Profits, Greed and Big Pharma

My Oxford Union case for why patients—not profits—must drive medicine (and a footnote on Charlie Kirk and Oxford)

This past June, I had the privilege of debating at the Oxford Union on one of the most consequential questions in modern medicine: what role should profits have in healthcare? Drawing on years of reporting for my bestselling book PHARMA, I made the case that when money dictates medical decisions, patients suffer—and too often, they die. In just twelve minutes, I laid out why a system driven by shareholder returns cannot put patients first.

Before

Trisha Posner

and I set off for the U.K., I asked

Konstantin Kisin

for any advice, since he had a celebrated debate at the Union. His reply was simple: “Smash it.” I am glad to report that those of us who argued in favor of that night’s debate proposition—This house believes that profit motives have no place in public health—did just that. We carried the evening with a 10 to 1 post-debate voting margin.

On my side, I was joined by an Oxford student and medical physician, Diana Mandewo, and Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu, a nanoscientist and the president of Wolfson College at Cambridge. Opposing us and arguing in favor of keeping profits and medicine intertwined, were two notable figures: Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall, former Chief Medical Officer at Pfizer, and Robert Califf, former FDA Commissioner under Presidents Obama and Biden.

Here is my 12-minute presentation that profits play too big a role in medical care and the drug industry

And here is the full hour debate

Trisha and I have very good memories of the Oxford event. And below is a picture where you can spot Trisha in the top row and me sitting in the front.

By the way, as an aside unrelated to my debate, about 3 weeks before I got to Oxford, Charlie Kirk had been there. I was curious about what the Union officials who had arranged that event, and many of the students who had attended his talk, thought of him. His appearance at Oxford had, not surprisingly, provoked a lot of heated discussion. When Trisha and I asked Oxford students what they thought, it turned out that whether they loved or hated his politics, they all raved about him personally. He left a mark at Oxford for his accessibility and his insistence that debate should bridge divides rather than deepen them.

That memory has soured in the past week. George Abaraonye, the incoming Oxford Union President-elect, had debated Charlie Kirk in May on a motion about “toxic masculinity.”

After Kirk’s assassination, Abaraonye posted messages celebrating or mocking the killing. He seemed almost gleeful that Kirk had been murdered Since then, there has been a groundswell of calls for him to resign. More than seventy Oxford Union alumni—former presidents, officers and standing committee members—have signed an open letter demanding that he resign or that Oxford Union strip him of his title. Next month, the Union might take a no-confidence vote in Abaraonye.

Quite a few people who have debated at the Union have said they would not return so long as Abaraonye is president. Last week on Twitter, I said, “I am an ardent free speech and debate advocate. However, words also have consequences. I debated at Oxford just 3 weeks after Kirk. If invited today, I would decline in protest of the president-elect’s hateful rhetoric.”

It is a shame that one of the world’s most prestigious debating societies is tarnished by the reckless language of its incoming president.

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