Corporations and Health Watch

Johnson & Johnson Agrees to Pay $2.2 Billion in Drug-Marketing Settlement

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Corporations and Health Watch

Johnson & Johnson will pay $2.2 billion to resolve civil and criminal allegations involving the marketing of off-label, unapproved uses for three prescription drugs, Justice Department officials announced Monday, reports the Washington Post. The cases, which date from the late 1990s through the early 2000s, involve alleged kickbacks to doctors and pharmacies to promote the antipsychotic drugs Risperdal and Invega, and a heart drug, Natrecor. The widely anticipated agreement was one of the largest health-care fraud settlements in U.S. history.

Alcohol Industry Interference: A Report from the Global Alcohol Policy Conference 2013

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Corporations and Health Watch

10.30 — Scotch whiskey at the pub. Credit: Cobalt 123

On October 7-9, the city of Seoul, Korea served as host for the third Global Alcohol Policy Conference. At the conference, more than 850 participants from 45 countries discussed the current state of science-based alcohol policies, recent successes in the alcohol policy field, the prospects for improvement, and the challenges facing alcohol policy advocates.

One important theme running through the conference was the role of the global alcohol industry in maintaining and intensifying alcohol-related harm through its tactics and practices.

Dr. Thomas Babor of the University of Connecticut, for example, stressed reasons to doubt the sincerity of the global alcohol industry in its insistence to be part of the solution to alcohol problems. This is particularly true, given that the strategy of the multi-national alcohol producers and their industry associations and social aspects organizations is clearly to increase overall consumption – a strategy which is inimical to public health and public safety. Additionally, the industry clings to “self-regulation” – a strategy Babor described as “spectacularly ineffective” in actually preventing industry misconduct or associated alcohol-related harms.

Other plenary speakers and workshop presenters illustrated specific cases of alcohol industry efforts either to prevent evidence-based policies from taking effect or to render such policies ineffective. Dr. Ronald Laranjeira (Professor of the Federal University of São Paulo [UNIFESP], Brazil; Director of Alcohol and Drug Research Unit of UNIAD) described the almost total lack of functional alcohol policies in much of Latin America. He called attention to the suspension of a national ban on the sales of alcohol beverages in soccer stadia during the forthcoming 2014 World Soccer Cup in Brazil. The removal of the ban was forced by the Fédération Internacionale de Football Association (FIFA), linked to that organization’s multimillion-dollar contract with Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Budweiser brand.

Similarly, Dr. Evelyn Gillan, Chief Executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland (AFS), Scotland’s national alcohol charity, addressed the tactics of the Scotch Whiskey Association to work to prevent or delay implementation of the Scottish Government’s Minimum Unit Pricing policy.

In South Africa – and the rest of that continent – multinational brewer SABMiller has made clear its intention to “grow per capita beer consumption.” Dr. Charles Parry, Director of the South African Medical Research Council’s Alcohol & Drug Abuse Research Unit (ADARU), described the efforts of SABMiller and other alcohol operators to resist a proposed total ban on alcohol advertising. Specifically, he listed the various arguments marshaled by industry groups and related associations and media outlets – all of which should be familiar to public health advocates vying with health-harming industries:

Casting doubt on the underlying science (the “scientific evidence is not uniform”)
Attacking public health advocates (the Minister of Health is a “Nanny from Hell,” and his allies are akin to the Nazi and Apartheid regimes)
Warning of the “unintended consequences” of regulating industries, including dire economic consequences
Claiming that the measures would be disproportionately burdensome to small businesses (“hurt the little guy”). (Dr. Parry noted that this claim begs the question: if this measure is so beneficial to big business, why would SABMiller raise such vigorous opposition?)

Finally, one of the workshops at GAPC 2013 specifically addressed alcohol industry influences in the alcohol policy process.

During that session, Professor Jeff Collin (Director of the Global Public Health Unit at the University of Edinburgh) called out the disconnect between the British government’s ostensible embrace of a multi-sectoral approach to global health in its “Health is Global” framework – and the reality of its trade policy, including the active promotion of hard liquor as a key export.

Sven-Olov Carlsson, International President of IOGT International, compared the tactics of Big Alcohol to those of Big Tobacco and found many parallels, including the creation of front groups to “fill the policy space.”

Sri Lanka’s Shakyra Nanayakkara detailed the various legal maneuvers utilized by alcohol industry interests to undermine that nation’s National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol (NATA) Act – which prohibits the sale of alcohol and tobacco to person under the age of twenty-one. These maneuvers include legal challenges and infiltrating the NATA training panel with industry-funded lawyers.

A key takeaway of the conference is that understanding the current gap between alcohol policy science and alcohol policy practice is impossible without taking into consideration the machinations of an industry which profits handsomely from underage and excessive adult alcohol consumption.

Thus, reducing the global burden of alcohol-related harm will require advocates to effectively counter that industry influence – through reliance on the best science, savvy media advocacy, and robust grassroots organization.

By Robert Pezzolesi is the Founding Director at NY Center for Alcohol Policy Solutions/NY Alcohol Policy Alliance

Air Pollution, Cancer and the Concerns of U.S. Auto Executives

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Corporations and Health Watch

The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) recently announced that it has classified air pollution as a human carcinogen. Automobile exhaust is a major source of such emissions. “We now know that outdoor air pollution is not only a major risk to health in general, but also a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths,” said Dr Kurt Straif of the IARC in the organization’s announcement. A recent survey of more than 75 U.S. auto industry and auto supplier executives by Booz and Company /Bloomberg identified top concerns of these industry leaders. The survey found that executives were confident about continued growth of auto sales through 2015. Leading concerns were the need for continued innovation in vehicle entertainment, telematics, and the “connected car”; the value of aggressive use of incentives to encourage more sales; and fears of a decline in sales growth after 2016.

Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Corporations and Health Watch

A recent study by researchers at Harvard and York Universities found that millions of patients suffer from adverse reactions to prescription drugs they take to get better. Patients experience an estimated 81 million adverse reactions a year. Although most of these are medically minor, about 2.7 million hospitalizations and 128,000 deaths are attributed to properly prescribed drugs. Prescription drugs are the 4th leading cause of death. Hospitalizations and deaths from prescribing errors, overdose, and self medication would add to these totals.

Corporations and Health Watch Goes to Boston

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Corporations and Health Watch

On November 3, the American Public Health Association begins its an 141^st Annual Meeting in Boston Massachusetts, the home of the nation’s first Tea Party– the one that challenged corporate control of trade, unlike the current Tea Party, which takes its money from the wealthiest.

Several CHW contributors will be presenting their work in Boston and below are listed a selection of the more than 30 sessions or presentations that examine the role of corporations in our society and their impact on health. Forward this list of sessions to your friends and colleagues who might be interested in learning more about how corporations shape population health during their time in Boston. For more details on these sessions, click on the number or the title. The first session listed below features CHW writers, the following sessions are listed in the order of presentation.

Featured CHW Presentation

5133.0 Advocacy for Reducing the Role of the Global Alcohol, Food and Beverage, and Tobacco Industries in Health Education

Wednesday, November 6, 2013: 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

10:30am Advocacy for reducing the role of the global tobacco industry on health education Cheryl G. Healton, DrPH

10:50am Advocacy for reducing the role of the global food and beverage industry on health education Michele Simon, JD, MPH

11:10am Advocacy for reducing the role of the global alcohol industry in health education David H. Jernigan, PhD

11:30am Lessons learned from local, national and global campaigns to change alcohol, food and beverage and tobacco industries influence on health education Nicholas Freudenberg, DrPH

Scientists’ Ties to Food Industry Raise Questions in Europe

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Corporations and Health Watch

Nearly 60 percent of the scientists used as consultants by the European Food Safety Authority, or E.F.S.A., have direct or indirect ties to industries regulated by the agency, according to a report from the Corporate Europe Observatory, an advocacy group that criticizes corporate influence on public policy, reports the New York Times. Martin Pigeon, a researcher at the Corporate Europe Observatory, said the notion that there were no scientists free of industry entanglement was a fiction, noting that many already worked for the food safety agency. “It’s not true that such people don’t exist,” he said, “They do.”

Keeping Salmonella Out of Chicken

Posted on October 24, 2013 by Corporations and Health Watch

In an editorial, the Los Angeles Times writes that Sweden has virtually eliminated salmonella in store-bought chicken, even though poultry there is industrially produced, just like in the United States. And even in this country, a 2010 Consumers Union study found no salmonella in the organic store-brand chickens it tested. In other words, consumers shouldn’t have to accept salmonella-tainted chicken as just one of those unavoidable things.

Fast Food, Poverty Wages: The Public Cost of Low Wage Jobs in the Fast Food Sector

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Corporations and Health Watch

A new report by the University of California, Berkeley, Center for Labor Research and Education and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Urban

& Regional Planning describes the social and economic consequences of low wages for fast food workers. The executive summary and excerpts from the conclusion are below.

Executive Summary

Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of enrollments in America’s major public benefits programs are from working families. But many of them work in jobs that pay wages so low that their paychecks do not generate enough income to provide for life’s basic necessities. Low wages paid by employers in the fast-food industry create especially acute problems for the families of workers in this industry. Median pay for core front-line fast-food jobs is $8.69 an hour, with many jobs paying at or near the minimum wage.

Benefits are also scarce for front-line fast-food workers; an estimated 87 percent do not receive health benefits through their employer. The combination of low wages and benefits, often coupled with part-time employment, means that many of the families of fast-food workers must rely on taxpayer-funded safety net programs to make ends meet.

This report estimates the public cost of low-wage jobs in the fast-food industry. Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit and the other public benefits programs discussed in this report provide a vital support system for millions of Americans working in the United States’ service industries, including fast food. We analyze public program utilization by working families and estimate total average annual public benefit expenditures on the families of front-line fast-food workers for the years 2007–2011.1 For this analysis we focus on jobs held by core, front-line fast-food workers, defined as nonmanagerial workers who work at least 11 hours per week for 27 or more weeks per year.

Main Findings

More than half (52 percent) of the families of front-line fast-food workers are enrolled in one or more public programs, compared to 25 percent of the workforce as a whole. The cost of public assistance to families of workers in the fast-food industry is nearly $7 billion per year. At an average of $3.9 billion per year, spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance

Program (CHIP) accounts for more than half of these costs. Due to low earnings, fast-food workers’ families also receive an annual average of $1.04 billion in food stamp benefits and $1.91 billion in Earned Income Tax Credit payments.

People working in fast-food jobs are more likely to live in or near poverty. One in five families

with a member holding a fast-food job has an income below the poverty line, and 43 percent

have an income two times the federal poverty level or less. Even full-time hours are not enough to compensate for low wages. The families of more than half of the fast-food workers employed 40 or more hours per week are enrolled in public assistance programs.

Conclusions

Because pay is low and weekly work hours are limited, the families of more than half of the workers in the fast-food industry are unable to make ends meet without enrolling in public programs. These families are twice as likely as working families in general to require public aid. Our conservative measurements indicate this public assistance carries a minimum annual price tag of nearly $7 billion.

Low wages, benefits and work hours in the fast-food industry come at a public cost. For front-line fastfood workers and others whose jobs pay too little to provide for food, shelter, health care and other basic necessities, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Aid for Needy Families are indispensable programs. These programs provide a last line of defense between America’s growing low-income workforce and the want of basic necessities. The results of this report suggest these programs would be more effective if they were combined with measures to improve wages and health benefits among low-wage workers. Pay in the fast-food industry could be increased through a variety of means. Many fast-food workers earn close to the minimum wage and would benefit from an increase in the minimum wage or through targeted local laws to raise labor standards. Collective bargaining in the fast-food industry would increase wage and benefits standards in correspondence to the markets in specific geographic areas and the economics of particular market segments. Very few fast-food restaurants currently have collective bargaining agreements. However it is achieved, improving wages and health benefits in the industry would improve the living standards of low-income families while reducing the public cost of low-wage work.

Partnerships of Peril: Keeping Food, Alcohol and Beverage Industries Out of Global Health Governance

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Corporations and Health Watch

In a blog on PLOS Medicine, Heather Wipfli, from the University of Southern California, highlights the lack of consensus regarding the role of private industry in efforts to control the burden of non-communicable diseases. At the May meetings of the World Health Assembly, there was widespread discussion about the role of the private sector in NCD control. While WHO’s position on the tobacco industry is definitive, the definition and parameters of partnerships with other industries driving NCD epidemics are not, despite recent efforts to put safeguards in place. The lack of clarity on when and how to engage with the private sector and the increasing push for public-private partnerships to address global health challenges provides industries with vested interests in policy outcomes direct access to, and greater influence on, decision makers.

Pricing in the Global Tobacco Industry: A Flagship Concept Under Threat?

Posted on October 17, 2013 by Corporations and Health Watch

A new report from Research and Markets, an international market research company, found that pricing strength remains of paramount importance to the tobacco industry. But things are changing and the prognosis is for less bullish price growth than previously, due to less uptrading and reduced product mix improvement.

Corporations and Health Watch

Johnson & Johnson Agrees to Pay $2.2 Billion in Drug-Marketing Settlement

Alcohol Industry Interference: A Report from the Global Alcohol Policy Conference 2013

Air Pollution, Cancer and the Concerns of U.S. Auto Executives

Institutional Corruption of Pharmaceuticals and the Myth of Safe and Effective Drugs

Corporations and Health Watch Goes to Boston

Featured CHW Presentation

Other Presentations

Monday, November 4, 2013

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Scientists’ Ties to Food Industry Raise Questions in Europe

Keeping Salmonella Out of Chicken

Fast Food, Poverty Wages: The Public Cost of Low Wage Jobs in the Fast Food Sector

Partnerships of Peril: Keeping Food, Alcohol and Beverage Industries Out of Global Health Governance

Pricing in the Global Tobacco Industry: A Flagship Concept Under Threat?