Morning Wire - Political Engagement by Religion & Critical Drug Shortages | 5.27.23

Episode Date: May 27, 2023

The political engagement of religious and non religious groups, critical drug shortages in several categories, and childhood obesity around the world. Get the facts first with Morning Wire.   Contingency Medical: ​​Get $20 off any Contingency Medical Pack! Use promo code WIRE at http://www.ContingencyMedical.com   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Move over white evangelicals. A new report shows atheists trounce other Americans in terms of political engagement. We discuss the latest trends in how religious faith affects political action. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's May 27th, and this is your Saturday edition of Morning Wire. Doctors are warning that hundreds of generic and brand-name drugs are in critically short supply, including chemotherapies. What's behind the shortages and why?

Why is the market struggling to self-correct? Hospitals all across the country on a regular basis, sometimes weekly, have to review which drugs are in short supply are not available that week. And a new report ranks countries by childhood obesity, with dozens of them soaring past the U.S. You might be surprised which countries top the list. Thanks for waking up with Morning Wire. Stay tuned. We have the news you need to know.

When it comes to tracking political activity by religious beliefs, a lot of media. coverage focuses on evangelicals, in particular white evangelicals. But new data shows that religious conservatives are not nearly as active as their atheist peers. Daily Wire culture reporter Megan Basham joins us now to discuss. So Megan, as John said, we hear a lot about how white evangelicals shape elections. You see a lot of polling on this group, a lot of reporting, opinion essays, there's numerous books on this. What does the new data say? Well, mainly what it says is that this outsized focus on the religious right may be misplaced. Atheists have a much higher political engagement.

To quote one statistician, no one gets involved in the political process to the level of the average atheist. And this data is drawn from the Cooperative Election Study. That's an annual survey put out by Harvard. And what it's found is that when asked, half of atheists say they have donated to a candidate in the previous month. Now, that's a huge percentage, though we do need to note that the... this research draws from a survey conducted in 2020. The results would probably be considerably different

in a year without a presidential election. But they're also the most likely to put up political signs at 27 percent. 37 percent of them have contacted a public official in the previous month. Again, that puts them at number one. And I should probably note that atheists overwhelmingly identify as Democrats at nearly 80 percent. Agnostics who are close behind them in political engagement also tilt overwhelmingly democratic. Now, you compare that to the white evangelicals that we hear so much about. They actually fell in the middle of the pack on just about every metric, around 20 to 25 percent on those same questions. Agnostics, Jews, mainline Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, they all ranked above them. And non-white evangelicals were at the bottom

of the pack, so not very politically active at all. And if you characterize your religious beliefs as nothing in particular, then you're among the most politically disengaged. Now, before we get to why there's been so much misperception about evangelicals as a political force, do we have any data on why atheists and agnastics are so engaged? Well, it's hard to pin down a specific cause, but one thing that could be contributing to it is that they tend to have fewer children. So they have a lot more disposable income. They also tend to be more educated, and that has correlated with political involvement. But there's also the theory that their political activity sort of supplants religious engagement.

I spoke to Brad Vermeerlin, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin, who studies evangelicals. Here's what he told me. When it comes to evangelicals, I mean, they have a worldview that's full of all sorts of enchanted ideas and topics, you know, the atonement and living a life for Christ and making disciples and evangelizing. And there's all sorts. It's just a very full worldview. And when it comes to atheists, it's almost like they use political positions as a religion substitute because it almost becomes like a religion for them. So just like religious people tend to find community and social engagement in their churches, atheists and agnostics could be doing that with their political activities. Okay, so back to evangelicals. Why is there this false perception that they're extremely political? Was that historically true? That's a very good question because no, it's not historically true. And this isn't actually.

actually new data. Social scientists have been discussing for a few years now that the conventional wisdom on this is wrong. One thing could be that there are just a lot of them. Gallup puts it at about 41 percent of Americans are evangelical, though other polls have put it a little lower. So atheists and agnostics represent a much smaller group, though they are growing. Today, one in five Democrats are in that group up eight points from 2008. And like atheists tend to be Democrats, evangelicals tend to be Republicans, especially those white evangelicals. So that could be why the media covers their political activity so much. Here's what Vermeerlund said about that.

It seems to me that the stereotype or perception of white evangelicals as politicized or overly politically active really stems from not any empirical data on political activity, which we know shows that evangelicals are very middle of the road, but just a dislike for the position that white evangelicals tend to take. among more progressive academics, journalists, and more progressive people in the public, and almost just because something you say, like, oh, evangelicals, they're too political. One of what that really means is, oh, evangelicals, they take stances I don't like. I don't think you need to be a political scientist to see how that's impacting our two-party politics. Well, as one of my colleagues here at Daily Wire says, all political battles are ultimately theological battles. Megan, thanks for reporting.

Anytime. Coming up. Hundreds of drugs are in critically short supply. Record drug shortages across the U.S. are delaying potentially life-saving treatments for thousands of patients around the country. Congress and the White House are scrambling to address a shortfall in hundreds of prescription drugs, including everything from painkillers to cancer treatments. Joining us with the details is Daily Wire researcher Michael Whitaker. So, Michael, what do we know about this drug shortage situation? Hey, Georgia. The shortage is being most acutely felt in the generic drug market, which is a lot of the generic drug market, which is,

accounts for nearly 90% of U.S. prescriptions. According to a Senate report at the end of last year, the U.S. reached a peak level of 295 active drug shortages, although as of March, the FDA claims that there are only 130. The American Society of Health, however, reports 301 active drug shortages as of now. Some of the medicines that have been in short supply include adderol, pylin, various antibiotics, including amoxicillin, saline mixtures used in IVs, and almost two dozen kinds of anti-cancer drugs. That last group is especially tributtal. because, unlike some other drugs in short supply, patients don't have a lot of alternative options for those kinds of treatments.

Now, how bad is the shortage? Are there confirmed deaths as a result of this? Well, according to one recent survey by the Society of Gynecologic Oncology, doctors in 35 different states said they had, quote, little to no supply of multiple chemotherapy drugs, including specialists at cancer centers. According to Laura Bray, founder of the nonprofit Angels for Change, which helps microsource rare medications for patients, nine out of ten oncologists say that the shortages have caused patient harm up to and including death. With less medicine and the same number of patients who need it,

doctors around the country have been having many hard conversations about who does and who doesn't get their dose. So what's causing the shortages? Is there just not much profit motive to produce these generics? Well, that's definitely part of the story. But the reasons run the gamut, depending on the drug. Some drugs like Adderall and Mozempic have been popularized for alternative uses and are seeing a huge demand, and supply just has not caught up with that. Then there are still global

supply chain delays. The numbers are a little fuzzy here. Part of the problem is that the supply chain for some pharmaceuticals is not totally transparent, to the point where regulators don't even know for sure where everything comes from. The FDA actually petition Congress for more resources to figure that out. Near as the Senate can tell, though, about 80% of pharmaceutically active ingredients, the most important part of any drug, are manufactured outside of the United States. If these foreign sources had their economies locked down or started hoarding supplies to themselves. That could completely gut our supply chain. Several fingers have been pointed at China, just to pick a name out of the hat. And many lawmakers view this is a serious strategic weakness of the United States.

Right. We've actually reported on that in the past. Now, what about some domestic causes? Some potential domestic causes include overprescription of antibiotics. Some say doctors have a tendency to overprescribe antibiotics, which could lead to shortages and other issues like antibiotic resistance. Panic buying has also been blamed, especially for over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol. A perceived shortage becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Something similar happened with toilet paper at the start of the last pandemic. I mean, I still keep at least 20 rolls in reserve just in case. But while all of these immediate causes have drawn a lot of attention,

some people are claiming that more basic market forces are to blame, like you mentioned earlier. Many generic life-saving drugs are not very profitable to make. We're talking pennies per dose. Those narrow margins discourage newcomers from entering the sector. And if there are supply chain issues that make the product more expensive, established players are more likely to cut corners on the product or simply stop making it altogether. There's been an upward trend in the number of drug shortages over the last few years,

while the prices of generic drugs have dropped 50% since 2016. Well, if the demand is high, though, why would the prices not creep up to match? Well, the pharmaceutical market is atypical for a few reasons. For one thing, it's highly consolidated. While there are thousands of hospitals and pharmacies in the United States, most of them get their supplies from a small number of intermediary firms. A review by a healthcare analytics company called IQVIA found that just free buyers purchased 90% of all generic drugs.

With so few potential customers, each one of them has a lot of leverage over what kind of price they're going to have to pay. Speaking of leverage, the U.S. government is a major player in healthcare, and lawmakers have passed limits on how much companies are allowed to charge for various drugs. The logic is straightforward enough. No one wants to get price-caged while their loved ones are dying, but prices are not arbitrary things.

If Congress passed the law tomorrow mandating that Tesla could not sell cars for more than $10 a piece, every American would not suddenly be able to afford a Tesla. Elon Musk would go out of business. All right, well, Michael, thanks so much for reporting.

Thanks for having me. A new report ranks the countries with the most childhood obesity and the U.S. did not even crack the top 50. Daily Wire investigative reporter, Marade, Alorty, is here with the details for us. So, Marade, I think a lot of people will be surprised that so many countries

are now more obese than the U.S. Tell us about this study. Hi, Georgia. Well, this World Health Organization report ranked countries, according to their rates of obesity among children under the age of five. The country that ranked first is actually Libya. Australia was second.

The U.S. came in at 52nd out of 198 countries. About 7.9% of American children are overweight, according to the data. Britain was much higher up and took the 22nd spot with 11.5%. 3% of children overweight. In Libya, which topped the list, 3 in 10 children under the age of 5 are overweight. In Australia, 21.8% of children are overweight. The next three countries rounding out the top 5 on the list are Tunisia, Egypt, and Papua New Guinea, followed by Greece, Paraguay, Trinidad, and

Tobago, Ukraine, and Albania, the top 10. Last year, there were 37 million obese children under five across the world, according to the data. That's more than four million more than around the beginning of this century. The World Health Organization warns in the report that, quote, the prevalence of obesity is moving in the wrong direction with no immediate sign of reversion. Do we have any idea why children in the countries at the top are so overweight? Well, some data suggests that countries like Libya have recently adopted a more Western diet with lots of processed foods, and that's contributing to skyrocketing obesity in children. children and adults. In general, poor diet, poor lifestyle, and lack of exercise are a common

theme in the countries that have a high percentage of children who are overweight. One interesting factor is breastfeeding. Breastfeeding tends to lower a child's chance of becoming overweight in the first year of life, and some of these countries at the top of the list don't breastfeed as much. Some of these countries like Egypt have launched government programs encouraging parents to guide their children towards healthier habits, but so far it doesn't seem to have made much of a dent in the childhood obesity numbers. Now, it's well documented that obesity and conditions caused by it eat up a lot of health care dollars. How much does our health care system actually spend on obesity?

Yes, that's right. Well, the CDC estimates that obesity costs the American health care system close to $173 billion every year. And, of course, obesity contributes to a lot of serious health issues, including diabetes, heart disease, and strokes. And even though the U.S. was not at the very top of the list for childhood obesity under five years old, the trends here are concerning. According to the CDC, between 1999 and 2020, U.S. obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 41.9%. In 2020, 74% of American adults were either overweight or obese. Well, it sounds like the rest of the world is catching up. Marade, thanks for reporting.

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