Construct of Interests
Vinay Prasad, Giorgio Agamben, and the lucrative quest for the medical holy grail
“Baptism is in this instance no longer permanent but necessarily temporary and renewable, because the neo-citizen (who will from now on always have to exhibit a certificate) no longer has inalienable and indivisible rights, but only obligations that must be endlessly revisited and updated.” - Giorgio Agamben
That the regulators for biomedical technology are infested with conflicts of interest is no longer news, having long since been reported. As Vinay Prasad remarked back in 2016, it is impossible to assert the necessary counterweight a regulator purportedly provides when every time you sit down at the regulatory table you are meeting with your future employer. Thus the FDA and other drug regulators have become incapable of doing their jobs. An inherent conflict of interest blocks the scepticism that would be requisite if regulation were a scientific endeavour and not, as is evidently the case, simply a passing phase in the commercial pharmaceutical pipeline.
All this worthy hand wringing about conflict of interest misses a bigger picture that is far more troubling and vastly less noticeable. Corporations such as Pfizer and Moderna that putatively manufacture medicines (and their captured regulators such as the FDA) have staunch allies far further afield. We might add those compromised journals whose editors court grants from both the agencies funding regulation and the corporations allegedly being monitored. We can include legacy news publishers for whom Pfizer is now a pivotal source of funding, as well as those who merely depend upon ‘generous’ donations from vaccine-profiteer Bill Gates, such as The Guardian or the BBC in the UK. Paradoxically, we can even include the staunchest critics of this dominating regime, even those alarmed by the endless layers of conflict of interest such as Prasad.
What we are facing is not so much a conflict of interest as a vast construct of interests, an implacable leviathan that it is now clear has not merely corrupted biotechnology, but national sovereignty and the rights of citizens as well. This construct is mythic as much as it is commercial, arguably more so, for enormous numbers of adherents to this shimmering path towards redemption have nothing to gain financially from their faith in its project. Its aim is nothing more nor less than the eradication of disease at any and all costs, even the sacrifice of the citizen or the human, now deemed expendable against that shining grail of jam tomorrow that unites this construct of interests.
Yet if I dare associate this construct with the name ‘vaccination’, as might otherwise be tempting to mention, this mirage I nearly conjured in your mind’s eye will surely vanish. For it is a truth universally denied that we can no longer think honestly the moment the sacred name of ‘vaccine’ is invoked. We must not waver in our faith that expensive drugs shall eradicate disease, even though it is far from clear what role pharmaceuticals actually played in the two eradications testified, nor was there ever any rational sense in believing every disease might be dealt with in this manner. Ah, but the faith, that blind certainty that supersedes all evidence - it carries this construct of interests towards a glorious future even as it extorts billions of dollars from nations in return for surrendering rights and sovereignty whilst silently striking down some unknown number of their citizens.
Is it not remarkable that a Nobel prize-winning biotechnology which computer models implausibly vouch has saved millions from death corresponds in every nation it has been deployed with a spike in deaths...? Correlation is not causation, of course, but when every public health body has acted to obfuscate these readily apparent tragedies in order to defend vaccination we begin to see how the construct of interests works, and why it is now cursed. For you cannot rescue vaccination without admitting to the catastrophe this faith just wrought. Since the construct of interests is incapable of admitting wrongdoing, even the rigorously validated vaccinations of the previous century that Prasad defends might now be ruined.
Even the honourable Doctor Prasad, who dared call out the vast and shameful failure of regulators, is still an unwitting accomplice to the catechism animating this fantasy of medicalised salvation. His own rhetoric makes it clear that he too would gladly require citizens to yield their bodies if only there were sufficient empirical evidence to justify our mandatory baptism. As Giorgio Agamben warned, our inalienable rights have been inverted into obligations. All must now bow down and serve this terrifying and inexorable construct of interests.