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For Immediate Release
February, 15 2023, 02:42pm EDT
Contact:
press@sanders.senate.gov
NEWS: Moderna CEO Agrees to Testify in Senate HELP Committee
Company Features Prominently in New Majority Staff Report on “Pharma Pandemic Profiteers”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, announced on Wednesday that Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel will testify next month in front of the committee for a hearing entitled, “Taxpayers Paid Billions For It: So Why Would Moderna Consider Quadrupling the Price of the COVID Vaccine?”
In January, Sanders wrote to Bancel – who became a billionaire after U.S. taxpayers gave his company billions of dollars to research, develop, and distribute its Covid-19 vaccine – urging the chief executive to refrain from more than quadrupling the price of the vaccine to as much as $130 while it costs just $2.85 to manufacture. “As you know, the federal government, over the years, has supported Moderna every step of the way going back to 2013 when your company reportedly only had three employees,” Sanders wrote at the time. “Now, in the midst of a continuing public health crisis and a growing federal deficit, is not the time for Moderna to be quadrupling the price of this vaccine. Now is not the time for unacceptable corporate greed.”
The committee majority on Wednesday also released a staff report on the rapid growth of pharmaceutical CEO compensation packages during the pandemic. Among the findings is that 50 pharmaceutical executives in 10 companies made $1.9 billion in 2021 and could receive $2.8 billion in golden parachutes, 10 pharmaceutical CEOs could receive $1.6 billion in golden parachutes, and 10 pharmaceutical companies made $102 billion in profits in 2021 – a 137 percent increase from 2020.
Bancel will testify at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, March 22.
He will be joined by the following expert witnesses: Ameet Sarpatwari, Ph.D., J.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Christopher J. Morten, Ph.D, J.D., Associate Clinical Professor of Law, Columbia Law School; and Craig Garthwaite, Ph.D., M.P.P., Herman Smith Research Professor in Hospital and Health Services Management, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
To read the Majority’s staff report on pharmaceutical greed, click here.
LATEST NEWS
'No More Money for Netanyahu's War Machine,' Says Sanders After Latest Gaza Atrocities
"Another school bombed, killing 14 people, including six U.N. aid workers," U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote. "Enough is enough."
Sep 12, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders reiterated his call for an end to American arms transfers to the Israeli military on Wednesday following the latest deadly attack on a school-turned-shelter for displaced people in central Gaza.
In a social media post, Sanders (I-Vt.) highlighted atrocities committed by Israeli forces over just the past week, including the bombing of a so-called "safe zone" and the killing of an American citizen in the West Bank.
"Now, another school bombed, killing 14 people, including six U.N. aid workers," Sanders wrote. "Enough is enough. No more money for Netanyahu's war machine."
Israel's bombing of the United Nations-run al-Jaouni school in the Nuseirat refugee camp on Wednesday was the most recent in a string of attacks on displaced people who have been forced by the Israeli military's evacuation orders and relentless airstrikes to crowd into ever-shrinking slivers of Gaza.
The school was sheltering around 12,000 people at the time of the Israeli airstrikes, according to the head of the United Nations.
Israel's military
claimed it was targeting militants. Hospital officials said at least two children were among those killed in Wednesday's strike.
The Israeli attack on the tent city of al-Mawasi earlier this week appeared to have been carried out with 2,000-pound bombs supplied by the United States, killing or wounding dozens of people including entire families.
"The United States is complicit in this individual crime, as well as in Israel's genocide of Palestinians, because it continues to supply Israel with weapons, despite knowing that the Israeli army uses these massively destructive weapons to regularly kill hundreds of civilians," the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor said in a statement Tuesday.
"All nations that cooperate with Israel in committing crimes by providing it with any kind of direct support or assistance must be held accountable, most notably the United States," the group added. "Giving aid and engaging in contractual agreements with Israel relating to the military, intelligence, politics, law, finance, and the media, among other domains that might help its crimes continue, is enabling Israel to commit its atrocities against Palestinians."
The United States has provided Israel with over 50,000 tons of weaponry and other military equipment since the October 7 Hamas-led attack, and the Biden administration recently signed off on a $20 billion sale of F-15 fighter jets, mortar shells, and other wares.
With U.S. support, Israeli atrocities in Gaza continue to mount.
Shortly before the school attack on Wednesday, Israeli forces bombed "a home near the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, killing 11 people, including six brothers and sisters from the same family ranging in age from 21 months to 21 years old," news agencies
reported.
"A strike late Tuesday on a home in the urban Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza killed nine people, including six women and children," the news outlets added. "
The civil defense agency said the home belonged to Akram al-Najjar, a professor at the al-Quds Open University, who survived the strike."
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UNRWA Says 6 Workers Among at Least 18 Killed in Israeli Strikes on Gaza School
"This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children. No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared."
Sep 11, 2024
The United Nations relief agency for Palestine said Wednesday that six of its workers are among the at least 18 people killed in a pair of Israeli airstrikes targeting a U.N. school in the Gaza Strip where thousands of forcibly displaced Palestinians were sheltering.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said the Israeli strikes on one of its schools, located in Nuseirat in central Gaza, resulted in "the highest death toll among our staff in a single incident" since Israeli forces began bombarding the strip following last October's Hamas-led attack on Israel.
"Among those killed was the manager of the UNRWA shelter and other team members providing assistance to displaced people," the agency said. "Sincere condolences to their families and loved ones. This school has been hit five times since the war began. It is home to around 12,000 displaced people, mainly women and children."
Victims of the strikes included women and children.
Earlier on Wednesday the United Nations said the school had been "previously deconflicted with the Israeli forces."
"No one is safe in Gaza. No one is spared," UNRWA stressed. "Schools and other civilian infrastructure must be protected at all times, they are not a target."
Responding to the attacks, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said on social media that "these dramatic violations of international humanitarian law need to stop now."
Israel is currently on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice, a U.N. body. International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is also seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated.
Over the past 341 days, Israel's assault on Gaza has left more than 145,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to Palestinian and international officials. Nearly all of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been forcibly displaced, while Israel's "complete siege" of Gaza has starved and sickened millions of Palestinians, dozens of whom have died of malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medical care.
UNRWA says around 200 of its staff members have been killed in more than 450 Israeli attacks on agency facilities since October. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed while seeking shelter under the U.N. flag.
Responding to Israeli claims—reportedly extracted from Palestinian prisoners in an interrogation regime rife with torture and abuse—that a dozen of the more than 13,000 UNRWA workers in Gaza were involved in the October 7 attack, numerous nations including the United States cut off funding to the agency. Almost all of them have restored funding as Israeli lies have been debunked.
Bucking this trend, U.S. President Joe Biden in March signed a bill prohibiting American funding for UNRWA.
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Grieving Father Tells 'Morally Bankrupt' GOP to Stop Exploiting Son's Death to Foment Hate
"Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose," said Nathan Clark.
Sep 11, 2024
A day after the Trump campaign saw fit to spread baseless lies about Haitian immigrants in the city of Springfield, Ohio, a grieving father with a deep connection to the bigoted viral stories was forced to speak out.
Springfield resident Nathan Clark spoke at the City Commission meeting that was held shortly before former President Donald Trump faced Vice President Kamala Harris in Tuesday's debate.
Clark was there to speak on behalf of his son, Aiden, who was tragically killed in August 2023 when a man who had moved to Springfield after immigrating to the U.S. from Haiti accidentally drove into the school bus the boy was riding, sending it into a ditch.
On Monday, without notifying the family in advance or receiving their permission, the Trump campaign posted a photo of Aiden and blamed Harris for his death.
"Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose," Clark said Tuesday, adding that politicians who have spoken about his son while attacking immigrants are "morally bankrupt."
"They have spoken my son's name and used his death for political gain," he said.
The child's death was also mentioned by Vance on Monday in a lengthy post on the social media platform X, in which he repeated unverified rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield abducting residents' pets and eating them.
"It's possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false," said the senator, before adding that "a child was murdered by a Haitian migrant who had no right to be here," and explicitly blaming immigrants for rising rates of communicable diseases like tuberculosis and HIV—claims that health authorities have said are false.
On Tuesday, Clark took Vance to task—along with Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), and Trump—for using his son's name for political gain in their attacks on migrants.
The spiraling rumors, he said, had left him wishing that a "60-year-old white man" had caused his son's death.
"If that guy killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate spewing people would leave us alone," said Clark. "The last thing that we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces. Even that's not good enough for them. They take it one step further. They make it seem as though our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate, that we should follow their hate. And look what you've done to us. We have to get up here and beg them to stop."
Soon after Clark spoke out, Trump once again spread the lie about migrants eating pets in Springfield—which authorities in the city have said are false—at the presidential debate.
Clark suggested that he can't stop Republican politicians who "vomit all the hate they want" about immigration and "untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members."
"However, they are not allowed, nor have they ever been allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio," he said.
"In order to live like Aiden, you need to accept everyone, choose to shine, make the difference, lead the way and be the inspiration," Clark continued. "Did you know that he researched different cultures to better appreciate and understand people that he interacted with? Did you know that one of the worst feelings in the world is to not be able to protect your child? Even worse, we can't even protect his memory when he's gone."
"Please stop the hate," he said. "I said to Aiden that I would try to make a difference in his honor. This is it. Live like Aiden."
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