Campaign season for the American general election is in full swing. Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign continues its Reproductive Freedom bus tour on a big blue bus, and there’s a big red bus making its way through states with close contests. The red bus is campaigning against Big Pharma which makes an admittedly noble slogan - Bust Big Pharma. But the group behind the bus, Americans for Pharma Reform, is funded by dark money and pushes far-right misinformation around gender affirming care, vaccines, and abortion.
This week STAT published a (paywalled) piece about the Bust Big Pharma Tour and its origins. The tour is moving through states with close races this fall. Already, the bus has visited Arizona, Montana, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Between now and election day, the bus has plans to visit Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The tour is building anti-Pharma buzz while letting folks autograph the vehicle in a “fun viral picture” sort of way.
However, the bus also directs folks to the Bust Big Pharma website which has the feel of a news site with headlines arrayed around the frame. Many of these headlines are to what are, from a journalism point of view, opinion pieces. But, the featured headlines are frankly common sense. In fact, the stories associated with these headlines reveal that they are simply aggregated content from other sites, like Forbes and AHIP, the trade group for American private health insurers (red flag #1). The headlines behind the search bar are much more sinister.
A search for “transgender” returns two headlines: “How A Left-Wing Activist Group Teamed Up With Big Pharma To Push Radical Gender Ideology on American Hospitals” and “Gender Ideology is a Boon to Big Pharma and Threat to Parental Rights.” So, that’s red flag #2! The first headline links to the Washington Free Beacon and the second links to the New York Post - two publications known for their conservative bent (if not outright bias).
(These claims are, of course, false. The “left-wing activist group” referred to in the first headline is the Human Rights Campaign - an organization known for their lagging stance on trans rights and very un-radical politics. The second headline was disproved by Dr. Jules Gill-Peterson in Histories of the Transgender Child where she unambiguously demonstrates how trans people have historically sought medical care from a skeptical medical system. Further, both headlines implicitly push the false “trans as social contagion” tomfoolery.)
And their misinformation is not limited to queer issues. The site also links to several anti-vax posts including one that suggests COVID-19 vaccines were unsafe and forced on people by a secret alliance of Big Pharma and the World Health Organization (red flag #3). Another article rails against Planned Parenthood for ;;; providing patients with health care (i.e. prescribing the abortion medication mifepristone) at a pop up clinic outside the Democratic party’s convention (red flag #4).
Americans for Pharma Reform, the group behind the bus tour and website, is registered as a 501(c)(4) “social welfare organization” - meaning that they are a nonprofit that doesn’t have to disclose donors. These organizations can engage in politics to “promote social welfare” which “does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office.”
We may not know the funders of the endeavor, but STAT reported on two public faces, including the group’s executive director Rob Burgess who worked on former president Donald Trump’s press team in 2020. The group’s spokesperson, Kathryn Wheeler, worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and in his State Department.
What does the group want? Presumably, reform of Big Pharma in the long term. But right now, they are asking people to sign their petition which is just 9 bullet points. Notably, the second bullet point demands “America First favored pricing” - invoking a Trumpian rhetorical device. To sign, they ask for your email and cell phone, raising the possibility that they are building mailing list that sends “news alerts.” A medium term goal for the campaign is likely to reframe issues of health care in ways that promote conservative electoral politics. According to a Fox News poll released last week, Harris is more trusted by Americans than Trump on “abortion,” “transgender issues,” and “health care.”
So, if the Bust Big Pharma bus comes to your town or if you see their petition going around, please remember that these folks do not have your best interest at heart - as much as we actually need reform of Big Pharma. The group is pushing anti-abortion, anti-trans, and anti-vax rhetoric using a pernicious tax loophole that allows them to use anonymous money.
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