June, 28 2012, 03:53pm EDT
Obama Plan Expands Risky Offshore Drilling in Arctic, Gulf of Mexico
WASHINGTON
The Obama administration announced plans today to dramatically expand offshore oil drilling, including in the Arctic and the heart of critical habitat for polar bears. The plan will also expand high-risk, ultra-deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, which is still suffering the effects of the Deepwater Horizon disaster that spilled more than 200 million gallons of oil.
The five-year plan schedules 15 lease sales in six offshore areas, including the Arctic's Beaufort and Chukchi seas, where an oil spill in remote areas would be nearly impossible to clean up, and portions of the Gulf of Mexico near areas where development has so far been off-limits. The plan encourages further reliance on oil and threatens species already stressed by the impacts of climate change.
"President Obama is doubling down on risky offshore oil development when he should be investing in clean energy," said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "This plan is a one-two punch to vulnerable wildlife like polar bears. They're already being killed off by climate change, and now they're facing dangerous, dirty drilling right where they live."
The Obama plan represents a long-term commitment to offshore oil drilling at a time when Arctic monitoring stations have reported carbon dioxide levels in the region have reached 400 parts per million -- a milestone that underscores the risks of greenhouse gas pollution. Leading climate scientists say CO2 concentrations should be reduced to 350 ppm to avoid catastrophic, irreversible impacts.
The Chukchi and Beaufort lease sales take place in critical habitat for polar bears, which were protected under the Endangered Species Act in 2008. Scientific studies show that, because of the rapid melting of their Arctic habitat, two-thirds of the world's polar bears, including all those in Alaska, are likely to be extinct within the next 40 years unless greenhouse gas pollution is significantly reduced.
"Polar bears are already teetering on the brink of extinction. Policies that worsen climate change and raise the risk of disastrous oil spills in their habitat will push them over the edge," said Sakashita.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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Idaho Hospital Ends All Labor and Delivery Care, Citing Abortion Ban
"Consequences for Idaho physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines," said Bonner General Health as it closed its obstetrics unit.
Mar 22, 2023
Rural areas in the U.S. have faced a decline in hospitals that provide obstetric services for years, and the fate of one hospital in northern Idaho suggests that abortion bans could worsen the trend.
As The Washington Post reported reported Tuesday, Bonner General Health in Sandpoint, Idaho has been forced to announce the impending closure of its labor and delivery department, citing staffing issues as well as the state's punitive abortion ban—one of the strictest in the nation—and threats from state Republicans to make the law even more stringent.
The state's ban criminalizes abortion cases in almost all cases and threatens doctors who provide care with felony charges, suspension or termination of their medical license, and up to five years in prison. It includes potential exceptions for people whose pregnancies result from rape or incest and people who doctors determine face life-threatening pregnancy complications—but as Common Dreams has reported, such exceptions have led medical providers to withhold care until a patient is sufficiently ill, placing them in danger.
The threat of prosecution and pressure to withhold medical care from people who need it has contributed to the hospital's staffing shortage, said Bonner General Health in a statement late last week.
"Idaho's political and legal climate does pose as a barrier specific to recruitment and retention for OB-GYNs."
"Highly respected, talented physicians are leaving. Recruiting replacements will be extraordinarily difficult," said the hospital. "In addition, the Idaho Legislature continues to introduce and pass bills that criminalize physicians for medical care nationally recognized as the standard of care. Consequences for Idaho physicians providing the standard of care may include civil litigation and criminal prosecution, leading to jail time or fines."
Idaho Republicans have proposed classifying abortion as "murder from the moment of fertilization" and have called for bans that extend to people whose pregnancies result from incest and rape.
"Idaho's political and legal climate does pose as a barrier specific to recruitment and retention for OB-GYNs," hospital spokesperson Erin Binnall told the Post.
Patients in Sandpoint will now have to travel to Coeur d'Alene, about 45 miles south, to deliver their babies. The city now has the northernmost labor and delivery department in the state, and people living near the state's northern border may have to travel two hours to reach the hospitals there.
Bonner General Health announced its decision days after the podcast "This American Life" featured an interview with an obstetrician who has worked for several years at Bonner General Health but has considered leaving the state since Idaho's ban went into effect last June, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturnedRoe v. Wade.
"I was looking at social media and somebody was talking about a person who is completing their OB-GYN residency and was looking to come to the Pacific Northwest," said Dr. Amelia Huntsberger. "And I'm like, hey, there's all sorts of openings in Idaho. And then I'm laughing out loud because I'm like, who is going to be finishing their residency training and being like, I definitely want to go to the state with the super strict abortion laws that criminalize healthcare?"
The Journal of the American Medical Associationpublished a report in 2018 showing that a lack of obstetric care in rural hospitals is associated with a rise in preterm births and more people giving birth in facilities where medical staff lack the proper training to assist with labor and delivery, such as emergency departments. High rates of maternal mortality are also associated with "maternity care deserts," which include nearly half of rural U.S. counties, according to the Commonwealth Fund.
Nearly 90 rural obstetrics units closed their doors between 2015 and 2019, with hospitals citing financial losses associated with high numbers of patients who use Medicaid as well as difficulty in recruiting and retaining doctors.
"This will be the beginning of a trend, I fear," said behavioral scientist Caroline Orr Bueno of Bonner General Health's decision. "We already have a maternal mortality crisis in the U.S.—we're the only country in the developed world where maternal mortality rates are increasing—and abortion bans are going to make it worse."
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Fears of Monarch Butterfly Extinction as Numbers Plummet 22% in Annual Count
"Despite heroic efforts... we could still lose these extraordinary butterflies by not taking bolder action," warned one conservationist.
Mar 22, 2023
Wildlife conservationists sounded the alarm Wednesday as an annual count of monarch butterflies revealed a sharp decline in the number of the iconic insects hibernating in Mexican forests, stoking renewed fears of their extinction.
The annual survey—led by Mexico's National Commission of Natural Protected Areas and the Mexican branch of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF)—showed a 22% drop in the hibernating monarch population amid accelerating habitat loss driven primarily by deforestation.
"Despite heroic efforts to save monarchs by planting milkweed, we could still lose these extraordinary butterflies by not taking bolder action," Tierra Curry, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), said in a statement.
"Monarchs were once incredibly common," she added. "Now they're the face of the extinction crisis as U.S. populations crash amid habitat loss and the climate meltdown."
Renowned for its epic annual migrations from the northern U.S. and southern Canada to Florida, California, and Mexico, monarchs have suffered a precipitous plunge in population in North America this century.
According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the number of eastern monarchs fell from around 384 million in 1996 to 60 million in 2019, and in the West their numbers declined from 1.2 million in 1997 to fewer than 30,000 last year.
As CBD noted:
At the end of summer, eastern monarchs migrate from the northern United States and southern Canada to high-elevation fir forests in central Mexico. Scientists estimate the population size by measuring the area of trees turned orange by the clustering butterflies...The eastern population has been perilously low since 2008.
Last year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature formally listed the monarch butterfly as endangered, citing critical threats posed by the climate emergency, deforestation, pesticides, and logging.
(Graphic: Center for Biological Diversity)
In the United States, the Trump administration in 2020 placed monarchs on the wait list for consideration for Endangered Species Act protection. FWS has until next year to make a final listing determination.
"It is not just about conserving a species, it's also about conserving a unique migratory phenomenon in nature," said WWF Mexico general director Jorge Rickards. "Monarchs contribute to healthy and diverse terrestrial ecosystems across North America as they carry pollen from one plant to another."
"With 80% of agricultural food production depending on pollinators like monarchs, when people help the species, we are also helping ourselves," he added.
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Bernie Sanders Targets Moderna Greed in Covid-19 Vaccine Hearing
"Should people in America and around the world be allowed to get sicker and sometimes die because they cannot afford the outrageous and arbitrary prices that the pharmaceutical industry demands?" asked the Vermont Independent.
Mar 22, 2023
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday denounced Moderna's proposal to more than quadruple the price of the Covid-19 vaccine it co-developed with billions of dollars in public funding—along with mRNA technology co-invented by government scientists—as an example of Big Pharma's "unacceptable corporate greed."
At a hearing held by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), the Vermont Independent reiterated his widely shared belief that the purpose of medical advancements should be to save as many lives as possible, not make executives "obscenely rich."
Sanders, who chairs the panel, invited Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel to testify at a hearing titled "Taxpayers Paid Billions For It: So Why Would Moderna Consider Quadrupling the Price of the Covid Vaccine?"
In his opening statement, Sanders stressed that scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other federal agencies "worked with Moderna to research, develop, and distribute the Covid vaccine that so many of our people have effectively used."
"While Moderna may wish to rewrite history," Sanders continued, "this vaccine would not exist without NIH's partnership and expertise and the substantial investment of the taxpayers of this country. As a matter of public record, U.S. taxpayers spent $12 billion on the research, development, and procurement of the NIH-Moderna Covid vaccine."
"For that huge investment," added the progressive lawmaker, Moderna is "thanking the taxpayers of America by proposing to quadruple the price of the Covid vaccine to as much as $130 once the government stockpile runs out—at a time when it costs just $2.85 to manufacture that vaccine."
"Moderna has already made $21 billion in profits off of the Covid vaccine during the pandemic and four of Moderna's executives and investors collectively became more than $10 billion wealthier as a result of the massive taxpayer investment into that corporation," said Sanders. "Mr. Bancel literally became a billionaire overnight and is now worth $4.7 billion."
"Do we not need to change the current culture of greed into a culture which understands that science and medical breakthroughs should work for ordinary people, and not just enrich large corporations and CEOs?"
In the words of the senator, "This type of profiteering and excessive CEO compensation is exactly what the American people are sick and tired of."
In response to a letter Sanders sent to Bancel following Moderna's January announcement of its planned price hike, the corporation vowed to make Covid-19 vaccines and boosters "available at no cost for the vast majority of people in the United States." Last month, after Bancel agreed to testify at Wednesday's hearing, Moderna said that when the federal government's public health emergency declaration expires in May, "Covid-19 vaccines will continue to be available at no cost for insured people," while the company's patient assistance program "will provide Covid-19 vaccines at no cost" to uninsured or underinsured people.
"That is good news," Sanders said Wednesday. "The bad news is that most patient assistance programs are poorly designed and are extremely difficult, if not impossible, for patients to access," he added, urging Moderna "to reconsider their decision to quadruple the price of this vaccine and not raise the price at all."
"Our committee looks forward to working with Moderna to develop a program that allows every American to continue to receive the Covid vaccine for free without the need to file complicated forms or paperwork, answer personal questions, or wait for hours on end at the pharmacy," said Sanders. "In other words, let us truly make this vaccine available for free to all Americans."
But when asked by Sanders if Moderna will charge the U.S. government less for the NIH-Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, Bancel refused to commit, citing so-called "complexity."
"You have money for stock buybacks by the billions, and you guys became billionaires," Sanders responded. "That doesn't seem too complex to me."
In a video shared Tuesday, Senate HELP Committee senior health counsel Zain Rizvi further detailed how Moderna has tried to suppress evidence of the U.S. public's massive contributions to the NIH-Moderna Covid-19 vaccine while refusing to share the recipe with South African scientists who are working with the World Health Organization to boost global supply.
The refusal of Moderna and other pharmaceutical corporations to transfer publicly funded technology to qualified generic manufacturers has contributed to global Covid-19 vaccine apartheid, needlessly prolonging and worsening the pandemic.
Although Covid-19 jabs have been credited with preventing roughly 20 million deaths worldwide in 2021 alone, researchers estimate that 1.3 million additional lives could have been saved in the first year of the vaccine rollout had shots been distributed equitably. As a result of unequal access to lifesaving Covid-19 vaccines—made worse by corporate-friendly trade rules that protect Big Pharma's intellectual property monopolies and lead to artificial scarcity—one person suffered an avoidable death from the disease every 24 seconds in 2021.
"Moderna has taken a publicly funded vaccine, built on decades of publicly funded research, and used it to maximize their own profits at the expense of public health," Julia Kosgei, policy co-lead for the People's Vaccine Alliance, said Wednesday in a statement. "It's long past time for Stéphane Bancel to be held to account."
"Today's hearing must be the beginning of a conversation about how governments can place public health needs before private profit. That means requiring companies that profit from publicly funded research to share new technologies with the world."
Citing the corporation's latest earnings report, Kosgei noted that "Moderna is spending as much on buybacks and dividends as it is on research and development." She called it "plainly ludicrous to suggest that this is the best way to ensure everyone has access to effective vaccines and medicines."
"This should be a moment of reckoning for Big Pharma," said Kosgei. "Today's hearing must be the beginning of a conversation about how governments can place public health needs before private profit. That means requiring companies that profit from publicly funded research to share new technologies with the world."
Like Kosgei, Rizvi stressed that Moderna's behavior is not unique and called for far-reaching action "to put an end to the greed of the pharmaceutical industry."
That's also precisely what Sanders did during his opening remarks:
In the pharmaceutical industry today we are looking at an unprecedented level of corporate greed—and that is certainly true with Moderna. Today, while 37% of the American people could not afford the prescription drugs their doctors prescribe, 10 major pharmaceutical companies made over $100 billion dollars in profits in 2021—a 137% increase from the previous year. In these corporations, the 50 top executives made over $1.9 billion in total compensation in 2021 and are in line to receive billions more in golden parachutes once they leave their companies. In other words, Americans die because they cannot afford the outrageous cost of prescription drugs, while the drug companies make huge profits.
Further, while many Americans don't know this, the taxpayers of this country have spent many tens of billions of dollars over the past decade to research and develop life-saving medicine. Yet, despite that huge investment, and the vitally important work done by NIH scientists, the citizens of the United States pay far more for prescription drugs than do the people of any other country, in some cases, as much as 10 times more. Unbelievably, there are important drugs on the market today that literally cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
"What does a lifesaving drug mean for a person who cannot afford to buy that drug?" Sanders asked. "Should people in America and around the world be allowed to get sicker and sometimes die because they cannot afford the outrageous and arbitrary prices that the pharmaceutical industry demands?"
"Do we not need to change the current culture of greed into a culture which understands that science and medical breakthroughs should work for ordinary people, and not just enrich large corporations and CEOs?" he continued.
Sanders urged people "to remember the contributions of great scientists like Dr. Jonas Salk who, in the 1950s, invented the vaccine for polio. Salk's work saved millions of lives and prevented millions more from being paralyzed."
According to the progressive lawmaker: "It has been estimated that if Dr. Salk had chosen to patent the polio vaccine he would have made billions of dollars. But he did not. When asked who owns the patent to this vaccine Dr. Salk said: 'Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?' What Dr. Salk understood was that the purpose of the vaccine he invented was to save lives, not to make himself obscenely rich."
Salk was not alone, as Sanders explained:
In 1928, Alexander Fleming, a scientist from Scotland, discovered penicillin at St. Mary's hospital in London. Fleming's discovery of penicillin changed the medical world and saved millions of lives.
When Fleming was asked about his role, he did not talk about the outrageous fortune he could have made through his discovery. Instead, he said: "I did not invent penicillin. Nature did that. I only discovered it by accident." He refused to make obscene profits from his discovery.
In 1921, Dr. Frederick Banting along with two other scientists at the University of Toronto invented insulin—an issue we're hearing a lot about today. When Dr. Banting was asked why he wouldn't patent insulin and why he sold the rights to insulin for just $1 he replied: “Insulin does not belong to me. It belongs to the world.”
It has been estimated that Dr. Banting's invention saved some 300 million lives. Once again, a great scientist made it clear that his purpose in life was to ease suffering and save human lives, not to make billions for himself.
"In this moment of excessive corporate greed," said Sanders, "the moral vision of these great scientists is something that we might learn from."
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