Scientists are leaving the States because of this BS. (Yes, that’s a feature from Glamour. I know, I was surprised, too!) I wish I could find a link to the article I read in Time a few weeks ago, about the plummeting numbers of scientists in the U.S., many of whom are discouraged by the increasing infiltration of politics into their research. Europe and China will have our heads.
Not sure which part to focus on; there’s so much. Doctors being compelled by law to provide medically inaccurate information? Kids being taught falsehoods that pose as sex ed, while at the same time being deprived of facts that could save their lives? “Christians” stalling the development of a vaccine that could prevent cancer? Wingnuts poking their sticky little fingers into all areas of American politics, spooking legislators in a manner reminiscent of Sunni Muslims?
Ah, how about the incessant crusade to control women’s sex lives through forced childbirth… (emphasis mine)
If it had been left up to the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee, American women would be able to walk into any drugstore and buy the emergency contraceptive Plan B over the counter (OTC). When the committee was convened in 2003 to review Plan B, a “morning-after” method of birth control that can reduce the odds of pregnancy by 95 percent if taken within 24 hours of unprotected sex, all 28 members agreed that the drug was safe and effective. The vast majority of them also voted to make it available OTC at any pharmacy.
In 2000 alone, the drug prevented approximately 51,000 abortions, according to a Guttmacher Institute estimate.
You guessed it - religious nutjobs put a stop to all that.
I simply do not comprehend this need to micro-manage the lives of strangers.
Let’s daydream for a minute and pretend EC is available OTC. Tell me how that affects your life. And don’t give me some hippy-dippy bullshit about how the moral decay it represents affects all our lives. I can smell a red herring a mile away, and I want a real answer. So consider the simple scenario. EC is available at your local Walgreen’s. You do not believe in taking EC to prevent pregnancy. Now… this affects your life, how?
Don’t buy it. Don’t take it. No one’s putting a goddamn gun to your head. They still sell Summer’s Eve by the gallon even though research has shown time and time again that douching disrupts the natural pH balance of the vagina and can make you more susceptible to infections. So, when I go to the pharmacy, I walk on by.
When are people going to start demanding that this shit be put to a stop, and accept nothing less than scientifically sound healthcare and education? Not to end on a downer, but I am honestly afraid that it might come to what the article mentions…
[M]any women can’t imagine how these lies could possibly have an impact on them, Trussell says. “The first time one of them walks into a pharmacy and can’t get her birth control pill prescription filled, that will have a wake-up effect. Most won’t feel the effects until these rights are gone — they can’t believe there would be a time when these things would be outlawed. I hope their belief is true, but I’m very worried.”
Ya know, it’d be a lot cooler if we were to make sure things don’t come to that.
h/t Bitch Ph.D.
READ ME: Disclaimer
20 Responses to "Wingnuts controlling your life"
You know, the comment on douching reminded me of my aunt telling me a time when she and my brother were watching TV and a douche commercial came on. My brother commented, “When I’m married, I’m gonna have my wife douche every day.” My aunt basically read him the riot act: “You will NEVER tell a woman what to do with her body! Do you understand me?” I love my aunt.
This has been going on for far longer than any of those problems you mention. The gov’t funds a ton of research, but now they are starting to dictate what can and cannot be studied. Mostly it’s sex research — shock and horror.
I’ve tried to get the students I teach to understand the problems inherent with this. I also ask them to write to their representatives if they disagree with it. I seriously doubt they do. The public doesn’t know about it and the people that do won’t do anything about it for the most part.
And that’s the most disheartening part to me. The students won’t care until it affects them directly; when they can’t do the research they want to do, then they’ll care, but it might be too late. </doom and gloom>
Tired of pietistic politicians having a say in your baby-making plans? Do you feel embarrassed when a do-gooder pharmacist type refuses to fill your prescription for Desogen because they are legally bound to hold out on you? Are you ever scared of being snipered when you head to your local abortion purveyor?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then an inter-uterine device may be for you.
IUD: moral turpitude in the privacy of your own cervix.
post scriptum: I have a good old copper T myself.
To me, this is a very big problem, but we are not getting to the root of it: the government funds research. Why?
This is analogous to the libertarian argument against government schools. Once you have the government deciding what projects are worth researching, following up on, etc., then science is in the hands of politics. Special interest groups will plead for more money for their pet cause, etc.
A really interesting (and rather infuriating) book came out recently on this (that focuses on government-runded cancer research in particular). I forget the name of it. There’s also The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, though that one is more polemical and probably will be too provocative to people of the Left. But the argument for government-free competition in scientific research seems pretty strong.
I agree that gov’t funded research is problematic. I don’t like that most of our money (at least the big money) comes from the gov’t. But aside from rich people donating to research programs because they themselves or a family member has X, Y, or Z, no one funds research privately other than med companies. So, medications would continue to be put out, but studies in psychology and other sciences would suffer. My views about research are very separate from the usefulness of the outcome — I think research should be done so we have a better understanding of our worlds, period. Research costs big money sometimes, and I don’t know where else it would come from. But, we reap the negatives by being fed by fickle masters and have to listen to and follow their whims.
I don’t care that splitting the atom led to nukes — it was worth knowing because it is true (true that atoms can be split). Of course, it’s nice when research produces useful outcomes, but that’s not why it should be funded. But the usefulness is why private folks would fund it — if someone doesn’t see the usefulness or potential in the outcome, then they don’t care.
Polemical? Sure. Provacative? Only if you consider poorly researched, scientifically absurd and factually lacking provacative.
Because, as Russ says, Big Pharma is only about making medications and conducting research that will lead to profits, without any consideration for the betterment of people for its own sake. Government funding, while prone to politicking and politicization, is still a far superior system to relying on private industry to do it. If it were up to them they’d only treat what was profitable to treat.
I consider the amount of government grants and siphoned money already goes to the Pharma companies (in the form of tax breaks and other forms of government largesse/welfare) to be a far worse combination of anything else I’ve suggested above because, when combined with poorly educated, religiously driven idealogues, creates the exact situation we are now residing in.
And, Xon, I just love that you’re linking to good ‘ol Lew. I had forgotten about him, he really is a riotous mess of half-baked polemics and conspiracies that would make Oliver Stone blush.
Regardless, though, removing government from the picture is not only problematic from a funding perspective (see Russ’s point), but it’s also giving the drug companies license to pander only to their stockholders, a recipe for completely discompassionate, profit-over-people research.
A more workable solution might be the depoliticization of government monies where a non-partisan (or as non-partisan as one can get, i.e. no Dems and no ReThugs) panel allocates money in a fair, transparent and public manner. Basically, let’s limit the politics to science politics and leave the sycophants, religious nutjobs, corrupt, election-focused thugs out of the picture as much as possible. Put all the money in a big pot and let the science community put people in charge of it and distribute it. Is that better? I don’t know, but the current state of affairs is even more worrisome.
Blah blah blah, ad hom ad hom ad hom, epon. Typical m.o. Sure, some libertarians are rather nutty and the quote from the author of the Politically Incorrect Guide to Science was from Rockwell’s blog, but so what? I wanted to give people a taste of how the argument against gov’t funding works. And that quote makes the case eloquently enough for my tastes. Give me a list of the sites I am allowed to link to to gain your respect, and I’ll try to search more carefully next time.
Of course, one of the reasons I deciced to link to Pol Inc Guide to Sci and called it “provocative” is because one of the big things he shows in that book is that historically much of the “big gov’t” funding waste in science has been the result of the Left. Given the way in which many people like to speak about our current situation (with you-know-who in power) as being some anomaly of big gov’t gone bad (if only we could get smart Democrats in office! etc.), I thought seeing how a good bit of the blame for gov’t waste falls at the feet of the Left might be edifying.
Russ and epon,
1. I agree that scientific advancement is good for its own sake and not simply for the sake of something it produces. But it is also good for the sake of what it produces. If we are “just learning about our world”, and people are dying who don’t need to die because we’re more interested in some scientific minutia that hasn’t been before, then we have a priority problem.
But we need stuff that “works” to some extent, as I said above. It is a great good to learn about the world, but we can learn about the world in ways that also benefit us, whenever that is possible. Otherwise, we’re just stabbing in the dark. First fund this thing, then that other thing, who knows what good any of it will ever do, but at least we’re learning.
Or think of it this way: If a new medicine is in demand because there are lots of lives that could be saved or improved by it, then who are we to say that money should not be spent on that but should instead go to some issue that interests a much smaller number in a much smaller way? Given that we can’t do everything at once, we have to prioritize. Why not prioritize towards stuff that ‘works?’
2a. As to your (Russ) own field of interest, I think there will still be a demand for pyschological research. The fact that it’s not funded much now privately is largely because so much is currently invested by the government. Scientific researchers are too busy convincing congressmen to give them money to go out and lobby the private sector. Would-be investors have too much money taken from them by the government to invest in all the projects that they would like to invest in on their own. This is always the government’s game–start funding something, and eventually they can control it and we’ll think we can live without them doing so.
2b. I think you’re underestimating how useful many of your own field’s discoveries really are. The vast majority of scientific discoveries really are ‘useful’ in some sense. This is what motivates doing them in the first place, in almost all cases. Michelangelo had to find someone who was willing to pay him to paint something, and Columbus had to find someone who was willing to ‘pay’ him to explore something, etc. And ‘hard’ scientists need to find someone who is willing to fund what they do. This is just as true when the money comes from the feds as it is when it comes from the private sector.
Ah, Xon, but the feds are willing to fund stuff that isn’t obviously ‘useful’. They don’t demand that every project have some obvious pay-off in the end. True, but neither do many private investors! There are many wealthy people who believe in “science for science’s sake” and who give to just that end. If the government is capable of this sort of motivation, then so are people not affiliated with the government.
3. As to “Big Pharma”, I find it ridiculous to suggest that the problem with private funding is that it encourages pharmaceutical companies to be “only about making medications and conducting research that will lead to profits”, or that this gives them license to engage in “profit-over-people research.” Since Pharm Companies make money (in general) by making drugs that people want or need to use, it stands to reason that in general they are producing drugs that are beneficial to the people who take them. They make their profits by producing things that help people. (Though I do admit this is all a bit too “ideal” in our current climate and is only a very “general” conclusion.) There is no reason to oppose “profits” and “people.”
Xon, who is this Left you keep referring to? Names and sources please. Perish the strawman.
Rusty,
In the context of the government’s horrendously inefficient (and often just plain corrupt) funding of science, I mean “the Left” to refer to those members of the government with “liberal” or progressive inclinations who have been pulling most of the levers for the last 50 (75? 100?) years.
Long before the Bush administration came in and started “messing with” funding of science, the Democrats and other progressives were messing with it.
As I said, the book epon refuses to recognize as being worth a darn goes through this in more detail. I don’t know how much more of a sketch you want me to provide here. ??
The problem with pigeonholing any group of people into a category like “Left” or “Right” is that everybody has different definitions of what words like conservative, liberal, left, right, progressive, etc. mean, and even the generally-accepted definitions evolve all the time (see: this post on my blog).
To give you an example, my definition of conservative and liberal under the context of government is simply liberal = more regulation/spending, conservative = less regulation/spending. Taken that way, both parties are liberal and only differ in how they regulate and allocate resources, not whether they regulate and allocate resources. A real conservative government (under my definition) would be taking resources out of research, not manipulating it to its own means and expanding funding for it.
So, re:
What Bush is doing is also a liberal inclination, so I’m still curious who the Left is if that’s supposed to be the Right.
Rusty, I understand well the problem you’re talking about. Political terms are often unhelpful, because there’s so much passion tied up in their creation (often), but out contemporary terms are particularly unhelpful. The ‘Left/Right’ dichotomy is simply awful, referring back to the French Revolution, and which side of the aisle the revolutionaries sat on. If you wanted many aristocratic heads to roll (Girondins), you were on the right. If you wanted all the aristocratic heads to roll (Jacobins), you were on the left.
Conservative and liberal are also unhelpful, because many people define ‘conservative’ as “less government” but many others define it as “sticking to the old ways/resistant to change”. These two things do not necessarily go together.
I’ve posted on this a bit too (and the post was in fact a paper I wrote for a seminar I took), and after much thinking I admit I don’t know exactly how to make our terms better or more clear. So I often stick to the same ol’ terms, especially in “quick” internet discussions.
I do agree with you, though, that almost all government since at least the 20th century has been variations on the same theme of “left” (where left means “big gov’t/more regulation”). So, Bush is part of the left, too, on this definition. I don’t object to that at all. Bush is part of the problem. But most of Bush’s critics are also on the left in this sense, and so they need to realize when they start criticizing Bush’s “meddling” with science funding that he’s not doing anything that hasn’t been done before by the sorts of politicians that his critics tend to like.
Perhaps between the two of us we can define our terms more carefully?
It’s too bad scientific research doesn’t always work that way, isn’t it? Simply attempting to focus money and energy on a problem doesn’t guarantee that you’ll solve it. Science is often most productive, most effective, when scientists are allowed to follow their muses, simply because we aren’t often able to see what it is that will help. This details how a number of discoveries that have had profound effects were the results of accidents.
First, there was an article recently in the Washington Post on schizophrenic treatment drugs, based on a scholarly article published in the American Journal of Psychiatry, that most industry-funded studies results were in favor of whomever was funding them, while a National Institute of Mental Health study found them all to be less effective than an off-patent drug.
Secondly, much of the marketing done by drug companies seems designed to manufacture a market for a preexisting or new drug, while spending considerably more money on such marketing than on R&D. Often times magnitudes more.
Matt, I don’t think our positions are in conflict. I cheerfully grant you that many scientific discoveries are “by accident.” But, these accidents usually happen in connection with someone who thinks they might be onto something, and then stumbles onto something very different from what they originally envisioned.
Science is messy, and no one is disputing that. What I am disputing is the wisdom of having the government decide where to funnel money. If a scientist can convince some whacky millionaire to fund his research, then I say that’s great. It’s great whether or not it works out. But it is when the process gets “political”, when governments start confiscating money and deciding which projects are “worthy” of that money, that we run into the problems I am concerned with.
I don’t think we usually have any freakin’ idea whether a particular line of research is going to “pan out.” But, there are certain situations in which we do have some idea, or at least we know that a certain product would be useful if we could figure out how to make it. This is where Big Pharma comes in, and where I am having difficulty giving much weight to the criticisms of Big Pharma that have been offered. Pharmaceuticals is one of those rare instances where scientists know up front that a certain “discovery” or “development” would indeed be useful and would be desired by a lot of people, if they can only figure out how to make it. (And they often have some idea of how to make it, as well.) For that reason, there are a lot of people willing to invest big-time money into the pharmaceutical industry. (The process of making these discoveries is just as sloppy here as it is elsewhere, though. But the point is that there are people who are willing to put billions of dollars of their own money into the sloppy process because they hope to eventually get a good return on their investment). And I don’t see how we can justify telling people that they are not allowed to invest in that sloppy discovery-process as they see fit, but instead must spend their money on some other sloppy discovery-process that the we-know-best politicians think is more noble/worthwhile/likely to get them re-elected.
Finally, you mention that there are problems with the way pharmaceutical companies currently operate. I agree with this as well. I never said the current situation was ideal. But even the problems you mention are probably more attributable to government than you realize: the unfair market edge to companies that already have a lot of money that results from our patent system is the government’s fault. It is the government that gives out patents, and that severely limits the availability (through regulations and other penalties) of off-patent drugs. Likewise, the fact that wealthy companies spend a lot of money on advertising and home-cooked test studies is largely a result of the unfair market edge these companies receive from the “cooperation” of the government (patent system, and lots of other instances of “corporate welfare” and the like).
Gotta run!
Off-patent drugs are drugs that are no longer covered by patent, and as such are no longer the money makers that on-patent drugs are. While this is the result of the patent system, it certainly doesn’t make it less available, just more ignored, and less likely to be included in a test. In fact, they are more available simply because they can be made by anyone, and are certainly cheaper. Don’t make claims that these companies are in any way going to work in the interest of people as long as they can make more money in other ways.
That was the point of the Washington Post artcle I linked to. Often the things that pharmaceutical companies come across are not that much better, and often worse than an already-established or even hardly known drug. We can’t trust the companies, patent system or not, to accurately and reliably test their products. And seeing as how I can’t do all my own testing either, I’m more than willing to fund the government, and set up a regulatory scheme, to make sure it gets done right.
As a bit of an aside, I’m rather disappointed that you didn’t really bother to read the item(s) I linked to. Not much has changed, has it?
Sorry, I don’t know what you’re referring to here. I did read your linked articles (promise!), though I confess to mixing terminology inappropriately about patents. That’s my bad.
Is this what happens under a regulatory system? It “gets done right?” I don’t think so.
Really, this whole paragraph shows again how our respective positions about how pharmaceutical companies work are not in conflict. I’ve already acknowledged that pharm. research is as messy as any other, or as you put it that “often the things pharm. companies come across are not that much better…than an already-established or even hardly known drug.” Right. Pharm. research is messy, like all science. It’s not a matter of people saying “What cool discovery can we make if we just have the money? Cool, let’s do it!” Instead, lots of things are funded and tried, and many don’t produce much in the way of results at all. It often seems very hit and miss.
But this is true whether the gov’t is handing out money or whether “the market” is directing the flow of money. Research will be messy and “inefficient” either way. So I don’t see how any of this is an argument for government regulation and funding of scientific research. The fact that Big Pharma spends a lot of money on things that don’t really work is no argument against Big Pharma: we’ve all been arguing this whole time that this is just the way scientific reserach works!
So, given that reserach is “inefficient” either way, do we want people to decide of their own free will which inefficient scientific research to invest in (in accordance with their own particular hopes, interests, and knowledge), or do we want people to have money taken from them to fund the inefficient scientific research that politicians want to invest in (in accordance with their own particular hopes, interests, and knowledge or lack thereof)? In any case, the idea that government is the right answer because private businesses “can’t be trusted” sounds like something out of Lewis Carroll.
Oops, one more thing.
This is the sort of argument that I am most interested in. How does a company make money without in some way working in the interest of people? If the company is not working in anyone’s interest outside of the company, then how is it making money (particularly for any sustained period of time)? The only obvious way that comes to mind is if the company is in cahoots with the government and has the coersive powers of the state at its disposal protecting it from other competitors and customer backlash. But this sort of scenario, of course, would not in any way militate against my claim that the government is too involved in things like how scientific research is done. Quite the contrary, it would only seem to confirm my claim. So what’s another example of this sort of thing?