Is Big Pharma to Blame for Pediatricians Pushing Masks on Kids?

(Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc through Getty Images)

Numerous big-box media shops have dutifully reported that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), “an organization of 67,000 pediatricians,” has advisable that every one kids over the age of two put on masks at college. What shouldn’t be being talked about is that this group’s present “corporate partners” and “top 10 donors” embody Big Pharma goliaths Johnson & Johnson and Merck, in addition to multinational companies, reminiscent of Nestle, that promote health-related merchandise geared toward kids.

“All students older than 2 years and all school staff should wear face masks at school,” the AAP declared in a “COVID-19 Guidance for Safe Schools” posting on its web site.

AAP’s startling July 20 suggestion was soberly handed alongside by institution media organs like ABC News, CNN, Fox News, NBC, NPR, and USA Today. “What top pediatricians want you to know about the delta variant and children,” an NBC News headline proclaims. “American Academy of Pediatrics recommends everyone wear masks in school,” reads the ABC News caption under a photograph of very younger, fully-masked schoolkids sitting on the ground of a classroom.

‘Shared Values and Policy Alignment’

Here’s what high company media shops don’t need you to know concerning the AAP: It has deep-rooted monetary connections to the pharmaceutical and industrial well being industries.

A “Current Partners” posting on the AAP web site reads:

“American Academy of Pediatrics partners with companies and organizations whose support helps advance our mission for children.

A partnership does not imply endorsement of an organization’s policies, products, or services and only begins after carefully reviewing factors such as corporate citizenship, shared values, and policy alignment.”

The high ten donors since Jan. 1, 2018 are:

• Mead Johnson Nutrition
• Abbott Nutrition
• Nestlé Nutrition
• Johnson & Johnson
• The Nicholson Foundation
• Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
• The JPB Foundation
• Merck & Co.
• Ronald McDonald House Charities
• Sanofi Genzyme

“The AAP would also like to thank the following companies for their support of the Friends of Children Fund. Through an annual membership contribution to the Fund, these companies are invited to a Corporate Summit held each summer at the AAP National Headquarters in Itasca, IL,” a subsequent paragraph reads. Corporate donors invited to AAP National Headquarters embody Big Pharma titans GlaxoSmithKline and Novo Nordisk. Baby-diaper behemoth Pampers can be on the record.

This info was not onerous to discover, but it has been universally ignored in “mainstream” media accounts of the AAP suggestions as far as we may see. The shops named above all left it out of their “reporting.” Knowledgeable affiliation of 60,000+ pediatricians is financially backed by pharmaceutical corporations that rely on medical doctors prescribing their merchandise to sufferers. How may anybody miss that battle of curiosity?

(Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc through Getty Images)

In addition to the Big Pharma coziness, Nestle and Pampers produce a plethora of merchandise which can be marketed to the mother and father of younger kids. Pampers is owned by Proctor & Gamble. Ongoing coronavirus alarmism inarguably boosts P&G’s backside line. Shouldn’t reporters level out one thing like that on the exact second AAP ratchets up the masks strain?

In March 2020, simply because the coronavirus social curbs had been beginning to kick in, P&G CEO David Taylor defined how thrilling the second was for his firm. “Many P&G products are key to helping prevent the spread of COVID-19 around the world, particularly those that are used daily for cleaning and sanitizing homes, businesses and places like health care and assisted-living facilities,” Taylor advised the Cincinnati Business Courier. “Other P&G products are critical for helping consumers maintain proper hygiene, personal health and healthy home environments.”

This blurring of strains between physicians and medical trade companies has been going on for many years. A 2001 “Letter From the President” penned by then-AAP head Dr. Steve Berman glowingly touts the group’s “alliance with Wal-Mart and [the] Pampers Parenting Institute.” The trio created a “Babies First” marketing campaign during which AAP literature, together with materials selling childhood vaccination, could be positioned in Walmart retail aisles. “As part of Babies First, each Wal-Mart infants and toddlers department will include a display of state-specific… brochures and applications,” Berman boasted.

Such relationships are taken for granted at this time – but all the world shut down on the recommendation of those physicians for greater than a yr. As the brand new AAP suggestions reveal, the push for strict social curbs goes on. It might not be the job of journalists to decide whether or not the AAP’s partnering with Big Pharma and Health Retail Inc. is moral. But as soon as upon a time, it might have been thought-about unforgivable not to reveal it to readers.

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