PAGE A4P KEIZERTIMESP SEPTEMBER 2P 2016
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
EpiPen is mighty—but only
for those who can afford it
By SCOTTA
CALLISTER
Controversy continues
to rage over the EpiPen,
fueled by social media
protests over what many
see as price gouging or
profi teering by Mylan, the
company that makes the
device.
EpiPens are used to easily inject
a dose of epinephrine into someone
struck by a severe allergic reaction.
According to the Centers for Disease
Control, epinephrine is the only rec-
ommended fi rst-line treatment for
the most serious reaction, anaphy-
laxis, which can progress to seizures,
cardiac distress and death.
Such emergencies are no longer
rare. The CDC estimates that 4-6
percent of U.S. children suffer food
allergies that can cause serious reac-
tions. In addition to some common
foods – such as peanuts, milk, eggs,
and shellfi sh –substances like latex
and insect stings are common cul-
prits. Adults, as well as children, are
at risk.
The problem is so pervasive to-
day that restaurants, schools, hospi-
tals and other institutions routinely
post warnings about the use of nuts
and other trigger ingredients in their
menus.
Against that backdrop of concern,
the price of EpiPens is soaring out of
reach of many households. A recent
Washington Post article put the in-
crease at 450 percent since 2004. And
Mylan has a monopoly on the device.
The most recent price hikes
spurred howls of protest from con-
sumers online, drawing attention
in the media and the halls of Con-
gress. Facing unprecedented scrutiny,
Mylan CEO Heather Bresch took a
stab at calming the debate earlier this
month. However, there was a defi nite
cringe factor in her closing defense
that, hey, we’re a for-profi t business.
We can certainly see the profi t mo-
tive, given that EpiPen sales have been
worth $1 billion a year to Mylan.
And given that the devices cost a few
bucks to make and now sell for $600
a two-pack. And given that Bresch’s
total compensation rose 671 percent
from 2007 to 2015.
The company’s profi t
motive isn’t apt to calm
the frustration of parents
whose children could die
because they no longer can
afford to have these devices
on hand. For these families,
it’s not like a choice be-
tween expensive Nikes and low-cost
Keds; it’s about life or death, because
there’s no low-cost alternative to the
EpiPen on the market.
That may be changing. With con-
tinuing public outrage, the company
produced plan B: It would remedy
the situation by offering savings cards
– worth up to $300 on the cost of the
two pack – and there’s also talk that
it will produce a lower-cost “generic”
version of its own product.
Those moves haven’t blunted all
the criticism.
Harvard Medical School professor
Aaron Kesselheim told the Post that
the cards are “a classic public rela-
tions move by the pharmaceutical in-
dustry” – offering a benefi t that will
reach only a fraction of the people
who need the pens. Other critics say
generics only guarantee competitive
prices when there are other manufac-
turers in the market.
Meanwhile, Huffi ngton Post writer
Andrew Palumbo, himself a parent
of a child with food allergies, cast
the discounts as a way to distract the
public until the hubbub dies down,
at which point any special programs
could be quietly discontinued. In a
post, he demanded that Bresch “cut
the price of EpiPens and resign.”
We doubt that Bresch will step
down to suit one angry parent, or
even a deluge of them on social me-
dia. But we also believe the issue is
far from dead. This week, a Congres-
sional committee launched an inves-
tigation.
One thing’s certain: If the price
remains too high for many families, a
toddler or child could die because a
simple device is out of their fi nancial
reach. The resulting PR storm would
make this one look like a gentle sum-
mer breeze.
guest
opinion
VFW snubbed
by state fair
(Scotta Callister is the publisher of
the Malheur Enterprise in ValeP OR.)
letters
To the Editor:
After more than 16
years, the new manage-
ment of the Oregon State
Fair is not going to allow
VFW Post 661 to show
its nation’s uniforms at the fair.
The VFW was given a spot as
a non-profi t; now it is pay-to-play.
Whatever answer they give it’s all
political. It is their way of getting
to the truth. All for the
money. I’m a veter-
an and I think all veter-
ans should boycott the
fair.
Carlos Grant
Keizer
Share your opinion
Email a letter to the editor (300
words) by noon Tuesday.
Email to:
publisher@keizertimes.com
Does Trump know what it means to preach?
By MICHAEL GERSON
So far, Donald Trump’s outreach to
African-Americans has consisted of
stereotyping them as impoverished, as
attending failed schools and as unem-
ployed, and then asking what the hell
they have to lose by supporting him.
If this sounds like a typically biased
media summary of Trump’s views,
here he is: “You live in your poverty,
your schools are no good, you have no
jobs ... . What the hell do you have to
lose?”
Most people, it turns out, don’t like
being referred to as part of an undif-
ferentiated mass of failure and de-
spair, particularly when the assertion
is wildly inaccurate (most African-
Americans don’t live in poverty). And
this message is particularly diffi cult to
swallow from a white guy who ini-
tially could not bring himself to repu-
diate David Duke, who has retweeted
bogus and racist crime statistics, and
whose campaign chairman ran a web
site that legitimizes white nationalism.
In his (very partial) defense, Trump
often seems unaware that he is spout-
ing offensive drivel. In speaking to
“the blacks,” Trump is Archie Bunker
on an outreach tour (the youngsters
should look it up). But this is part
of the problem for the GOP. Archie
Bunker didn’t realize he was acting
like Archie Bunker.
In many ways, Trump’s campaign
seems like a rerun of politics in the
late 1960s and early 1970s. On foreign
policy, the Republican nominee some-
times sounds like George McGovern’s
“Come Home America.” In appeal-
ing to racial division and blue-collar
resentment, Trump echoes George
Wallace’s “Stand Up for America.” In
placing “law and order” at the center
of his campaign, Trump is channeling
Richard Nix-
on, who played
to a silent ma-
jority’s fear of
social disorder.
But political
nostalgia can
have
major
policy impli-
cations. For example, when Nixon
employed “lock ‘em up” rhetoric, only
about 100 people were incarcerated
per 100,000 of the population (a level
that had not substantially changed
since the 1920s). Now that fi gure is
more than 700—lower than at the
peak, but still the highest rate in the
world. Trump is addressing the crime
issue near the end of a massive, un-
precedented experiment in routine
incarceration. And he seems to have
no idea what he is doing, or undoing.
Trump is correct that people in
poor and minority communities suf-
fer fi rst and most when crime is ram-
pant and violent recidivists go free.
Poor people depend on public order;
wealthier people can purchase order
with gates, guards and moving trucks.
But an understandable response to
high crime rates has had a series of
unintended consequences. Some
neighborhoods feel like they are un-
der military occupation. Mass incar-
ceration removes large numbers of
men and women from communities,
then returns large numbers to com-
munities with even worse problems
and prospects—a constant churn of
downward mobility. Children are hurt
in countless ways when their parents
are imprisoned. Young people are too
easily sucked into a criminal justice
system that too often recruits them
into criminal careers.
The elements of our criminal jus-
other
views
tice system that are most destructive
and criminogenic have become the
focus of a remarkable reform move-
ment in recent years. Steven Teles and
David Dagan tell the story in their
recent book, Prison Break: Why Con-
servatives Turned Against Mass Incarcera-
tion. Unexpectedly, they argue that
the almost complete consolidation of
Republican power in certain states has
reduced the political motivation for
attacking Democrats as soft on crime.
Deep red states such as Texas and
Georgia have taken the lead in juve-
nile justice reform that offers alterna-
tives to incarceration without making
the streets less safe.
Libertarians such as the Koch
brothers are predictably skeptical of
denying liberty, as a matter of course,
to more than 2 million people at any
given time. But they have been joined
by religious conservatives who are
prone to believe in the possibility of
human redemption and infl uenced
by the prison reform work of the late
Chuck Colson. House Speaker Paul
Ryan would probably fall into both
categories. “I think we need to let
more people earn a second chance in
life,” he has argued. “Instead of locking
people up, why don’t we unlock their
potential?”
With his misguided, simplistic and
offensive rhetoric, Trump has been
blowing up bridges across ideologi-
cal divides for more than a year now,
which may take many Republican
presidential campaigns to rebuild. But
this is one area—if he and his advisers
are smart and willing to reverse course
—that he might abandon a slogan
from 1968 for a policy more suited to
our time.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
Freedom of, and from, religion
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Being ignorant does not necessarily
mean a person is evil or bad; rather,
it simply can mean that the person
does not know. He may not wish to
know something and he may reject
knowledge in order to protect his be-
liefs. Whatever the case, this consid-
eration with all its permutations and
complications has a lot to do with a
debate that’s continued unsettled in
the minds of many among us for well
over 200 years. Is the United States of
America a Christian nation?
There are a few arguments that,
when considered, may serve to refute
what turns out to be a Christian na-
tion myth. Yet, even with presentation
of relevant information, the myth’s
legacy endures and has now—as it has
for all those years since the adoption
of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of
Rights in the late 1700s—and remains
to infl uence American politics and
public policy.
But let’s get directly into this per-
sistent issue with this relevant ques-
tion: If a Christian nation had been the
intent of our nation’s founders, would
those men of old not have written
it at the very front of our Constitu-
tion? However, if the seeker of truth
will just read the document from start
to fi nish he will fi nd no reference to
God, Jesus Christ, or Christianity. If
one stays within the document itself,
it does not state that our nation is of-
fi cially a Christian nation.
The Constitution provides no rec-
ognition to or acknowledgement of
Christianity, including Article VI that
bans “religious tests” for public of-
fi ce. The First Amendment bars all
laws “respecting an establishment of
religion” and protects “the free exer-
cise thereof.” Should he who doubts
seek refuge in the Declaration of In-
dependence where the reference to
“the creator”
is made, there
again he will be
denied a Chris-
tian reference.
G e o r g e
Wa s h i n g t o n
viewed his god
as the “supreme
architect” of the universe. He saw reli-
gion as necessary for good and moral
behavior but wrote in support of reli-
gious liberty. In his 1790 Touro Syna-
gogue letter he wanted Jews to enjoy
religious liberty not mere toleration
and outlined his preferences in the de-
sign of a new nation—not a Christian
nation—but one of multi-faith where
all would be free to practice as they
will.
Founding Fathers James Madison
and Thomas Jefferson stood fi rmly
against the co-mingling of state and
church. They did not support the es-
tablishment of an offi cial Christian
nation. They were knowledgeable
in world history and knew how the
offi cial Christian governments of Eu-
rope had deprived their citizens of
freedoms. Then, too, they were well
acquainted with the religious wars
among rival factions of Christianity.
Alexander Hamilton wrote in one
of his papers that there were to be no
religious duties of the U.S. president.
Hamilton explained that the presi-
dent would differ from the English
king in that “the one (president) has
no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the
other is the supreme head and gover-
nor of the national church” (in Eng-
land).
Suffi ce it to say that the United
States was not founded on the Chris-
tian faith; rather, those who put it to-
gether sought a refuge for all faiths
where men and women could come
gene h.
mcintyre
together as brothers and sisters of good
will for the common good and estab-
lish and sustain a nation. That condi-
tion of union has been the case for the
past 225 years, its existence, rights and
beliefs kept whole by a Constitution
and its 27 amendments in the Bill of
Rights.
Although caution is my watch-
word, a fi nal note from this colum-
nist’s personal experience, having lived
and worked in the Middle East, has to
do with Muslims. Inshallah is one of
their favorite expressions, one they
utter about everything all day long.
Translated, it means, “If God’s will-
ing.” They recognize their religious
leaders as representing Allah and
thereby what they’re told by their
imams they do because their think-
ing process is a priori (blind-faith ac-
ceptance of dogma without question),
that is, that imams speak God’s will.
Thousands of them are coming
into the U.S. as refugees. Will they
try to be Americans and abide by the
U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights?
Or, will they try by every means pos-
sible to destroy America as so many of
their insidiously hateful brethren seek
to achieve overseas? Our founding fa-
thers knew about Islam but it’s doubt-
ful they ever thought it’d be present
in America and that the Koran would
one day be used as a road map to a
Muslim nation where a Constitu-
tion prevails.
The U.S. will never establish de-
mocracies in the Middle East because
Muslims do not want the West’s free-
doms there any more than they want
them here. They accept only their re-
ligious enslavement as their govern-
ment: that’s their culture and way of
life and they totally reject any change.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)