermeasures for COVID-19 could be even more dangerous than the usual newly-marketed pharmaceuticals. Why? Pres. Trump has lost much of his political support because of his failure to protect Americans by controlling the coronavirus pandemic. Realizing this threat to his reelection prospects, Trump is relentlessly pressuring pharmaceutical companies and others in the health field to rush their development process and to get a potential product to market as soon as possible – preferably in time for him to announce the new “cure” before the November election.
Trump has publicly acknowledged that expediting the vaccine could help his reelection campaign. He has an incentive – and he is doing his utmost to give Big Pharma an incentive – to push out any kind of COVID treatment as quickly as possible, regardless of whether it has been fully developed or fully tested by federal safety authorities like the FDA.
(Drug companies are also asking for immunity from liability if their *workers* get sick after they are ordered to return to work (on pain of losing their jobs), despite the risk of COVID spreading in the workplace.
What can people do if they discover that they’ve been harmed by a product that they took to protect them from COVID-19? We discuss the political and legal landscape, and consider what steps a responsible government should be taking.
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/28/coronavirus-vaccine-prep-act/
TOXIC CHEMICALS DIVIDE A TOWN & CAUSE CHAOS.
Decatur, Alabama, a small town in the rural south, is a production hub for a toxic chemical called PFAS. Like other chemicals before it, PFAS have been contaminating the town’s soil and water for years. When the town purifies its water by filtering it through the soil, it creates a *sludge* that not only is contaminated but which also *does not break down*. So it gets into the food and also into the river.
The producer of the PFAS was 3M, an international mega-corporation. 3M had known about the chemical’s toxic effects. But people in the community did not. Suddenly, a news report made the issue public, and the town’s reaction has been dramatic.
Frightened families have spoken out against the dangers to their health, and criticized 3M’s greedy betrayal. The company and its supporters spoke out in favor of the town’s economy and creating jobs. At first, town leaders debated both sides of the issue. After some time, however, the city council began to lean toward catering to the company. It turned out that 3M had targeted people who were speaking out against PFAS. The attorney for the city worked to defeat (and did) two of the council members who had expressed concerns about the health and safety of the people of Decatur. Those council members were defeated and replaced by pro-3M officials. Other supporters of PFAS went beyond figurative back-stabbing and threatened their rivals with guns.
We consider whether the federal government has a role to play here? So far, the feds have done very little to regulate or restrict PFAS in the way that they had regulated other toxic chemicals in prior years.
The bottom line is that nobody in Alabama is standing up to 3M. Defending the community’s health and wellbeing is devolved to the local town government, but they are not equipped to effectively fight off such a wealthy and well-connected corporate powerhouse. Any city councilors who dared to stand up to 3M have been targeted and removed from their positions of leadership. And the town leaders who have been complicit in allowing 3M to continue polluting have been given a figleaf to hide behind: 3M “donated” a town amphitheater to Decatur. Of course, the amphitheater does nothing to protect the residents from toxic chemicals.
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/23/pfas-3m-decatur-alabama/
Part Two:
TRUMP MUST WIN THE MIDWEST, YET HE HAS NO IDEA HOW IOWANS VIEW THE WORLD.
Our guest is Art Cullen, a Guardian US columnist and editor of the Storm Lake Times in northwestern Iowa. He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing (mostly on agriculture). In his acclaimed book, “Storm Lake: Change, Resilience and Hope in America’s Heartland,” Cullen writes about the lives we’re living, the fear we’re experiencing, and what America looks like from places in the midwest like Iowa.
The Midwest is a region that Pres. Trump absolutely must win in order to secure reelection. Instead, however, here his breezy reelection gambit falls flat. Iowans are more concerned about the drought, economic uncertainty and COVID-19 than about right-wing talking points like crime and socialism.
For example, recently 14 million acres of corn and soybeans were laid flat — blown over – by a “derecho.” A derecho is a wind that blows parallel to the ground but it blows in a straight path, as distinguished from a tornado which blows in a circular motion. Many Iowans have suffered – and continue to suffer – the economic, personal, and health damage caused by events like these.
As another example, Iowa’s Republican governor called children back to school. This caused much consternation among Latinx, Asian and African-American communities. Fearful teachers and staff worried about whether they should comply with the return orders (assuming they could afford to refuse and risk losing their jobs) or instead choose to avoid risking their own health and that of their children and loved ones. The parents of many of those children work in meatpacking plants and have been among the hardest hit by the pandemic in the last few months, after they were called back to work (as “essential”) by a president who demanded slower virus testing.
Iowa is one of the hottest areas in the land. Yet the Governor ordered bars shut down in (only) 6 of the state’s 99 counties. The state’s refusal to take the virus seriously resulted in the virus exploding to the point where 70% of the population has tested positive.
