Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s passion for her job has been on full display ever since she arrived in Washington, D.C. She has an unerringly straight shot into the meat of the matter for those who attack her. Her latest critic tried to hit her supposed ignorance about the drug industry. She turned around and fired back with beautifully accurate aim.
Aaron Kesselheim, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard University and Ocasio-Cortez had a dialogue during a hearing on drugs. Then, RealClearScience tweeted, finding it necessary to criticize her regarding the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) role in drug discovery. He tweeted:
‘.
@AOC: “Right now, your knowledge of where drugs come from appears to be seriously inadequate. To be fair, you’re definitely not alone in that, but there’s no reason not to learn more.'”
Then, Ocasio-Cortez responded in kind. However, she hit upon the real point of his attack:
‘This is what being a woman in politics looks like: Disagreements aren’t labeled as differing opinions. They’re labeled as one’s knowledge being ‘inadequate.’ As a reminder, I’m not the one who testified about Big Pharma under oath to Congress. It was an expert witness.’
Ocasio-Cortez noted in a hearing that the National Institute for Health (NIH) receives public funds to develop drugs, which are handed off to a for-profit business. She said, Newsweek reported:
‘So the public is acting as an early investor, putting tons of money in the development of drugs that then become privatized, and then they receive no return on the investment that they have made.’
Derek Lowe wrote a piece in The Science Traditional Medicine publication which read:
‘Rep. Ocasio-Cortez: it is absolutely your job to participate in hearings like the above, to question those appearing at them, and to look into such issues. But it’s also your job to know as much about these issues as you can.’
He continued:
‘Right now, your knowledge of where drugs come from appears to be seriously inadequate. To be fair, you’re definitely not alone in that, but there’s no reason not to learn more. Unless you, like many of your colleagues on both sides of the aisle, are mostly interested in generating zippy sound bites and looking dynamic for the next round of fund-raising and the next election. In which case, carry on. But that would be sad.’
Surely, this guy can find a better use for his time, because it was wasted here.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
