Moral Numbness Leads to the Abandonment of Moral Principle

“WE ALREADY KNEW THAT!”

Moral numbness leads to the abandonment of moral principle

In reading Brett Stephens’ review of John Bolton’s new book, The Room Where It Happened, I was reminded of one of the most gut-wrenching experiences in my youth.  I was 7 or 8.  I had a pet turtle.  I placed it in a bowl with a rock it could rest on surrounded by water.  The room that day was cold, so I decided to put the bowl on a radiator to give the turtle some needed warmth. The next morning, the turtle was dead.  The temperature had gradually risen.  It killed him.

This well-worn analogy, unforgettable in my mind seventy-five years after it happened, applies to the Trump presidency and to Stephens’ review of Bolton’s book. 

John Bolton writes that Trump’s Ukraine quid pro quo discussions with the President was “bad policy, questionable legally, and unacceptable as presidential behavior.”  Stephens' response: "We knew that."

Bolton writes that Vladimir Putin “had to be laughing uproariously at what he had gotten away with in Helsinki.”  But we knew that, too.  

He writes that for Trump, “Obstruction of justice (is) a way of life.”  We knew that, too. And, so, on it goes. One "head-shaking" divisive and denigrating tweet or action after another. 

I asked one of my Trump-supporting friends, “Do you believe what John Bolton is telling in this book will change people’s minds about whether to vote for Trump?”  His answer was, “Probably not. Everyone already knew all of that.” 

Think back to the history of our country.  Would the by now well-supported allegations being made about President Trump, not just by Bolton but by many others, be accepted with a shrug of the shoulders and a “we knew that?”  Of course not. 

We’ve long known that moral standards of behavior cannot be taken for granted.  It’s a slippery slope.  A company can pledge itself to never giving a bribe, but then can be tempted to give a small facilitation gift to get something done and, sure enough, that small “facilitation gift” can  become bigger, and bigger.  You've crossed the line.  And as others in the organization see it happening, they start to believe that the controlling mandate is to make the end goal happen, no matter what the means.  

This is a dangerous, frightening and treacherous development in our Nation.   We are on the way to moral numbness through the repeated violation, at first perhaps seemingly small, of moral standards of truth and of common decency.  What does this lead to? It leads to the abandonment of moral principle and the commitment to truth. It leads to cynicism and to the corruption which inevitably follows. 

That’s what’s been happening in this country under the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. 

This risk of moral corruption didn’t begin four years ago.  It will always be a risk in human nature.  However, Donald Trump has brought it to an unprecedented level. This represents a grave danger for our Nation.

Bret Stephens cites an essay in The Atlantic by Ann Applebaum which draws on the inspiration of Czeslaw Milosz’s The Captive Mind, to shed light on the roots of this human tendency.  There is the relief and pleasure of political conformity, there is the allure of power or proximity to it and there can be a profit motive.  

I believe one or more of these attitudes explain how almost every Republican senator is justifying not speaking out against Trump:  “I am doing everything I can privately to alter his behavior where it needs to be altered,” they explain.  “Coming out publicly would not lead to a good outcome.  And while here, in the Senate, I will be pushing for legislation which is good for the American people.”

Understandable responses?  "Yes."  Responses which are helping to enable  President Trump's immoral behavior to continue unchallenged and thereby grow stronger?  Absolutely, "yes." This represents a frightening threat to our Nation's future. 

In the first week of November, every voter will face a stark question,  “Am I willing to continue to condone the moral behavior of Donald J. Trump through my vote?   Or is his behavior and the character which it portrays so out of line, so against what I believe is right personally and what is right for my family and for our Nation that I will vote to remove him from office?”

I pray and trust that a great majority of Americans will vote to remove Donald Trump from office.

Doing so will validate and affirm for time immemorial that there are certain moral principles which dare not be transgressed and which cannot be taken for granted and which cannot be tolerated in the leader of any organization, let alone the Presidency of the United States. It will affirm that the values of integrity and common decency reign supreme and that personal character is non-negotiable. 

The Pharmaceutical Industry

PHARMA:  GREED, LIES AND THE POISONING OF AMERICA BY GERALD POSNER
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This is a blistering indictment of the pharmaceutical industry focused especially on the deadly scandal of OxyContin and the Sackler family which pulled it off.

There aren’t many heroes in this book and villains abound.  The Sackler’s, of course; weak-kneed administrators in the FDA; and Rudy Giuliani, who ended up being the Sackler’s lawyer after he had the mayor position in New York.

It’s amazing to me how I failed to penetrate the severity of the opioid OxyContin crisis.  By 2015, opioid prescription rates were triple the number dispensed in 1999.  Enough OxyContin was prescribed that year to medicate every American for nearly a month, and it killed more people than had fatal car crashes and guns combined; 52,000.

The claims made on label and in detailing OxyContin were plain lies and the executives knew it.  Seventy-five percent of the $400 million spent on marketing OxyContin came after the year 2000, when executives first acknowledged knowing about the abuse.  

The premise of OxyContin’s differentiated position was that it would last for 12 hours and did not require repeat dosage as other similarly effective pain relievers did.  It counted on its slow-release coating to achieve that.  They also claimed that the slow-release coating meant that it would not produce the “highs” that could lead to addiction.  This claim was made despite the fact that a third of the subjects in their trials needed another dose to offset pain before 12 hours expired.  Not only that, addicted people learned to scrape the delayed coating off the tablet to get a quicker release and a high.

The Sackler’s made billions off OxyContin.  Particularly staggering to me was the fact they continued to promote the drug illegally after they had made a full-throated confession of guilt and had signed a consent order with the FDA in 2007.

The case that will determine how much money they will end up paying is still in the courts.  Nobody has gone to jail, despite all these deaths.

Stepping back, "Pharma" is not a well-balanced history of the pharmaceutical industry.  While it does, in the early pages, give credit to the breakthroughs that occurred in penicillin and other antibiotics, it does not step back and appraise the life-extending benefits and life-improving relief which pharmaceuticals have enabled.  

It does leave no doubt that a large part of the higher cost of pharmaceuticals in the U.S. is due to pharmaceutical benefit firms.  These middlemen are soaking up significant amounts of money.  This doesn’t happen in other universal healthcare plans in other countries.  It also illuminates the challenge posed by “orphan drugs,” often ones with very small differentiated claims, that enable an extension of patents for years.  Seven of the top ten selling pharmaceuticals as this book was written were orphan drugs.  

Posner also does a good job of pointing out the risk that we have of antibacterial resistant strains developing because antibiotics are being prescribed far too often for conditions that don’t warrant it.

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Posner may have ended his play one scene too soon: before the covid-19 crisis. He salutes the pharmaceutical industry for pooling their research on penicillin in the 1940s leading to the mass availability of the drug by the latter part of WWII, thereby saving tens of thousands of lives. The same opportunity for pharmaceutical companies to pool their research findings and supply chain capability exists today.. Doing so is vital to achieve the equitable distribution of the vaccine once it is proved.