Don't worry: If you're concerned about rising Federal debt -- read this


Dean Baker, DC Report @ Raw Story

February 21, 20

February 21, 2021

How will our children know they face a crushing debt burden?

The question above may seem silly.

Of course, they will know because there are a number of well-funded policy shops that will be spewing out endless papers and columns telling them that they are facing a crushing debt burden.

Because these policy shops are well-funded and well-connected we can be sure that major media outlets, like The New York Times, The Washington Post and National Public Radio, will give their complaints plenty of space.

But let's imagine a world where our children weren't constantly being told that they face a crushing debt burden. How would they know?

Even with a higher tax burden due to the debt we are now building up, workers 10 years out should enjoy substantially higher living standards than they do today.

It might be hard if the latest budget projects are close to the mark. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released new projections for the budget and the economy.
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They show that in 2031, the last year in their budget horizon, the interest burden on our debt will be 2.4% of Gross Domestic Product. That's up from current interest costs of 1.4% of GDP. That implies an increase in the debt burden, measured by interest costs, of 1.0 percentage point of GDP.

Side note 1: The true debt burden is actually somewhat less. Last year the Federal Reserve Board refunded $88 billion, roughly 0.4% of GDP, to the Treasury. This was based on interest that it had collected on the bonds it held. That leaves the actual interest burden at around 1% of GDP.

Will an interest burden of 2.4% of GDP crush our children?

On the face of it, the deficit hawks have a hard case here. The interest burden was over 3.0% of GDP for most of the early and mid-1990s. And for those who were not around or have forgotten, the 1990s, or at least the second half, was a very prosperous decade. It's a bit hard to see how an interest burden of 2.4% of GDP can be crushing if burdens of more than 3.0% of GDP were not a big problem.
Imagining Even More Debt

But, the debt burden may be higher than the current projections show. After all, President Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion pandemic rescue package. He also will have other spending initiatives. The CBO baseline includes tax increases in current law that may not actually go into effect.

CBO's latest projections put the debt (currently $22 trillion) at $35.3 trillion in 2031.

Let's assume that the rescue package and other issues raise the debt for that year by 10%, or $3.5 trillion. This brings the interest burden to 2.7% of GDP. That's still below the 1990s level.

Furthermore, insofar as the rescue package and other initiatives are successful in boosting growth, GDP, the denominator in this calculation, will be larger, which will at least partially offset the higher interest burden.

One point the deficit hawks add to this calculation is that interest rates are extraordinarily low at present.

CBO does project that interest rates will rise, But in 2031 they still project an interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds of just 3%. This is up from 1.1% at present, but still well below the rates we saw over the 40 years before the Great Recession. It certainly is not impossible that interest rates will rise to 4% or even 5%.

Higher Interest Rates

Higher rates will mean that the debt poses a greater interest burden. But there are a couple of important qualifications that need to be made. First, much of our debt is long-term. The 30-year bond issued in 2021 at a 2% interest rate doesn't have to be refinanced until 2051. That means that even if interest rates do rise substantially they will only gradually lead to a substantially higher interest burden.

The other point is that we have to ask about the reason interest rates are rising.

It is possible that interest rates will be rising even as the inflation rate remains more or less in line with CBO's latest projection of around 2%. In that case, higher interest rates mean a greater burden over time.

However, interest rates may also rise because we see higher than projected inflation. Suppose the inflation rate rises to 3%, roughly a percentage point higher than projected. If interest rates also rise by a percentage point, so that the interest rate on a 10-year Treasury bond in 2031 is 4%, instead of 3%, we would still be looking at the same real interest rate. In that case, the value of the bond would be eroded by an extra 1 percentage point annually, due to the impact of higher inflation.

In the case where higher inflation is the reason for higher interest rates, the actual burden of the debt does not change.

With nominal GDP growing more rapidly due to the higher inflation, the ratio of debt to GDP would be lower than in the case with lower inflation. This means that we only need to worry about a higher interest burden if interest rates rise without a corresponding increase in the rate of inflation.

Side Note 2: If the economy grows at a 2% real rate over the next decade, and the inflation rate averages 2%, then nominal GDP will be 48% larger in 2031 than it is today. If it grows at a 2% real rate and the inflation rate averages 3%, nominal GDP will be 63% larger in 2031 than it is today. With nominal GDP 10% larger in 2031 in the case with higher inflation than the case with lower inflation, the same amount of interest would imply a 10% lower burden, relative to GDP. Alternatively, to have the same burden relative to GDP, interest payments would have to be 10% higher.

What would adding a 1 percentage point interest burden look like?

Paying The Bill

At first glance, this higher interest burden implies that, if the economy is operating near its capacity, we would have to get by having the government spend roughly 1 percentage point less of GDP on various programs. This could mean, for example, cuts to spending on education and infrastructure, or the military. Alternatively, it would need to raise taxes by roughly 1 percentage point of GDP, or some combination in order to offset the additional interest payments on the debt.

In fact, the first glance story is likely to substantially overstate the impact of this debt burden. The reason we would need to cut spending and/or raise taxes is to keep the economy from overheating.

The interest burden increases this risk by increasing the income of bondholders, who then spend more money because of their higher income.

But the bondholders don't spend all of the interest income they receive, in fact, they might spend a relatively small share.

Bondholders Are Big Savers

Remember, the people who hold government bonds are disproportionately higher-income households. That's why it is possible to say there is a burden from interest payments. If the interest was paid out to all of us equally, then we would just be paying ourselves. As was the case with the pandemic checks, and there would be no burden.

With a large share of interest payments going to the wealthiest households, perhaps 70 cents on a dollar ends up being spent. This is what we have to offset with spending cuts or higher taxes. That means we need to come up with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases that will reduce demand in the economy by 0.7% of GDP.

If we did this on the spending side, we would need to cut an amount of spending roughly equal to this amount. In the current economy, 0.7% of GDP would come to around $150 billion in spending cuts, roughly a fifth of the military budget or twice the annual budget for Food Stamps.

On the tax side, we might be tempted to take it from the wealthy, but we then come back to the same issue, that the wealthy save much of their income. If we want to reduce the consumption of the wealthy by an amount equal to 0.7%, we may have to raise taxes on them by something close to twice this amount, or 1.4% of GDP.

Suppose this proves politically impossible, so we end up having to share the higher tax burden more or less evenly across households. This means a tax increase equal to roughly 0.7% of people's incomes. Is this a big deal?

Wages and Productivity Get Divorced

The figure above shows the impact of CBO's projected increase in productivity over the next decade on wages, assuming productivity growth is fully passed on in higher wages.

It also shows the 0.7 % hit from debt burden taxes. As can be seen, the projected wage gains from higher productivity growth are roughly twenty times the "crushing" burden of the debt calculated above.

This means that even with a higher tax burden due to the debt we are now building up, workers ten years out should enjoy substantially higher living standards than they do today.

There is the obvious issue that productivity growth does not automatically translate into higher wage growth.

While wage growth for the typical worker did track productivity growth from 1947 to 1973, that has not been the case since 1979. Average wage growth did not track productivity growth reasonably well in the last four decades. Most of the gains went to high-end workers, such as top-level corporate executives and Wall Street types. Typical workers saw little benefit.

This pattern of upward redistribution of before-tax income could continue for the next decade, which would mean that most workers cannot offset an increased tax burden with higher pay. That would be a very serious problem, but the problem would be the upward redistribution blocking wage growth, not the relatively minor tax increase they might see due to the debt.

Anyone generally concerned about the well-being of workers ten years out, or further in the future, should be focused on what is happening to before-tax income, not the relatively modest burden that taxes may pose due to the debt.
Monopolies Impose 'A Private Tax'

This brings up a final issue about burdens. As I have often pointed out, direct spending is only one way the government pays for services. It also grants patent and copyright monopolies to provide incentives for innovation and creative work.

By my calculations, these monopolies add more than $1 trillion a year (4.8% of GDP) to the cost of a wide range of items, such as prescription drugs, medical equipment, and computer software. The higher prices charged by the companies that own these monopolies are effectively a private tax that the government allows them to impose in exchange for their work. No honest discussion of the burden of government debt can exclude the implicit debt that the government creates with these monopolies.

At the end of the day, we hand down a whole economy and society to future generations. Anyone seriously asking about the well-being of future generations must look at the education and training we have given our children, the physical and social infrastructure, and, of course, the state of the natural environment. The government debt is such a trivial part of this story that is hard to believe that would even be raised in the context of generational equity, if not for the big money folks who want to keep it front and center.

Featured image: Visual Capitalist

Conspiracy nuts think Bill Gates helped Biden generate ‘synthetic snow’ to make Texas look bad

Brad Reed
February 22, 2021

HOLLYWOOD STAGE FANS

AND TONS OF POWDER SOAP FLAKES

A man crosses Lemmon Avenue as a winter storm brings snow and freezing temperatures to North Texas on Sunday, February 14, 2021, in Dallas. - Smiley N. Pool/10053254P/TNS

The state of Texas is still dealing with the aftermath of a massive snow storm -- but many conspiracy theorists believe that it was all faked just to make the state look bad.

As The Independent reports, several viral videos on social media sites including TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook have been claiming that the storm that hit Texas was a hoax concocted by the federal government to undermine Texas's state sovereignty.

The conspiracy theorists have seized on the fact that snowballs they make do not instantly melt when they hold them up to cigarette lighters.

"This goes out to our government and Bill Gates," said one woman who filmed herself a lighter to a snowball. "Thank you Bill Gates for trying to f*cking trick us that this is real snow!"

However, as PolitiFact notes, snowballs do not simply melt when they come into contact with lighters.

"Ice and snow have distinct physical properties, which leads them to react to heat differently," the fact-checking website writes. "Snow consists of frozen water droplets that have fallen to Earth. When snow is compressed into snowballs, there's a lot of space between the crystals, making them soft and porous."

This means that taking a lighter to a snowball will, in fact, leave a black burn mark on it -- and it certainly doesn't mean that the snow is a synthetic compound generated by Bill Gates.

Watch a video debunking the "synthetic snow" conspiracy theory below.

REST IN POWER

Sister Dianna Ortiz—US nun who survived Guatemala torture and became human rights champion—dies at 62

Common Dreams
February 22, 2021


Sister Dianna Ortiz (Screen Grab)

Sister Dianna Ortiz, a Catholic nun from New Mexico whose 1989 abduction, rape, and torture by U.S.-backed Guatemalan forces led to her becoming an outspoken peace, human rights, and anti-torture activist, died Friday in Washington, D.C. at the age of 62 after battling cancer.


"I know what it is to wait in the dark for torture, and what it is to wait in the dark for the truth. I am still waiting."
—Sister Dianna Ortiz

Ortiz—who wanted to be a nun since she was a little girl—joined the Ursuline Sisters of Mount Saint Joseph, part of a 400-year-old Roman Catholic order dedicated to the education of girls and the care of the sick and needy, when she was still a teenager. She taught kindergarten for a decade before moving to Guatemala in 1987 at the age of 28.

Years later Ortiz explained that she wanted "to teach young indigenous children to read and write... and to understand the Bible in their culture."

It was dangerous work at a dangerous time. Guatemala was ravaged by decades of civil war that followed a 1954 CIA coup deposing Jacobo Arbenz, the democratically-elected progressive president. U.S.-backed right-wing military dictatorships, some of which perpetrated genocidal violence against the country's Mayan population, followed.

The 36-year civil war left over 200,000 Guatemalans dead, more than 600 villages destroyed, and countless people—mostly Mayan campesinos—displaced.

"Every family in San Miguel had people who had been tortured, disappeared, or killed," Mary Elizabeth Ballard, an Ursuline sister who had arrived in Guatemala a year before Ortiz, told the literary magazine Agni in a 1998 interview. "No family was untouched."

By early 1989 Ortiz was receiving threatening letters imploring her to leave Guatemala. She eventually did depart, traveling to the Urusline motherhouse in Kentucky. But only for a short while.

"She had a great love for the Guatemalans," explained Luisa Bickett, another Ursuline sister who worked in San Miguel.

"I heard a man's deep voice behind me: 'Hello, my love,' he said in Spanish. 'We have some things to discuss.'"
—Ortiz

Ortiz returned to Guatemala in September 1989. By the following month, she was receiving death threats. For her safety, Ortiz decided to seek refuge at Posada de Belén, a convent and religious retreat 170 miles (270 km) from San Miguel in Antigua.

On November 2, Ortiz was reading in the convent's garden when her life was forever changed. In an interview with Kerry Kennedy, she recalled that:

I heard a man's deep voice behind me: 'Hello, my love,' he said in Spanish. 'We have some things to discuss.' I turned to see the morning sunlight glinting off a gun held by a man who had threatened me once before on the street. He and his partner forced me onto a bus, then into a police car where they blindfolded me.
We came to a building and they led me down some stairs. They left me in a dark cell, where I listened to the cries of a man and woman being tortured. When the men returned, they accused me of being a guerrilla and began interrogating me. For every answer I gave them, they burned my back or my chest with cigarettes. Afterwards, they gang-raped me repeatedly.

Ortiz was then moved to another room with another woman prisoner. Some men returned with a video camera and a machete, which Ortiz thought would be used to torture her. Instead, she says she was forced to kill the other woman.

"What I remember is blood gushing, spurting like a water fountain... and my cries lost in the cries of the woman," she recalled. Her captors then threatened to release video of her attacking the woman if she refused to cooperate. Then:

I was lowered into a pit full of bodies—bodies of children, men, and women, some decapitated, all caked with blood. A few were still alive. I could hear them moaning... A stench of decay rose from the pits. Rats swarmed over the bodies... I passed out and when I came to I was lying on the ground beside the pit, rats all over me.

Ortiz said that a North American man her torturers called "Alejandro" was present during her ordeal. When he realized she was an American, he helped her get dressed and drove her away while apologizing. "He said he was... working to liberate [Guatemala] from communism," Ortiz recalled.

Darleen Chmielewski, a Franciscan nun who was one of the first people to see Ortiz after her escape, described her friend as in "a state of shock." The two women went to the home of the the Vatican representative in Guatemala City, who had offered Ortiz refuge.

"Diana wanted to take a bath," Chmielewski recalled. "I helped her wash and saw all the cigarette burns... she just cried and took baths."

Two days later, Ortiz was back in the United States. "After escaping from my torturers, I returned home to New Mexico so traumatized that I recognized no one, not even my parents," she told Kennedy. "I had virtually no memory of my life before my abduction; the only piece of my identity that remained was that I was a woman who was raped and forced to torture and murder another human being."

Ortiz also felt forced to do something unimaginable for many nuns. "I got pregnant as a result of the multiple gang rapes," she told Kennedy. "Unable to carry within me... what I could only view as a monster, I turned to someone for assistance and I destroyed that life."

"I felt I had no choice," explained Ortiz. "If I had had to grow within me what the torturers left me I would have died."

Ortiz's torment continued as she sought—and was denied—justice. U.S. embassy officials accused her of staging her abduction in a bid to thwart the George H.W. Bush administration's military aid to Guatemala. Cigarette burns—111 of them, according to a U.S. doctor who examined her—told a different story.

"The U.S. government funded, trained, and equipped the Guatemalan army's death squads—my torturers themselves."
—Ortiz

In a bizarre twist, Guatemalan officials claimed Ortiz faked her kidnapping to cover up a violent lesbian affair, a rumor subsequently spread by U.S. officials. 

Previously, the Reagan administration had undertaken a similar effort to discredit another Ursuline nun, Dorothy Kazel of Cleveland, Ohio, who along with three other American churchwomen was kidnapped, raped, and executed in El Salvador by U.S.-backed troops in 1980.

Even though she was back in the relative safety of the United States, Ortiz received menacing phone calls and anonymous packages, one containing a dead mouse wrapped in a Guatemalan flag. However, undaunted, she made three trips to Guatemala to testify against the government there.

Ortiz tasted victory, albeit of a largely symbolic nature, in April 1995, when a federal judge in Boston ordered Gen. Héctor Gramajo, the Guatemalan defense minister who had tried to discredit Ortiz, to pay her and eight other torture victims a combined $47.5 million.

In 1996 Ortiz held a five-week fasting vigil in front of the White House, where she demanded that the U.S. government declassify all documents about human rights abuses in Guatemala since the 1954 coup. Hillary Clinton, then first lady, invited Ortiz to her office. During their meeting, Clinton did not rule out the possibility that "Alejandro" was a past or current U.S. operative.

Ortiz's relentless pursuit of justice eventually compelled the United States to declassify long-secret documents revealing details of U.S. cooperation with Guatemalan security forces before, during, and after the time of her abduction, including an admission that the U.S. embassy was in contact with members of a death squad.

The documents also showed that Gen. Gramajo had been trained in counterinsurgency tactics at the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), where military and police officials from Latin American allies—many of them dictatorships—were instructed in counterinsurgency and democracy suppression using course manuals that advocated the torture and execution of civilians.

The files also proved that the U.S. was supporting Guatemalan forces guilty of perpetrating genocide. In 1999, President Bill Clinton apologized to the Guatemalan people for the U.S. role in the bloodshed, terror, and repression.

"The U.S. government funded, trained, and equipped the Guatemalan army's death squads—my torturers themselves," Ortiz later wrote. "The United States was the Guatemalan army's partner in a covert war against a small opposition force, a war the United Nations would later declare genocidal."

Ortiz's suffering left her with an acute awareness of human rights issues and a desire to work in service of those rights. In 1998 she founded Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC), and in 2002 published The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth. In the 2000s Ortiz was a vocal opponent of the George W. Bush's torture program in the so-called War on Terror.

Last year, she was named deputy director of Pax Christi USA, part of an international Catholic peace movement.

Recently, Ortiz worked for nuclear disarmament and led Pax Christi's work commemorating the 75th anniversary of the U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

As for her recovery, Ortiz wrote in The Blindfold's Eyes that despite years of therapy at Chicago's Marjorie Kovler Center for torture survivors, "no one ever fully recovers" from torture, "not the one who is tortured, and not the one who tortures."

Ortiz never not stopped searching for the whole truth of what happened to her back in 1989.

"No one ever fully recovers, not the one who is tortured, and not the one who tortures."
—Ortiz

"I demand the right to a future built on truth and justice," she told Kennedy. "My torturers were never brought to justice. It is possible that, individually, they will never be identified or apprehended. But I cannot resign myself to this fact and move on. I have a responsibility to the people of Guatemala and to the people of the world to insist on accountability where it is possible."

"I know what it is to wait in the dark for torture, and what it is to wait in the dark for the truth," said Ortiz. "I am still waiting."

Ursuline Sister Larraine Lauter was with Ortiz when she passed away on Friday. Lauter called her friend "unfailingly good."

"Dianna walked through the very worst of hell and came out with love," she told the Catholic Standard. "It's hard to believe that bad things happen to good nuns, but they do. Her legacy is for us to be nonviolent. Her legacy is a witness to nonviolence and to love in the face of evil and to redemption. That's her legacy, to teach us that that's possible."

Clarence Thomas dissent in GOP election challenge raises new questions about his wife: 'Investigate Ginni'

Travis Gettys
February 22, 2021

Clarence and Ginni Thomas (Facebook)

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a dissent after the high court refused to hear a Republican challenge to a Pennsylvania state court decision that extended the deadline to receive mail-in ballots in last November's election -- which once again raised questions about his wife's activism ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up cases challenging the Pennsylvania state court, and Trump and supporters like Ginni Thomas have challenged state laws to claim President Joe Biden's win was illegitimate.

Ginni Thomas had publicly endorsed the "Stop The Steal" rally in Washington, D.C., that turned into a deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol, and her husband wrote a dissent that seems destined to justify attempts by Republican state legislatures to limit mail-in voting in future elections.

"That decision to rewrite the rules seems to have affected too few ballots to change the outcome of any federal election. But that may not be the case in the future," Thomas wrote

"These cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address just what authority nonlegislative officials have to set election rules, and to do so well before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable."

The dissent set off alarm bells for many social media users.

Alma Levant Hayden: First Black woman in the FDA

Photography courtesy of NIH History Office/Wikimedia
Photo editing by Stephen Kelly


History shows many Black women scientists have been at the forefront of research, some holding positions in esteemed medical organizations. However, their accomplishments often go unrecognized. In this Special Feature, we highlight the life and achievements of the first Black woman chemist in the FDA: Alma Levant Hayden.

Many scientists have garnered worldwide acclaim for their groundbreaking discoveries and accomplishments throughout the world of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

These individuals have been celebrated for their significant scientific contributions throughout history — many of which have saved countless lives.

However, despite their equally monumental achievements, Black scientists have been largely overlooked in the annals of scientific history.

One of these innovative researchers was Alma Levant Hayden (1927–1967). Known as one of the first Black women to hold a position at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), she was not only a pioneer in the field of chemistry but also an integral part of a discovery that exposed potentially dangerous false claims about a widely publicized cancer drug.

In this Special Feature, we look at the life and career of Alma Levant Hayden, her monumental contributions to science, and why she may not have attained the acclaim she deserved.

Early life and accomplishments

Alma Levant Hayden was born in Greenville, SC, on March 30, 1927, and began her chemistry career by graduating with honors from South Carolina State College.

She then obtained a master’s degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C. Her expertise was in spectrophotometry, a type of electromagnetic spectroscopy that measures light wavelength absorption.

In the 1950s, Hayden joined the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and thus became one of the first female Black scientists to hold such a position in Washington.

She then went on to be one of the first Black women scientists to join the FDA. In 1963, Hayden came to lead the spectrophotometer research branch of the FDA’s Division of Pharmaceutical Chemistry.

She was an accomplished scientist with research published in several journals. For example, using chromatography techniques, Hayden and her colleagues conducted a study on determining individual adrenocortical steroids in urine in 1956.

In 1962, she was involved in research surrounding the identification and determination of adrenocortical steroids, barbiturates, and sulfonamides from paper chromatograms.

Uncovering the Krebiozen scam

Hayden’s most known contribution to American science involves Krebiozen, a substance allegedly discovered in the 1940s by Yugoslavian physician Dr. Stevan Durovic.

Widely publicized as a cure for cancer, this white powdery compound allegedly came from the distilled blood serum of horses and was named Krebiozen after the Greek phrase for “that which regulates growth.”

Dr. Durovic began treating people with Krebiozen, claiming that the drug eliminated tumors and reduced pain. Dr. Andrew C. Ivy and Dr. William F. P. Phillips were also involved in the drug’s distribution and fraudulent claims.

With growing doubt about this unknown substance’s cancer-curing benefits and safety, the FDA sought to test a sample of the drug in their laboratory.

On September 3, 1963, Hayden and her colleagues were assigned the task to determine what the “miracle” drug was and whether it had anti-cancer attributes as claimed.

Using a small sample of the white compound, Hayden tested it with an infrared spectrometer, crossmatching it with known chemicals to reveal its identity.

What she found was astonishing. The miracle cancer drug was nothing more than creatine, an amino acid derivative already found in the human body.

An article from 1966 comments on the case, further explaining the findings:

“By the fall of 1963, FDA had reached its scientific conclusions. The Krebiozen powder, the agency announced, had been identified by several chemical tests as creatine. The contents of Krebiozen ampules were identified as mineral oil, with minute amounts of two other substances, amyl alcohol and 1-methylhydantoin, found in ampules shipped in 1963. FDA’s chemical analysis was soon supported by the findings of the National Cancer Institute that Krebiozen ‘does not possess any anticancer activity in man.'”

As a result of her discovery, officials issued dozens of indictments against several key players in this false cancer treatment scandal.

Another article — this time from November 27, 1984, and published in Time Magazine — outlined the details:

“After […] years of medical claims and counterclaims, of whodunit-style charges and countercharges, the loud controversy over the alleged anti-cancer drug Krebiozen seemed headed at last toward orderly disposition. A federal grand jury in Chicago handed up an 85-page indictment listing 49 counts against Dr. Andrew C. Ivy, 71, three associates, and a corporation. The charges ranged from mail fraud and conspiracy to mislabeling and making false statements to government agencies about the drug.”

Despite the importance of Hayden’s discovery, historical documentation on the Krebiozen scandal does not mention her name.

Deeply rooted inequities

Commenters have pointed out that, in the mid-twentieth century, FDA researchers only occasionally testified in court cases. Furthermore, although Black scientists did hold official positions in the agency, the FDA did not recommend that they appear in court to relay data.

In the book Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action, 1940–1972, Cornell historian Margaret W. Rossiter notes that FDA officials at the time tended to subscribe to antiBlack views, believing that “a [Black] person might prejudice the case in court, in certain sections of the country.”

In the U.S., statistical data reveal inequities in the fields of science and technology, which continue well into the twenty-first century.

According to a comment article published in the journal Nature, between 2015–2018, data collected by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and the Open Chemistry Collaborative in Diversity Equity (OXIDE) show that Black chemists are still denied access to academic jobs.

Journal authors also note that in the top 50 schools in the U.S., Black students represent 7.9% of bachelor’s degree recipients, 4.5% of Ph.D. recipients, 3.2% of postdoctoral researchers in universities, and 1.6% of chemistry professors.

The authors say: “In particular, Black women and early-career Black researchers suffer the devastating effects of institutionalized racism, with very little opportunity for training and promotion. In many cases, they are made to feel that they do not belong and are regularly subjected to various forms of discrimination, resulting in them leaving academia.”

An example from Europe suggests the existence of widespread global inequities. The Chemistry Europe Fellows Program was founded in 2015 to identify chemists for outstanding research and support as authors, advisers, and services to their national chemical societies.

The organization include 16 chemical societies from 15 countries and have not yet recognized any Black chemists.


Promoting equality in STEM

Equity across STEM is an urgent need, and several organizations have been formed in the U.S. to bring reform to the scientific community.

The OXIDE are one such organization working toward rectifying inequitable policies found in some academic chemistry departments. They also select diversity leaders within chemistry departments based on accomplishments in their field.

The National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers (NOBCChE) are another organization supporting and promoting equitable education and professional development of Black students and professionals.

NOBCChE say it is a “nonprofit professional organization dedicated to assisting Black and other minority students and professionals in fully realizing their potential in academic, professional, and entrepreneurial pursuits in chemistry, chemical engineering, and allied fields.”

The goal of these and similar organizations is to prioritize the changes needed to foster the academic and career aspirations of Black students in the science fields.

Hayden’s life continues to inspire others

Besides Hayden’s professional life and accomplishments, her personal life was equally fulfilling. She was married to NIH chemist Alonzo Hayden and had two children, Michael and Andrea.

On August 2, 1967, Hayden died of cancer.

Despite the racial inequities she endured, her work will be forever engrained in the hearts and minds of chemists worldwide.

Her pioneering spirit is also a shining example of unwavering determination and dedication that continues to inspire scientists of all racial and ethnic 



Written by Kimberly Drake on February 19, 2021 — 

Fact checked by Malgorzata Pachol



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The flu pandemic of 1918 and early conspiracy theories

The COVID-19 pandemic has taken the world by storm, but it is not unique. Past pandemics have likewise been accompanied by conspiracy theories and waves of mistrust in science. In this Curiosities of Medical History feature, we look at some of the wildest theories to emerge during the flu pandemic of 1918.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch file photo/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

The COVID-19 pandemic is not a first in world history. There have been many before it, including the infamous Black Death, which historians believe started in 1334, and which may have lasted for centuries.

More recently, the world was turned upside down by the 1889 flu pandemic and the 1918 flu pandemic, sometimes referred to as the “Spanish flu.”

The latter resulted from infection with an H1N1 virus that had a genetic structure reminiscent of viruses of avian origin, though its actual source remains unknown.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the 1918 pandemic, which started to peter out the following year, caused around 40 million deaths globally.

As the flu started spreading throughout the world, local governments and newspapers struggled to keep up with the devastation. On October 6, 1918, a Greek newspaper reported an announcement from the government, warning that:


“The disease germs enter the body through the mouth and generally from the respiratory system. […] The disease spreads by coughs and [is] transmitted by air. Therefore, it is recommended the avoidance of [mental] stress and overwork. […] All schools must be close[d], and meticulous maintenance of cleanliness of lingerie and hands is proposed. In particular, it is highly recommended to avoid close contact with every person who displays flu symptoms.”

This notice echoes those issued by governments today, and much of the public health advice was similar to present-day guidance; washing the hands frequently and wearing face masks were top criteria for public safety.

And in 1918, much like now, dangerous misconceptions and conspiracy theories regarding the origin of the virus soon emerged.

In this feature, we look at some of the most striking “fake news” from 1918 and explore why conspiracy theories were popular then and remain a widespread issue, despite having harmful effects.


The controversy around aspirin

Today, the Big Pharma conspiracy theory holds that in order to promote and sell pharmaceutical products, companies intentionally spread disease. This conspiracy theory has resurfaced in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic, though it is hardly a 21st-century phenomenon.

During the pandemic of 1918, one myth propagated in the United States and the United Kingdom was that the pandemic was linked to the use of aspirin produced by the German pharmaceutical company Bayer.

The mistrust of products of German origin is not as strange as it may seem, given that the start of the pandemic coincided with the end of World War I, in which the U.S. and Germany had fought as enemies.

The myth caused enough of a stir to prompt the American branch of Bayer to reassure potential buyers in the U.S. One advert, published on October 18, 1918, stated that “The manufacture of Bayer-Tablets and Capsules of Aspirin is completely under American control.”

Ironically, some later studies have suggested that aspirin may indeed have worsened some symptoms of the flu responsible for the pandemic, but not due to tampering.

A study paper published in Clinical Infectious Diseases in 2009 suggests that aspirin may have worsened the symptoms of the illness because doctors were prescribing dosages that were too high.

The paper’s author, Dr. Karen Starko, notes that at the time, doctors were routinely prescribing dosages of 8.0–31.2 grams of aspirin per day, unaware that this can cause hyperventilation and pulmonary edema in some people.

“Just before the 1918 death spike, aspirin was recommended in regimens now known to be potentially toxic and to cause pulmonary edema and may therefore have contributed to overall pandemic mortality and several of its mysteries,” Dr. Starko writes.


Claims of biological warfare

During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, one widespread rumor claims that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the disease, was created in a laboratory and nefariously spread throughout the world.

The most prominent of these rumors holds that the virus was created in and leaked from a lab in China — though research indicates that SARS-CoV-2 is, in fact, of natural origin.

This is not a far cry from myths and spurious claims about the origin of the influenza virus that emerged and spread in 1918.

One such rumor, found in the pages of a Brazilian newspaper, suggested that the influenza virus was spread around the world by German submarines.

Similar stories claimed that German boats coming ashore on the East Coast of the U.S. had released the infectious agent into the atmosphere.

According to an account in Gina Kolata’s book Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus that Caused It, a woman claimed to have seen a toxic cloud spreading over Boston as a camouflaged German ship drew close to the harbor.

Kolata writes:

“The plague came in on a camouflaged German ship that had crept into Boston Harbor under cover of darkness and released the germs that seeded the city. […] There was an eyewitness, an old woman who said she saw a greasy-looking cloud that floated over the harbor and wafted over the docks.”

Kolata goes on to describe other rumors that Germans had snuck into the city carrying vials of germs and proceeded to release them in theaters and at rallies.


A perpetually ‘foreign’ plague

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, some referred to SARS-CoV-2 as the “China” or “Wuhan” virus. This naming has racist and xenophobic connotations, suggesting that a specific country or population is responsible for the emergence and spread of a pathogen.

The misnomers soon attracted an international outcry, with human rights advocates citing related surges in racism throughout the world.

However, the phenomenon of naming a pandemic or epidemic after a specific country is by no means new. The 1918 flu is often called “the Spanish flu,” though it did not originate in Spain. In fact, its origins are still unclear. So how did it get this name?

According to a research paper published in Clinical Infectious Diseases in 2008, the name “probably [emerged] because of the misinformation surrounding the news about the origin of the epidemic.” The authors go on to explain:

“It is usually accepted that, because Spain was a neutral country in World War I, freedom of the press in Spain was greater than that in the allied countries and in Germany. The U.S. and European press, likely for political reasons, did not acknowledge or transmit timely and accurate news about the high number of casualties among their military and civilian population that were attributable to the ongoing influenza epidemic.”

While “the Spanish flu” remains the best-known moniker for the cause of the 1918 pandemic, the illness took on other names, depending on the country.

In Spain, it was sometimes referred to as “the French flu,” possibly because Spanish seasonal workers traveled to and from France by train, prompting Spanish authorities to believe that they had “imported” the virus from France.

Another name for the flu in Spain was “the Naples Soldier,” referring to a musical performance popular at the time, suggesting that the virus stuck as easily as the melody.

In Brazil, meanwhile, it was “the German flu,” in Poland it was “the Bolshevik disease,” and in Senegal it was “the Brazilian flu.” In short, each country nicknamed the virus after a political opponent.

Why did these misconceptions catch on?

In the past, as now, myths and conspiracy theories surrounding the origins of disease spread like wildfire.

As the authors of a 2017 study in Current Directions in Psychological Science observe, conspiracy theories give people quick, easily acceptable explanations for issues that otherwise have no simple answers or solutions.

The researchers found that people who believe in conspiracy theories do so for three reasons:

epistemic motives — the need for ready-made causal explanations of certain problems or phenomena in order to regain a sense of certainty
existential motives — the need to regain control over one’s situation or environment
social motives — “the desire to belong and to maintain a positive image” of oneself and the society that one inhabits or wishes to inhabit

Our senses of certainty, control, and belonging can easily become jeopardized in crisis situations, such as a pandemic.

Both the influenza virus behind the 1918 pandemic and the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19 have maintained an aura of mystery: Scientists and governments do not and did not provide quick, easy solutions for stopping the spread.

The means available to prevent infection — wearing face masks in public, minimizing social contact — feel precarious and often alienating, sometimes seriously harming mental health and altering daily life.

Naturally, widespread anxiety in times of crisis prompts people to look for answers and solutions everywhere — and conspiracy theories seem to provide them.

Yet, time and time again, experts have shown that buying into conspiracy theories does more harm than good, damaging public health and social well-being.

Past public health crises such as the 1918 pandemic can teach us important lessons about crisis management — as long as we learn from our mistakes.

Pandemic leaves Europeans more likely to believe conspiracy theories – study

Jon Henley Europe correspondent

A year of the coronavirus pandemic has left many Europeans markedly more fed up, more pessimistic, more critical of the way their government is handling the crisis – and worryingly prone to believe conspiracy theories, according to a major study.

The survey of nearly 8,000 people across France, Germany, Italy and Britain by the French Cevipof political research centre (pdf) showed widespread levels of belief in coronavirus and vaccine-related conspiracy theories across all four countries surveyed – with mistrust highest in France.

More than 36% of French respondents, 32% in Italy and Germany and 31% in Britain agreed that health ministries were working with pharma companies to cover up vaccine risks, while 42% in France, 41% in the UK, 40% in Italy and 39% in Germany felt governments were exploiting the crisis to “control and monitor” citizens.

© Photograph: Anne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP/Getty Images Just 49% of respondents in France said they were likely to be, or had already been, inoculated against Covid-19.

The survey also confirmed a familiar contrast in levels of social and political confidence between southern and northern Europe.

The four countries’ experiences of the pandemic are not the same: Italy, hit hard last spring, is starting cautiously to reopen; Germany and the UK, both with second waves deadlier than the first, cannot yet do so; France is hoping to avoid a third lockdown.

But asked what word best described their state of mind, 41% of French respondents chose “weary”, against 28% last February. In Italy, included for the first time, the figure was 40%. In Britain it rose to 31% from 19%, and in Germany to 15% from 7%.

Similarly, the proportion of people saying the word “gloomy” best described their mood was up 12 percentage points in France at 34% and stood at 24% in Italy. It also rose in Germany, doubling to 14%, and less sharply in the UK, up to 16%.

“People everywhere are very, very preoccupied by this crisis,” said Bruno Cautrès, a Cevipof analyst. “But the morose, anxious outlook of the French emerges very clearly from these figures. There is a thick French filter of mistrust.”

Asked if they agreed with their government’s handling of the crisis, 56% of Germans answered “wholly” or “partly”, compared with 74% last April. In the UK, approval fell from from 69% to 48%, and in France from 39% to 37%. In Italy it was 52%.

“These figures represent a mixture of temporary and structural factors,” said Gilles Ivaldi, a Cevipof researcher. “Regardless of the government’s objective performance in handling the pandemic, trust in politics generally is lower in Italy but, most clearly, in France, and that is reflected in people’s judgments.”

Asked how they felt about politics in general, 39% of French respondents opted for “mistrust”, against 30% of Britons, 27% of Italians and 24% of Germans. Nearly 25% of French and 31% of Italian respondents chose an even stronger epithet – “disgust” – against 8% in Germany and 11% in the UK. The survey was carried out by pollster Opinionway between 20 January and 11 February.

Differing attitudes towards government and institutions were also reflected in concerns about the economic consequences of Covid-19, the survey showed, with levels of worry high in all four countries – but greatest in France and Italy.

Almost 90% of those questioned in Italy and 84% of those questioned in France said they were very or fairly worried about the post-pandemic economic situation in their country, compared with 80% of those in the UK and 72% in Germany.

Vaccine acceptance showed a similar divide, with the French again the most wary: just 49% of respondents in France said they were likely to be, or had already been, inoculated against Covid-19, against 80% in the UK, 76% in Italy and 66% in Germany.

Across the four countries, the most common reason (58%) given for not wanting to have the jab was fear of possible side-effects, while 54% said not enough was known about the vaccines or the virus and 25% that they did not think the vaccines would be effective. One-sixth (16%) said they mistrusted vaccines in general.

CANADA VS USA

Biden administration must settle unwinnable WTO cases over steel and aluminum tariffs

Marc L. Busch, Opinion Contributor

 The European Union (EU) sees it as the dispute that could spell the "end of a rules-based multilateral trading system."

 Boeing-Airbus?

 No, the EU is talking about its case against U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs, one of seven being argued at the World Trade Organization (WTO). 

Given delays due to COVID-19, the WTO recently announced it doesn't expect to rule in these cases, or in the cases the U.S. filed in response, until the latter half of 2021. 

The Biden administration should use the extra time to negotiate out of this mess.

 In the seven cases on the defense, the U.S. loses no matter how the WTO rules. 

In the five cases on the offense, the fight isn't worth the candle.

© Getty Images Biden administration must settle unwinnable WTO cases over steel and aluminum tariffs

Back in 2017, the Trump administration imposed 25 percent tariffs on steel and 10 percent tariffs on aluminum, citing national security under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Nine countries challenged these tariffs at the WTO, and retaliated with tariffs of their own. This led the U.S. to bring WTO cases against seven of these countries for illegally retaliating. Canada and Mexico struck deals with the U.S. as part of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), cutting the total number of cases from 16 to 12. Currently, the United States is the defendant in seven cases and the complainant in five.

The way Europe sees it, the U.S. used Section 232 as a safeguard measure, but not in the way the WTO prescribes. The EU says the tariffs are thus illegal, and can't be justified under the WTO's "national security" exception. In this view, Europe's retaliatory tariffs make sense as the equivalent of the compensation the U.S. would have otherwise owed, had it fessed up to using a safeguard in the first place.

The U.S. disagrees. It argues that its national security tariffs are not safeguards, and that they are justified under the WTO's "national security" exception if the U.S. says they are. In this view, the U.S. does not owe compensation, meaning the EU's retaliatory tariffs, like those put in place by China, India, Russia and Turkey, are illegal.

Europe is surely right about the national security exception. The U.S. has been testing out its theory as a third party in WTO cases against Russia and Saudi Arabia, but it hasn't gained any traction. In fact, the rulings in both cases make it clear that the U.S. can't win.

The bigger picture, though, is that the U.S. shouldn't want to win. That's because a victory would motivate others to broadly define national security to include things like bilateral trade imbalances. If claims of this sort are also not reviewable by the WTO, or even subject to a "good faith" test, as the U.S. said in Q&A with the panel, then markets would shut down overnight to American exports. In sum, the worst thing that could happen to the U.S. would be to win, not lose, the seven Section 232 cases.

The flipside is that it's also wrong for the EU and the four other countries to take it upon themselves to decide the Section 232 tariffs were really safeguards and take compensation at a level of their choosing. The U.S. makes several references to EU unilateralism but doesn't raise a legal claim to back it up, perhaps because this narrative might have raised defensive liabilities in this and China's Section 301 litigation. The EU should be pressed harder on its unilateralism in negotiations.

More broadly, a Biden trade "reset" will have to start with the EU. Like other U.S. allies, the EU was stunned by Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, and his threats to employ Section 232 on their exports of autos. Biden needs to address the future of Section 232 to calm allies, and appease members of congress who have been busy drafting legislation to rein it in.

The EU "ask" will be WTO reform. It wants the Appellate Body working again. It wants to partner with the U.S. at the WTO to address concerns about China. Ending the 12 cases triggered by Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs would help signal U.S. resolve to see through WTO reform.

Bad cases make bad case law, and worse. COVID delays at the WTO have handed Biden a little more time to resolve 12 bad cases that the U.S. can't win, no matter what the rulings are.

Marc L. Busch is the Karl F. Landegger Professor of International Business Diplomacy at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and host of the podcast TradeCraft.