Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead E.P.A.

rugcat · Dec 7, 2016

The hits just keep on coming.

Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt, climate change denier and fossil fuel ndustry ally has been named to run the EPA.

https://www.google.com/amp/mobile.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/us/politics/scott-pruitt-epa-trump.amp.html

On the more amusing side, the leading contender to run the FDA is said to be Jim O'Neill, close associate of libertarian billionaire, Trump supporter, and general all-around nut bag, Peter Thiel.

O'Neill, hedge fund manager, has no medical or scientific background, unlike every other previous head of the FDA. One of the things he believes is this – "Clinical trials? We don't need no stinkin' clinical trials."

"We should reform FDA so there is approving drugs after their sponsors have demonstrated safety -- and let people start using them, at their own risk, but not much risk of safety," O'Neill said in a speech at an August 2014 conference called Rejuvenation Biotechnology. "Let's prove efficacy after they've been legalized."

http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news...id-to-consider-thiel-associate-oneill-for-fda

See, if a company claims to have a new drug that cures cancer, we don't need to bother with clinical trials or demonstrate with proof that the drug does what the company claims. We simply let them sell it and if it turns out that it doesn't cure cancer and that people who take it start dying in droves, why then people will stop buying it.

Let the market decide.

MaeZe · Dec 7, 2016

Can you imagine working in those agencies when these people take charge? I also wonder what is going to happen when the confirmation hearings take place. Will the GOP kowtow to Trump or will they stand up to him and let him melt down?

rugcat · Dec 7, 2016

From Scott Pruitt's bio on his official government website:

"Pruitt filed the first lawsuit challenging the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and is a leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda. "

As Attorney General, he also filed several suits against the EPA, one of which is still outstanding. As head of the EPA, he will then be defending against the lawsuit that he himself brought -- or not.

ElaineA · Dec 7, 2016

MaeZe said:
Can you imagine working in those agencies when these people take charge? I also wonder what is going to happen when the confirmation hearings take place. Will the GOP kowtow to Trump or will they stand up to him and let him melt down?

This is a subject my hubs and I have talked a lot about. It's a weird (and massively hypocritical, on my part) conundrum. In the past I've been pretty anti entrenched-bureaucracy. But now I find myself thinking...hoping...they're the last bastion. It's disconcerting as all hell.

cornflake · Dec 7, 2016

I "enjoy" how the FDA guy's quote makes no sense. Not much risk of safety? First, that's not what you mean to say. Second, how is anyone supposed to know how much risk there is without, you know, clinical trials? Third, how will we know about the efficacy after legalization? .... Clinical trials? I mean how else?

MaeZe · Dec 7, 2016

cornflake said:
I "enjoy" how the FDA guy's quote makes no sense. Not much risk of safety? First, that's not what you mean to say. Second, how is anyone supposed to know how much risk there is without, you know, clinical trials? Third, how will we know about the efficacy after legalization? .... Clinical trials? I mean how else?

A lot of these guys believe getting sued for killing people will control the safety issue as companies will be careful about the products they release.

The ignorance is mind boggling. A lot of these drugs make so much money initially that subsequent lawsuits don't dent the profits.

On the other side of the coin, often the news media will ignorantly publicize some Big Pharma scandal that really isn't. When a drug is released on the market, it cannot have been tested for rare risks. You study a thousand patients. You cannot study 100,000 patients before marketing a new drug, it's not practical. So if said untoward reaction occurs in 1/100,000 people, it won't show up until the drug is on the market.

The news media, then, making money off selling scandal, reports that this was somehow the drug company's fault. The result can be a useful drug for a recalcitrant problem is banned from the marketplace, no longer available.

Not that Big Pharma is never to blame, often they are, again, because they can make huge profits before it is revealed the new drug has serious problems.

Someone heading the FDA who has naive laissez-faire beliefs about the pharmaceutical industry will be disastrous from the get go.

ShaunHorton · Dec 7, 2016

Well, look at it this way, with the repeal of the ACA, and the slashing of Medicare and Medicaid. Nobody will probably be able to afford any of these new, untested drugs.

cornflake · Dec 7, 2016

Yeah, except don't they also believe in tort reform to cap potential awards and even suits that'd stem from their glorious free market?

Also also, it's not as if a case would be clear-cut without, wait for it, clinical trials.

"My husband had disease X, so took this new drug and died."

"You have no proof the drug had anything to do with it -- he was probably killed by the disease. Someone else took the drug and is still alive, soooo.... '

nighttimer · Dec 8, 2016

With Pruitt at the EPA, DeVos at Education, Flynn as National Security Advisor, Sessions at Justice, Carson at HUD, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon tabbed for Small Business and the completely deranged Sarah Palin under consideration for V.A. Secretary, because our veterans haven't suffered enough, it's obvious to me how thoroughly the Punking of America by Trump really is going to be.

The Killer Klowns From Outer Space are have landed in Washington.

Introversion · Dec 8, 2016

It's so ironic to me that the Electoral College was created to prevent someone like Trump from ascending to the White House. But since that's apparently not going to happen, we're all agitating to remove the EC.

cbenoi1 · Dec 8, 2016

> "Let's prove efficacy after they've been legalized."

Efficacy determined by patients directly? I don't think too many patients would accept to pay for pills that may as well turn out to be very expensive placebos. Also, countries - like Canada - sort of lean on the FDA rigid clinical testing processes so I expect drug exports to suffer on short order, which in turn will make domestic sale prices go through the roof. Good luck with that.

-cb

jennontheisland · Dec 8, 2016

So, now we all get to be lab rats too? Yay.

JimmyB27 · Dec 9, 2016

Can't decide if this is better or worse than Theresa May simply shutting down our equivalent.

jennontheisland · Dec 9, 2016

This continues to feel like Germany in 1932. Trump is now asking for the names of anyone who has participated in climate talks or carbon control:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...d-in-climate-meetings/?utm_term=.1f6ac02f45c0

In short weeks, these people will likely not have jobs.

Helix · Dec 9, 2016

"Are you now or have you ever been a climate scientist?"

Alessandra Kelley · Dec 10, 2016

jennontheisland said:
This continues to feel like Germany in 1932. Trump is now asking for the names of anyone who has participated in climate talks or carbon control:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...d-in-climate-meetings/?utm_term=.1f6ac02f45c0

In short weeks, these people will likely not have jobs.

Helix said:
"Are you now or have you ever been a climate scientist?"

Sounds like it's Lysenkoism all over again.

Stalin's pet theoretician (he was never a scientist), Trofim Lysenko pooh-poohed all this bourgeois nonsense about "genetics" and "evolution" and the so-called "scientific method", instead pushing magical theories of farming and development which accorded with Marxist theories about being able to control and mold the environment.

Stalin had Lysenko's back. No dissent or even real testing was tolerated. Real, trained geneticists who objected on rational grounds were "disappeared" into gulags, never to be seen again. All of the Soviet Union was farmed according to Lysenko's crackpot schemes.

And the wheat crops failed.

Again and again (In the Ukraine, breadbasket of Eurasia!)

Millions died of famine, year after year.

Few dared speak against Lysenkoism until after Stalin died.

I can recall, as a child in the 1970s, seeing the news (which I now understand was an early sign of the USSR crumbling away) that the Soviets were buying vast quantities of American wheat to alleviate their starvation, and how shocking and darkly amusing that was to the adults around me.

Ideologically-driven anti-science purges never turn out well.

Trump Picks Scott Pruitt, Climate Change Denialist, to Lead E.P.A.

rugcat

Lost in the Fog

MaeZe

rugcat

Lost in the Fog

ElaineA

All about that action, boss.

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

MaeZe

ShaunHorton

AW's resident Velociraptor

cornflake

practical experience, FTW

nighttimer

No Gods No Masters

Introversion

Pie aren't squared, pie are round!

cbenoi1

jennontheisland

the world is at my command

JimmyB27

Hoopy frood

jennontheisland

the world is at my command

Helix

socially distancing

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian