The five major tobacco companies sent their lawyers to federal court in Washington last week to argue in support of their effort to obtain an injunction that would bar the US Food and Drug Administration from enforcing regulations requiring graphic new warning labels. The tobacco companies claim that the new requirements violate the First Amendment by forcing the companies to take up the government’s anti-smoking campaign.
Indonesia Challenges Global Tobacco Reform
With 240 million people and weak public health regulations, Indonesia is of the world’s last countries refusing to sign the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, the World Health Organization’s treaty to limit the tobacco industry’s influence by encouraging nations to restrict tobacco advertising and raise excise taxes. In a major investigation on the role of the tobacco industry in Indonesia, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists documents the role of the tobacco industry in Indonesian politics.
Corporations Undermine UN Effort to Reduce Chronic Diseases
Cross-posted from Common Dreams.
While much of the world’s attention focused on the UN debate about Palestinian statehood last week, the General Assembly took up another issue that garnered less media scrutiny, even though its outcome could prevent millions of premature deaths in coming decades. On September 19th and 20th, 30 heads of State and 100 other senior ministers and experts met at the UN General Assembly’s first high level summit on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) to discuss how to reduce the burdens of such conditions as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases.
These conditions cause about 35 million deaths a year, of which 80 percent occur in low and middle-income countries and one quarter among people younger than 60 years. By 2030, NCDs will cause more than three quarters of all deaths in the world. While the UN has previously recognized HIV, tuberculosis and malaria as threats to economic development and global security, this was the first time the UN acknowledged that non-communicable disease also jeopardized economic well-being.
The NCD summit was an important step in shaping a coordinated global response to these conditions but unlike infectious diseases, where few organizations profit directly from their spread, powerful industries depend on encouraging consumption of products like tobacco, alcohol, unhealthy food and automobiles that have fueled epidemics of non-communicable diseases. Thus, the summit previewed the great public health battle of this period. On one side are the public health professionals, advocacy organizations and local officials who have to cope with the rising tide of NCDs fueled by the growing consumption of tobacco, alcohol and unhealthy food. On the other are industries built on the model of profiting by promoting unhealthy lifestyles and products.
Participants in the UN meeting recognized this conflict. In his remarks, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon observed that “there is a well-documented and shameful history of certain players in industry who ignored the science – sometimes even their own research – and put public health at risk to protect their own profits.” He went on to note that “there are many, many more industry giants which acted responsibly,” sounding a conference theme that disease promotion was the work of a few bad apples.
In the lead up to the conference, industry lobbyists worked hard to persuade wealthy nations to look out for business interests. According to the Washington Post, a confidential summary of the negotiations on the summit’s political declaration showed that US negotiators threatened to scuttle the document if it even raised the issue of using trade agreements as a vehicle for protecting public health. The Canadian Medical Association charged that Canada had been instrumental in removing a passage that would have limited the impact that food and alcohol corporations have on health policies and in failing to address trade-related barriers to global health.
A main issue dividing meeting participants was whether the 2001 Doha Declaration, which allowed low-income countries to compel drug companies to allow generic drugs for use in their own countries, could be applied to drugs for NCDs. The Doha amendment refers to HIV, TB, malaria “and other epidemics,” language that led one activist to observe that this agreement “was not meant to be so narrowly interpreted… it was intended to address all public health crises.” Jay Taylor, a vice-president of The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, explained the opposing position to the Post, “Compulsory licenses are intended to be used to address health emergencies and to provide urgent access in situations where there is little or no availability of existing effective medicines. This situation is clearly not the case in the context of the growing burden of noncommunicable diseases.” Tellingly, the summit’s final statement does not use the word epidemic, even though the number of diabetes cases, for example, increased from 300 million worldwide in 2009 to 366 million in 2010.
A second debate was whether international standards of corporate conduct should be voluntary or mandatory. Business favored voluntary codes, arguing companies were better equipped to implement standards and that mandates threaten jobs and economic growth. Public health activists pointed to the scientific evidence that voluntary standards rarely lead to meaningful changes in corporate behavior.Two other key issues led to conflict. The first was who should participate in the meeting. Industry insisted that “all sectors” of society should be represented while public health advocates argued industry participation was inappropriate. One hundred forty three non-governmental organizations from around the world created the Conflicts of Interest Coalition and urged that the NCD summit and other forums for policy development should be “free from industry involvement” because of the “obvious conflicts of interest associated with food, alcohol, beverage and other industries that are primarily answerable to shareholders.”
At the end of the meeting, many participants expressed disappointment. While the summit acknowledged “the fundamental conflict of interest between the tobacco industry and public health,” no such statement was made about the food, alcohol, automobile or pharmaceutical industries. Unlike tobacco, these industries also produce products that contribute to health, but in recent decades they have increasingly followed the playbook of the tobacco industry: making campaign contributions and lobbying to oppose public health regulation, aggressively promoting unhealthy products in low and middle income nations when wealthy countries regulate their practices, and distorting scientific evidence that implicates their products in global epidemics.
In the final analysis, industry succeeded at the summit in avoiding direct challenges to its role in promoting disease and national governments refused to set specific targets for NCD reduction, a prerequisite for coordinated global action. These outcomes make it hard to be optimistic that the meeting opened a path for more forceful action to take on the world’s leading killers.
On the other hand, the UN meeting did show the potential for a global movement to challenge corporate influences on health. A few world leaders spoke out forcefully. Torphong Chaiyasan, the Deputy Minister of Health for Thailand, told the meeting that “many large companies contributed to the non-communicable disease problem and continue to try to weaken public health policy.” The organizations that signed on to the Conflict of Interests Statement represent tens of thousands of health activists from around the world. “I am very, very optimistic about the creation of a social movement. The evidence is clear that it can be done,” George Alleyne, a physician who once headed the Pan American Health Organization, told the Washington Post earlier this week. Today corporations have more resources and power to shape health than this emerging movement, but the future health of the world depends on changing that equation.
Image Credits:
1. ComSec via Flickr.
2. ComSec via Flickr.
New Study Tracks Pharmaceutical Fraud and Abuse in the United States, 1996-2010
In a recent article in the Archives of Internal Medicine, Zaina Qureshi and colleagues report that between 1996 and 2005, $3.6 billion wasrecovered for 13 pharmaceutical fraud cases initiated by “whistleblowers” and that since 1996, a total of $12 billion has been recovered from 31 pharmaceutical prosecutions for violations of the False Claims Act. The authors conclude that “industrywide changes in the way pharmaceutical corporations conduct marketing activities are needed.”
New Rating Scheme for Corporate Disclosure of Political Contributions
A new report from Baruch College of the City University of New York rates the Standard and Poor 100 on their level of disclosure of corporate political contributions after the Citizens United decision. Only 7 of the 100 S & P Companies got the highest score, indicating transparent disclosures. These included Pfizer and Sara Lee. By sector, pharmaceutical/consumer products rated highest, with an average score of 58 out of 100, while food, beverage and tobacco companies rated on average 22, sixth lowest of the 10 sectors rated.
Did Walmart Buy Growing Power’s Silence for a Million Dollars?
Cross-posted from Appetite for Profit.
Last week retail behemoth Walmart announced a $1.01 million donation to Milwaukee-based Growing Power, a well-known nonprofit whose founder Will Allen has gained much accolades for his hard work to bring local, healthy food to low-income areas.
So far the online debate over Growing Power taking this funding is predictable: some defend it for pragmatic reasons, while others deplore the move, either because they don’t like this particular company or they think all corporate money is evil. However, this donation cannot be viewed in such a narrow context. There is a pattern here that spans decades.
By partnering with a group that could otherwise be one of its staunchest critics, Walmart is taking a page right out of the Big Tobacco playbook: Buying silence.
Philanthropy to win over causes that could cause them trouble is a time-honored tradition of Corporate America, and this is the just the latest installment. The tobacco industry saw great success with sponsorships of women’s causes (Virginia Slims tennis anyone?) and both the tobacco and alcohol industries have bought off Latino groups along with plenty of others, as I’ve described before.
It’s easy to justify taking this sort of money. Of course Growing Power needs the cash and will do good things with it. It’s understandable, in these hard times, how the group could justify taking it. Why not put a corporation’s profits to good use? Viewed in that narrow frame, almost any donation can be justified.
But what happens when Walmart’s pledge made earlier this year–with the first lady by their side–to sell more fresh produce at affordable prices falls through (or squeezes farmers) as it inevitably will? What happens next year, when Allen needs more money, and Walmart ups the ante? One colleague had no problem with the deal as long as Walmart didn’t ask for a seat on Growing Power’s board. They just might.
It’s not at all clear where Growing Power is drawing the line. On their blog, Allen defends the move by arguing that we “can no longer refuse to invite big corporations to the table of the Good Food Revolution.”
Invite them to the table? These corporations: McDonald’s, PepsiCo, Kraft, and especially Walmart, have already been to the table: they have set the table, and left a stinking mess for us to clean up.
Has Corporate America really been left out of the conversation about our food supply? My book was inspired by the response of the food industry to the criticism being leveled against them. Responses in the form of a massive public relations campaign designed to convince the American public and policymakers alike that they have it covered.
McDonald’s pushing cheeseburgers and fries? No problem, now they sell salads. General Mills promoting sugary cereals to kids? Enter whole grain Reese’s Puffs. Not enough access to fresh food in poor areas? Walmart to the rescue.
Meanwhile, any policy effort to reform the food system in more meaningful ways is resisted by these same companies with powerful lobbying campaigns. Walmart is no exception to this pattern.
Christopher Cook (author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis – which I highly recommend) recently hit the nail on the head, posting to a list-serve that such donations are “not only tainted but tied to political allegiance with the corporate agenda.” He goes on:
The PR and influence that Walmart and others gain from this “charitable giving” expands their corporate power and their market control–the very things that are directly undermining our food system, sustainability, and food access and justice. These corporations are a huge part of precisely why we are in such deep trouble with our food today. It’s not just about “tainted” dollars, it’s about how these corporations will profit (and they will) both economically and politically by buying market share in the food justice movement.
See also Andy Fisher’s excellent critique on Civil Eats concluding that Walmart cannot possibly be part of the solution to our broken food system because the company “hurts communities more than it helps them.”
So what then, I hear many asking, is the alternative given that the money is still sorely needed? Cook offers an admittedly more challenging solution: “We need a strongly united movement pushing aggressively for public investment in the great and vital work of Growing Power and other groups.”
Let’s get to work.
Corporate Responsibility Works Better for Corporations than Public Health
A new report from the Children’s Food Campaign of Sustain, a food advocacy group in the UK, says that its government’s Responsibility Deal with the food industry about marketing practices is good for food companies but not so effective for public health.
Global Public Health Implications of Social Media Direct-to-Consumer Drug Advertising
In a recent article in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Liang and Mackey assess the global public health and patient safety implications of unregulated social media direct-to-consumer advertising using web 2.0 (eDTCA 2.0) by online pharmacies and pharmaceutical corporations. They conclude that both pharmaceutical companies and illicit online drug sellers use eDTCA 2.0 to market themselves and their top-selling drugs, requiring regulators worldwide to take into account the current eDTCA 2.0 presence when attempting to reach policy and safety goals.
Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement Threatens Public Health
Increasingly corporations and their allies are using trade agreements as vehicles for achieving policy changes that even the most business-friendly legislatures would have trouble passing. A case in the point is the new Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) currently being negotiated in Chicago with the goal of completing an agreement in time for an Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Meeting in Honolulu this November. The United States’ TPP partners are Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. These negotiations include agreements around tobacco, alcohol and pharmaceutical trade that could have a deep influence on public health. Public health advocates fear that the TPP might ask signatory nations to weaken existing public health protections.
The Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health (CPATH), an organization that brings a public health voice to the debate on trade and sustainable development, has worked to mobilize various constituencies to speak out publicly against U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk’s proposals to increase the prices of medicines and to make tobacco products cheaper and easier to buy. They also call for greater public health representation and transparency in trade policy.
Several groups have joined this effort. For example, Dr. James Madara wrote to Kirk on behalf of the American Medical Association earlier this month, “The AMA strongly urges you to ensure that tobacco products and alcoholic beverages are excluded from all provisions of the TPP and any other trade agreements… Our request is consistent with longstanding AMA policy that ‘international trade agreements recognize that health and public health concerns take priority over commercial interest, and that trade negotiations be conducted in a transparent manner and with full attention to health concerns and participation by the public health community.’”
One issue of concern is tobacco giant Phillip Morris International’s (PMI) effort to use trade provisions to claim that graphic warning labels on cigarette packages (as mandated by several nations) violate trade agreements that protect the company’s trademark rights and related intellectual property rights. According to CPATH, the TPP could strengthen PMI’s hand. The tobacco and drug industries’ representatives are members of the influential and confidential trade advisory committees that guide the Trade Representative. Another concern is that trade agreements will increase the price of prescription drugs, as happened with the Central America Free Trade Agreement.
Some elected officials have also joined the fight against trade agreements that value business interests over health. Congressmen John Lewis, Pete Stark, Charles Rangel, Earl Blumenthal and Lloyd Doggett recently wrote Kirk noting that they expected an “improved public health standard” in the final TPP agreement.
As CPATH observed, “It’s time to put an end to trade agreements that make life-saving medicines too expensive, and deadly tobacco products too cheap. We call for a change of course to a new high performance trade policy that improves and protects health.”
For more on the TPP see CPATH’s slide show.
Image Credits:
1. U.S. Mission via Flickr.
2. TPPWatch.Org
Study Finds Density of Alcohol Outlets in United Kingdom Harms Young People
One on Every Corner, a new report from Alcohol Concern, a United Kingdom alcohol research organization, found that the greater the availability of alcohol in a community, the greater the risk of young people suffering alcohol harm. The report suggests policies to limit density of alcohol outlets.
Corporations and Health Watch 