RFK Associate Rips Big Pharma To Its Face
With the appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services, government policy and the direction of public health in the United States is rapidly changing.
And one of the biggest examples of it is that officials inside those government agencies are now willing to call out pharmaceutical companies for using advertising and lobbying to advance their interests. The most recent example being Calley Means, the new Special Government Employee for HHS Secretary and the Co-Founder of TrueMed, who appeared at POLITICO's Health Care Summit on Wednesday.
Means, interviewed by POLITICO's Dasha Burns, did not hold back when addressing an unfriendly audience.
While Burns, the lobbyists in the room, and legacy media outlets have criticized Kennedy and the Trump administration for cutting jobs and reorienting how research funding is distributed, Means pointed out that for all their criticisms, none have acknowledged that previous bureaucrats failed. Spectacularly.
Means pointed out that chronic illness rates have skyrocketed, with lower life expectancy and sicker children. Saying there's no other way to describe it other than "utter failure."
"Those scientists fundamentally have overseen, just demonstrably, a record of utter failure,’ Means said. "... Any business in the world, if you went into it with the metrics that HHS has overseen with skyrocketing costs and has caused to skyrocket worse and worse outcomes, with extremely little innovation from industry on actual chronic disease reversal and prevention — just management — you would of course fire a bunch of people and you would of course install new leadership to put that mantle down."
And he wasn't done there.
Former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump shake hands during a campaign rally at Desert Diamond Arena on August 23, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. Kennedy announced that he was suspending his presidential campaign and supporting President Trump. (Photo by Rebecca Noble/Getty Images)
Big Pharma Lobbyists Called Out Over Aggressive Advertising
He also called out that the previous administration at NIH almost certainly contributed to overseeing the "literal creation of a pandemic," by supporting gain-of-function research through grants handed out to the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And he's right; Fauci and his agency signed off on grant money handed out to EcoHealth Alliance, and the WIV at one point sent out a grant proposal describing the exact methods a COVID-like virus could be created with risky research.
Those bureaucrats have, instead of facing accountability, been lauded by the media and awarded by academia. That's how the system currently works.
They've also overseen the "devastation in American health over the past 20 years, with disease rates skyrocketing in America," Means said. And they've used legacy media to do it.
"When you turn on CNBC, it's just a nonstop infomercial for pharma. It's a Skyrizi commercial followed by Scott Gottlieb saying how Bobby's killing people followed by breathless coverage of the measles outbreak, and no mention of the mental health crisis. It is insane for you to insinuate that the thing standing between us and better health is more government bureaucrats."
Again, he's right. The pipeline from government bureaucrat to pharma board member is well established and extremely busy. Gottlieb was head of the FDA, then seamlessly transitioned to being a board member at Pfizer. Sure enough, he was on TV almost every night during the pandemic, pushing Pfizer's mRNA vaccines or their Paxlovid treatment, without any acknowledgment of his conflicted interests.
At times, it seems like half of Washington DC makes their living off big pharma, one way or another. But instead of the media criticizing that system, they too benefit from it. And get extremely upset when called out for it.