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.
CEOs Rake it in while their Corporations Avoid Taxes
Executive Excess 2011, a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, found that 25 major U.S. corporations last year paid their chief executives more than they paid Uncle Sam in federal income taxes. Included on the list is Ford Motor Company executive Alan Mulally who received $26,520,515 in compensation in 2010, a 48 percent increase from 2009, while Ford had a $69 million credit on 2010 corporate income tax. Also on the list is Coca Cola Enterprises CEO John F. Brock who was compensated $19,114,318 in 2010, a 71 percent increase from 2009, while Coca Cola paid $8 million in 2010 corporate income tax.
Corporations and Health Watch Goes Back to School: 10 Ways to Bring the Health Impact of Business Practices into the Classroom
As faculty and students return to the classroom after leaving their summer jobs, social action projects, vacation houses, beaches or research projects, Corporations and Health Watch examines how public health programs can integrate information on the impact of business practices on health into teaching, research and service.
While a growing body of evidence documents that the practices of the tobacco, alcohol, food, firearms, automobile, pharmaceutical and other industries have a profound impact on health, many public health, nursing and medical programs and courses continue to focus on how to improve public health by changing individuals, communities and governments, rather than businesses.
Faculty and students who want to broaden their understanding of the role of corporations and business practices can use the Corporations and Health Watch website to design teaching, learning, research and practice experiences. These can expand the repertoire of public health researchers and practitioners who seek to promote social justice by tackling the social determinants of health. Listed below are 10 actions that can help your public health, nursing or medical education program to address this neglected influence on population health, health inequalities and social determinants of health.
1. Develop a lecture on corporate practices for the public health core courses.
- For some relevant slide shows, visit here.
- For documentaries and films to show in class visit here.
- For tips on introducing corporate practices issues into public health core courses, visit here.
2. Assign students to monitor marketing, product design, or retail practices as well as lobbying, campaign contributions and sponsored scientific research of a specific industry for a semester and report on their findings to class.
- Some useful resources: The Influence Explorer at the Sunlight Foundation
- For a description of an undergraduate class project visit here.
- For introductions to doing research on corporations visit here and here and here.
3. Develop and teach a new course on business practices and health.
4. Organize field placements at advocacy organizations that monitor corporate practices or organize advocacy campaigns to change alcohol, tobacco or food industry practices.
5. Organize an event on role of food industry on Food Day, a national event being led by Center for Science in the Public Interest.
6. Assign or write a research paper on the health impact of a product, practice or industry.
7. Organize a faculty seminar that includes researchers from public health, marketing, sociology, business, law and other disciplines to explore areas of common interest.
8. Organize a student group on campus to study and take action to reduce harmful business influences on health.
9. Offer to assist your local or state health department to conduct research on activities of alcohol, tobacco and food industries in your jurisdiction in order to inform public health activities to counter harmful practices of these industries.
10. Support or organize a student group to investigate business practice of campus food service, vending machine contractor or university endowment fund.
- For an example visit here.
These are only a few ideas to get students and faculty started. Have an experience to share? Send it to us (info@corporationsandhealth.org) and subscribe to our free monthly e-newsletter.
Image Credits:
1. Velkr0 via Flickr
2. OSU Archives via Flickr
NRA and Gun Industry Team Up to Oppose UN Small Arms Treaty
“I just delivered a message to those anti-gun elitists at the United Nations, who are meeting to discuss ways to craft an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) that could go after your Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” wrote Wayne La Pierre, Executive Vice President of the National Rifle Association of America recently.
Beginning in 2001 at the first UN Conference on Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons, the United Nations has convened member states to draft a treaty to regulate the international trade in small arms, a treaty scheduled to be ready for a vote in July of next year.
At the behest of the arms industry and the NRA, the US has for the most part opposed the treaty. Now some gun proponents are worried they can’t depend on the Obama Administration to defend their interests. To date, 57 senators have vowed they will not approve a treaty that in their view undermines the Second Amendment. The small arms the treaty addresses are weapons estimated to contribute to about 200,000 deaths a year, a body count that does not include those killed in military conflicts. Other groups, including the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) have supported the treaty, claiming it would help to slow illegal gun trafficking and the diversion of arms to gangs, drug dealers and terrorist organizations. “By recognizing the interconnectedness of the unregulated arms trade, armed violence and the undermining of human rights, including implicitly the right to health, a robust ATT would help prevent the misuse of arms and thus reduce resultant deaths and injuries,” noted Dr. Robert Mtonga MD, IPPNW co-president.
Corporations and Health Watch 