When Business and Politics Collide
I have always kept my business and political lives separate – and have had no trouble doing so. But now my political beliefs and my industry are threatened by the same plague.
Donald Trump would not merely undermine our country, he would undermine the fundamental principle of our industry – and, speaking quite selfishly, my business…and yours.
That principle is truth. Absent devotion to facts, evidence, the scientific method – in short, truth and the search for it – our industry has nothing to say or to sell.
Donald Trump is all about lies and slander. His campaign of grievance is entirely based on an election lie – so often, so clearly, so utterly debunked that it is impossible for him (let alone his enabling acolytes, including JD Vance) not to know its baselessness.
He demands loyalty, a key test of which is slavish acceptance of his lies. And the fevered fantasies of his allies are fine with him (as long, of course, as they don’t contradict his own).
He has said, for example, that he will unleash the fabulist Robert (vaccines-cause-autism) Kennedy Jr. on the FDA.
“I’m going to let him go wild on health,” Trump told the crowd at his Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27. “I’m going to let him go wild on the food. I’m going to let him go wild on the medicines.”
And what would Kennedy do? As he said on Oct. 25 on X: the FDA aggressively suppresses anything “that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma. If you work for the FDA and are part of this corrupt system, I have two messages for you: 1. Preserve your records, and 2. Pack your bags.”
No one believes the FDA does everything right. It is hardly immune from politics. But an implacably corrupt system? Ask yourself: when the FDA has abandoned the scientific method, when clinical trials have devolved into anecdote, when your competitor’s TikTok claim is as valid as your 1,000-patient randomized controlled trial — what will your business look like?
Whatever your feelings about Trump’s political views, you cannot believe that this man, whose disastrous floundering and foundationless assertions (bleach, anyone?) during the Covid crisis were responsible for so many excess deaths, will do anything to promote human health – let alone preserve the industry which has shown again and again its ability to demonstrably and dramatically improve our lives.
I don’t expect I’m changing anyone’s mind. But maybe you haven’t had enough reason to get to the polls in the first place. If you haven’t voted yet for Harris and Walz: do it now.
