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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Joe Biden: cometh the hour, cometh the man | Editorial

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      “This is the time to heal in America”. President-elect Joe Biden’s words were directed at a nation suffering after four years of Donald Trump’s dishonesty and fear-mongering. Mr Biden understands Trumpism is arsenic in the water supply of American political culture. It has sloshed around the country, flowing most freely wherever Republicans were in power. Even after the president had clearly lost the popular vote, his Republican enablers embraced his claims about a stolen election rather than denouncing them.Yet Mr Biden wants America to come together not come apart. There is nothing to gain from trading incivilities with Republican opponents. He seeks to bridge divides. Under Mr Trump, the US has become more polarised between educated and less-educated voters; whites and people of colour; haves and have-nots; and urban and rural areas. Mr Biden is right: politics can’t be conducted in a furnace, it’s time to “lower the temperature”.In his words Americans must “see each other again [and] listen to each other again”. There’s too much at stake to do otherwise. The US faces a triple crisis: a pandemic that is costing hundreds of lives daily; an economic depression with skyrocketing long-term unemployment; and a politics where consensus is sorely lacking but badly needed. These are interrelated emergencies. Covid cannot be solved without a faith in facts, which is why Mr Biden will set up an expert pandemic taskforce ahead of naming his cabinet. His emphasis on science is in contrast to widespread Republican disdain for evidence.The country’s economy can only be revived by federal spending to keep companies and households afloat while upscaling the test-and-trace regime. Thanks to the US’s skewed electoral system Republicans may find themselves in a position to frustrate a president Biden. Some want to bite the hand of friendship that he has extended. This would be a bad idea. Republicans who shrank the government to the size “it can be drowned in the bathtub” can see when you do so people die. Those who pushed profit-driven opinion ahead of scientific fact ought to realise that conservative ideology won’t cure coronavirus.Without a vaccine, what is needed is money from Congress and politicians willing to persuade people to change their behaviour. Super-spreading lies about the economy and the virus has deadly consequences. A public reared in an age of government distrust led to a revolt against mask-wearing and social distancing. Mr Biden is asking Republicans to stop peddling fact-free assertions about liberties being lost for the sake of public health. They should listen to him.The trained cynicism about government needs to be unwound. Mr Biden’s argument is that if Americans cannot share a common narrative about how to handle Covid then the government cannot produce a successful solution. He is right. Republicans must break Mr Trump’s spell over their party. Left unchecked the Grand Old Party risks reducing itself to a cult beholden to an ageing leader’s bizarre conspiracy theories.The American dream does not exist for many people. How to manage this pain is central to Mr Biden’s healing touch. The president-elect seems ready to offer compassion and help to those whose suffering Mr Trump dismissed as fraudulent. Mr Biden wants Americans to feel empowered by believing in something larger than themselves. He would like elected leaders to take, rather than abdicate, responsibility for public duties. If the 2020 election was a referendum on the Trump years, the pandemic provides a test of conservative principles. Mr Biden aims to restore trust in government, and in the US itself. Republicans should do their bit to help. More

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      in US Politics

      US Congress hopeful Nancy Goroff: 'We need more scientists in public office'

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      Nancy Goroff will be the first female research scientist to serve in the US Congress if she is elected this November. The Democratic candidate is running for one of Long Island’s seats in the House of Representatives against incumbent Republican, Lee Zeldin, an ardent President Trump supporter who has described her as a “radical professor”. Facing a tight race with issues such as the coronavirus pandemic and climate change looming large, Goroff, a professor of chemistry at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, is stressing her science credentials.
      You’ve worked at Stony Brook University for more than two decades developing new organic molecules for solar cells and eco-friendly lighting in your lab. What made you decide to run for Congress?I decided in late 2018, when the issues top of mind were climate change, the environment and healthcare. It came from being frustrated and infuriated with the denigration of science and expertise by the Trump administration. I’ve always advocated causes that I believe in – I sit on the Union of Concerned Scientist’s National Advisory Board – but it just didn’t seem like enough any more. I couldn’t stand by.
      Given the pandemic and climate emergency, is this election a referendum on whether politicians should listen to scientific advice?It seems to be. We hear from voters that they’re frustrated with politicians for not paying attention to the science and leading us to where we are now. Biden has said he is going to be a big proponent of science.
      We need to use facts to guide us through the coronavirus pandemic. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) testified recently that the most important thing we can do to get ahead of the pandemic – more important than a vaccine – is to have everyone wear masks. That didn’t fit Trump’s narrative, so he said the CDC director misspoke. Rather than contradicting the CDC, he should be amplifying its message. That [Trump] won’t wear a mask and denigrates people for wearing masks is just unconscionable to me.
      What would the fallout for science be if Trump was re-elected?There would be a lot of pain and suffering. The pandemic will last much longer. I also worry about a continued lack of action on climate change, lack of concern about providing healthcare to people and the further undermining of experts in every government agency. People have been pushed out and there is a huge amount of work to do to rebuild that expertise.
      You’re not specifically supporting the Green New Deal, the progressive environmental package introduced last year by two Democrats including New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It sets an aggressive goal of developing a carbon neutral economy in 10 years. If elected, what would you do instead?There are many different versions of the Green New Deal. If I say I’m for the Green New Deal, the Republicans will decide that I’m for the most extreme version. I am for the US aiming to be carbon neutral in our energy production by 2035 and carbon neutral overall, including all sources, as soon after as we can. To achieve that we need to deploy the renewable energy technologies we have as quickly as possible and invest in research to develop new ones.
      I want to make sure Covid-19 stimulus spending is focused on investment in clean energy infrastructure. That will bring jobs and move us closer to a carbon neutral future. Then – I’m a scientist, I am well versed in the data – I want my office to be a resource for every member of Congress on scientific questions.
      You are backed by 314 Action, a Democratic committee whose mission is to get scientists elected to public office. Why do we need more scientists in Congress and does gender matter?We need more scientists, regardless of gender. We have a lot of lawyers and business people and that’s fine, but you want people from diverse backgrounds when you are trying to make complicated policy decisions. So many of our big challenges as a country have a scientific or technical component. There is only one research scientist in Congress now [Bill Foster, a Democratic physicist from Illinois]. As a woman in science, I know what it means to be an underrepresented group and I think that will be helpful for making sure my constituents get their voices amplified. More

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      in US Politics

      If the poorest Americans are selling their blood, the US is in serious trouble | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Looking to make extra cash? Don’t want to retrain in “cyber” but need a new gig? Good news! All you need to do is contract Covid-19, try not to die, then sell your antibody-rich blood plasma. Blood centres in the US are currently paying Covid-19 survivors a premium for their plasma, the yellowish liquid that makes up about 55% of blood. Apparently, you can get $100-$200 (£75-£155) a pop.It would seem some enterprising students have cottoned on to this money-making scheme. Administrators at Brigham Young University’s campus in Idaho recently announced that they are “deeply troubled” by accounts of students who have “intentionally” exposed themselves to coronavirus in order to get that sweet, sweet blood money. “There is never a need to resort to behaviour that endangers health or safety in order to make ends meet,” the school said.A noble sentiment. However, the US would not have a booming blood plasma industry in the first place if it weren’t for the fact that so many people have to resort to potentially endangering their own health in order to make ends meet. Even before the coronavirus hit, low-income Americans were selling blood plasma to get by.“Selling plasma is so common among America’s extremely poor that it can be thought of as their lifeblood,” a 2015 Atlantic article noted. The US is an outlier in this regard: you’re not allowed to sell your blood plasma in the UK or in many other developed countries. In the US, however, you can donate up to twice a week; the procedure typically takes about 90 minutes, and you will get somewhere between $30 (£23) and $50 (£38) a time. Which is more than the $7.25 (£5.50) per hour federal minimum wage. The companies bleeding you dry, of course, will be earning a whole lot more: blood plasma is a multibillion dollar business in the US. Indeed, blood products are the US’s 12th most valuable export; in 2016, they made up a greater percentage of all American exports than soya beans or computers. Industry people joke that the US, which produces 70% of all plasma worldwide, is “the Opec of plasma collections.”Giving blood plasma now and again won’t hurt you. Indeed, it is something we should all do if we can: plasma is desperately needed for life-saving therapies. In Britain, the NHS is urging Covid-19 survivors to donate plasma to treat those who fall ill during a second wave. But selling your blood plasma 104 times a year, as some desperate Americans do, may be another matter. Someexperts and research have queried whether it is healthy, and even in the US if you donate plasma rather than sell, there are limits on how many times you can do it. Some people who sell their plasma frequently have also complained about things like migraines, numbness, and fainting.I am not necessarily against the idea of allowing people to sell blood plasma: as long it is strictly regulated, the number of donations safely capped, and the pay fair. However, I am definitely against people having to resort to selling plasma because the lack of a meaningful welfare state, along with a stagnant minimum wage, means it’s the only way they can scrape by. Even if there were zero health consequences involved there is something fundamentally sickening about the blood plasma industry. According to one study, plasma donation centres are disproportionately located in low-income areas and the most frequent use of money earned from donating was paying for food and basic necessities. And this is happening in the richest country in the world. It should make your blood boil.• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More

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      in US Politics

      Covid drug given to Trump developed using cells derived from aborted fetus

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      One of the drugs taken by Donald Trump that he has touted as a potential “cure” for coronavirus was developed using human cells originally obtained from an elective abortion, a practice repeatedly denounced by the president and many of his supporters.The drug is a monoclonal antibody cocktail developed by Regeneron. The president received an 8-gram infusion under a “compassionate use” exemption when he was hospitalized over the weekend after testing positive for Covid-19. There is no cure for Covid-19, and the drug is not approved.The stem cells used to develop the drug are known as HEK-293T cells, a line of cells used in laboratories. The cells were originally derived from an embryonic kidney after an elective abortion performed in the Netherlands in the 1970s.Trump has consistently sought to restrict abortion access, including most recently, when he nominated the conservative Catholic Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the supreme court last month. The anti-abortion movement is one of Trump’s most enthusiastic bases of support.The 2020 Republican party platform explicitly opposes embryonic stem cell research, and calls for a ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.Trump has already limited research using embryonic stem cells for ideological reasons. In 2019, his administration paused funding for government scientists to work on studies involving embryonic stem cells, affecting about $31m in research, according to Science Magazine.“We stopped the federal funding of fetal tissue research, which everybody felt was so important …” the president told supporters in January 2020. “We’re standing up to the pro-abortion lobby like never before.”The HEK-293T line of cells has been “immortalized”, meaning they divide freely in the lab. Regeneron said the company does not consider the cells “tissue”.“It’s how you want to parse it,” a Regeneron spokeswoman, Alexandra Bowie, told the MIT Technology Review. “But the 293T cell lines available today are not considered fetal tissue, and we did not otherwise use fetal tissue.”Development of the Regeneron antibody cocktail is supported by a $450m grant from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (Barda).The Susan B Anthony List, a leading US anti-abortion group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, the anti-abortion movement has weighed in on other Covid-19 drugs in development. At least five Covid-19 vaccine candidates used either HEK-293T cells or a proprietary line of cells developed by Janssen from a 1985 elective abortion.In April, the influential US Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote to the US government to ask that it “incentivize” vaccine candidates developed without use of such cells.“It is critically important that Americans have access to a vaccine that is produced ethically: no American should be forced to choose between being vaccinated against this potentially deadly virus and violating his or her conscience,” the letter said, as reported by Science Magazine.Regeneron has worked with the US government to develop monoclonal antibody therapies for years. In 2018, researchers from Regeneron and the US government used the same line of stem cells in development of a therapy for the Ebola virus, according to a study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.“Research using such stem cells allows Regeneron to model complex diseases, test new drug candidates and can help unlock new scientific insights that ultimately could lead to the discovery of new treatments for people with serious diseases,” Regeneron said in an April 2020 statement.Regeneron’s drug is not available to the public and has been tested on only 275 people to date. Therapies in the same class as Regeneron’s antibody cocktail cost on average more than $96,000 per course.The Trump administration has worked systematically to limit abortion access in the United States and abroad. Vice-President Mike Pence has said: “I long for the day Roe v Wade is sent to the ash heap of history,” referring to the US supreme court decision which has allowed for women to obtain legal abortions since 1973. More

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      in World Politics

      A Year On, the Clean India Mission Falls Short

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      Research amidst the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the virus is transmitted through wastewater. This makes it crucial to revisit the goals of India’s ambitious Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission, or SBM) that came to a close almost exactly a year ago. While there were substantial improvements made in toilet coverage, a lack of data clarity muddies an understanding of exactly how large these improvements were across the country. According to government estimates, national sanitation coverage was 51% in 2014 when SBM began and reached 78% in 2018, less than a year prior to the end of the program. While this certainly shows progress — the national average was just under 26% in 1999 — no one would think to take these numbers and simply round up to 100%.  

      But at the close of the SBM last fall, this is exactly what Prime Minister Narendra Modi did. Speaking to a crowd, Modi proclaimed that India was now completely open defecation free (ODF), with sanitation coverage reported by the SBM portal as 100% in rural areas and, inexplicably, 105% in urban areas. From the start of the 2014 campaign, the central government maintained that in just five short years, India would be ODF. Despite the gains made, a singular focus on meeting steep targets in a very short amount of time seems to have put Modi in a tight spot by the time October 2019 rolled around. 

      Caste Politics Overshadow Sanitation Issues in India

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      The gaps have been, at times, glaring. News reports from established outlets all over the country reported open defecation in areas that were already recorded as ODF. A 2018 study by the Rice Institute estimated an open defecation rate of 44%, meaning nearly half of the sampled population was still engaging in the practice hardly a year before SBM ended. In urban areas the picture looks a bit better: 95% of urban households access an improved toilet. But this includes community toilets, which may be used by hundreds of other families and are often plagued with maintenance, hygiene and safety issues. Furthermore, one survey from 18 states identified over 48,000 manual scavengers still cleaning “dry” toilets which do not discharge into sewer lines.

      Social Pressure-Cooker

      What explains these inconsistencies? The use of shame-based tactics to stop open defecation, alongside a rush to meet ODF goals, have built up a pressure-cooker environment. The SBM has continued prior national efforts that deemphasized technical solutions and focused heavily on strategies to encourage behavior change at the local level. One such strategy is Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS), which hinges on “triggering” disgust and extreme emotions among community members to spur the abandonment of open defecation. Despite some concerns about shame-based approaches, the SBM continued with the CLTS Foundation and others as implementation partners.

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      But open defecation is an issue that needs more than short-term emotional reactions. The longstanding practice is mired in cultural tradition, casteist taboos and environmental factors, among others. Some reasons people give for it is that they do not wish to empty a pit themselves, that it is considered more hygienic to defecate further away from the home — certainly reasonable considering how few poor Indian homes have running water — or that community toilets are dirty and unsafe, so squatting in a quiet area nearby is actually preferable.

      In the SBM environment, people who have not built a toilet, for whatever reason, are highly likely to experience retaliation for continuing to defecate in the open. Because Indian culture is quite collective — the actions of one person are seen to have radiating effects on the family and community — sometimes social pressure can play a role in nudging behavior change. However, this is a slippery slope. In India’s highly unequal society, characterized by stark gender and caste-based hierarchies amidst a wide array of languages and ethnicities, such strategies have the potential to be misused, with large social costs.

      There is ample evidence to show this. In June 2017, Zafar Hussein, a local community leader agitating against the eviction of his settlement in Rajasthan, was allegedly beaten to death by local officials for trying to stop officials from taking photographs of women defecating in the open. His death was reported by multiple outlets. In other areas of Maharashtra, people have been followed by a loud band, jailed or fined for defecating in the open.

      Walls of shame have been instituted by local village councils onto which the names and photographs of people defecating openly are be pasted. These individuals were often removed from eligibility for local government programs. The previously mentioned Rice Institute study also recorded coercion and threats of the loss of government rations as a way to bring down open defecation rates. Notably, the study found that Dalits and Adivasis were the most likely to face such behaviors. India’s Health Ministry has publicly denounced the results of the Rice survey. But in September last year, weeks before Modi’s ODF declaration, two young Dalit children were beaten to death in their village in Madhya Pradesh for defecating in the open.

      Numbers, Strategies and Health Equity

      These debates over sanitation data are not merely academic exercises. They have real, material impacts on people. In some ways, the above tragedies are not surprising. If a hasty approach is taken toward declaring areas ODF, it follows that any activity hinting that this claim is not matched by reality will be quashed. Despite this, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation bestowed the Global Goalkeeper Award upon Modi last year. It is surprising that one of the largest, most influential health organizations in the world, committed to facts and data, accepted without question the Indian prime minister’s claims, failing to consider all the evidence to the contrary.

      So what is the solution? Certainly, the answer is not to give up on sanitation programming as the need remains great. There are several organizations on the ground that have successfully integrated mobilization with communities, technical expertise and a sustained presence through which people are not merely pressured to stop a practice but meaningfully guided toward an alternative and given the facts and tools to integrate that alternative into their lives.

      However, this takes a more long-term presence, a less single-minded focus on quick targets, a commitment toward waste management infrastructure besides just toilets, and a willingness to meet people where they are. Further, the same people who have fallen through the gaps in the SBM are those with a lot to lose during the current pandemic: the rural poor, slum-dwellers, sanitation workers, manual laborers and migrants. Brutal crackdowns against those who kept working amidst India’s COVID-19 lockdown illustrate that retaliation cannot continue to be a solution when reality does not match the official word. Amidst the pandemic, sanitation infrastructure and the transparency of data surrounding it are necessities that cannot afford to wait.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More