Veterans’ groups are suing the Department of Defense for covering up the chemical exposure that our troops are subjected to at an overseas military base. Thousands of soldiers have reported illnesses and cancers, but the military refuses to tell our troops what they’ve been exposed to. Plus, the Biden Administration has sided with drug companies in a dispute over the cost of a prostate cancer drug. Consumers could die without the drug – which is what they told the administration – but Biden’s cabinet decided that profits for billion-dollar drug companies were more important. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: Veterans groups are suing the Department of Defense for covering up the chemical exposure that our troops are subjected to at an overseas military base. Thousands of soldiers have reported illnesses of cancers and illnesses we don’t even have a name for. And the military refuses to help these troops at all.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is a terrifying story because to this day, these American soldiers, you know, we’re supposed to protect these folks almost more than anybody else in this country. And we’re failing them because they’re at this base in Uzbekistan, it’s called K2 is the nickname. It’s the Karshi-Khanabad Air Base. And for years and years, thousands of soldiers every year would come down with these mystery illnesses. Many of them ended up developing cancer. And so the military came out a couple years ago and they said, okay, we’re gonna do some testing. We’re gonna be looking for asbestos, we’re gonna be looking for cancer causing chemicals. We’re gonna find out what’s hurting you folks. So they do the tests, they get all their results.
Mike Papantonio: They find everything.
Farron Cousins: They hide them.
Mike Papantonio: Exactly. They find everything and then they don’t disclose it.
Farron Cousins: Exactly. So we still to this day don’t know what’s in that report because they clearly saw it and said, oh God, we can’t show this to anybody because we’re killing people.
Mike Papantonio: Let me tell you our experience with the Department of Defense and it’s just, it’s really, really ugly. We handled the terrorism cases where, you know, American citizens are killed through terrorism, that’s funded by banks, it’s funded by Iran. We don’t get any information from the DOD unless we beat it out of them. They’re always protecting whatever that thing is that they want to protect, which is the government mostly. Same thing on Camp Lejeune, big case up in North Carolina, where entire families are dying of cancer. They died of brain tumors. They died of birth defects because the DOD did not disclose to the soldiers that were on that camp, that were on that base, that all of these toxins were in their drinking water.
The levels, Farron, were so far off of the chart that when they looked at it the first time, they said it had to be some mistake. Then they looked at it three times and every time they looked at the levels of toxins that caused cancer, neurological disease, birth defects got higher and higher. They hid that. They hid it from the American public, from these soldiers, for about 50 years. Then come along and you’ve got this, these, these soldiers are in tents, they’re in tents on the ground and this toxic sludge is coming up underneath their tent. They’re taking it up through dermal exposure, inhalation exposure, drinking water exposure. And the DOD won’t tell ’em even what the hell was in it so a doctor can treat them.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And all we know right now is that if you served at this K2 base in Uzbekistan, you have a 500 times greater chance of developing cancer than the average person in the country.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. Yeah, we asked them to go put their lives on the line for us. You know, go leave your family. Two years, three years, some of these people have been signed up three terms to go fight for America. And then when we do these things to ’em, we treat ’em like they’re second rate citizens. I see it all the time. I’m working on that, the case up in North Carolina, Camp Lejeune case. And it’s just unbelievable to me that you would have a government that would hide how dangerous this exposure was, not only to the soldier, the soldier’s wife and children.
Farron Cousins: Well, and you know what they do instead, we get the US military, the government that says, hey NFL, you’ve gotta have a salute the Veterans Week. Major league baseball, you gotta have your, your military day. This is what we do to them. We give them parades. But we’re also killing them with cancer. But it’s okay because we got to do a fun parade for you.
Mike Papantonio: Virtue signaling.
Farron Cousins: Right.
Mike Papantonio: We give them virtue signaling.
Mike Papantonio: The Biden administration has sided with drug companies in a dispute over the cost of prostate cancer. Now, let me say that again. The Biden administration sided with big pharmaceutical in a dispute over the cost of prostate cancer drug that was gonna save people’s lives. The Biden administration said it’s okay to charge more, even though, Farron, government and universities paid for all the research. Pick this story up.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. This is another one from The Lever. Again, my new favorite site.
Mike Papantonio: What a great.
Farron Cousins: David Sirota, Matthew Cunningham Cook, put this story together.
Mike Papantonio: These guys are brilliant. I love this site, man.
Farron Cousins: So what you have is, you have an individual who’s flown under the radar in the Biden administration named, Xavier Becerra. Mr. Becerra happens to be the head of Health and Human Services. But back when he was in the state of California, when Trump was in office, Mr. Becerra petitioned the Trump administration, you have got to lower the price on this specific prostate cancer drug because people are dying. And this drug has been proven. It’ll fix you for the most part if we get it in time. But you’re letting people die. How dare you Mr. Trump do this.
Mike Papantonio: It’s even uglier than that. It’s even uglier than that. Part of his argument was that taxpayers paid for the development of this drug. It was actually developed at a university and government paid for part of that. And then we let a drug company get the patent on it. And so there’s a solution, clear solution. The government has the ability to come in and say, we’re not gonna honor your patent. We’re gonna do what we call march-in rights. And march-in rights is when you say, this drug is so vital, A, it was paid for by taxpayers. The industry had nothing to do with developing this drug. They simply got the patent and now they’re gouging the eyes out of people to get this drug. So what is most bothersome about me is we have the Biden administration saying, well, it’s okay. And as I look at it, as I look at the connection between Biden and this, well, let me read this to you.
This, by the way, this is called The Lever. And it is a great source of information. When Biden was vice president, when Obama, during the administrative, during the Obama administration and congressional Democrats demanded that government used this march-in power to do away with the right of these pharmaceutical companies to lower skyrocketing medicine in America. It was Biden that was one of the eight Democrats who voted against it. And but for that vote, it would’ve passed. And so as I look at this, this is another deal where Reagan, again, it’s another Reagan story. Reagan comes in and he makes a requirement that drug companies sell medicine developed with public money at a reasonable price. He kept that under control. Clinton, Bill Clinton comes in, does away with that. So, you know, you got people out there saying, I’m a Democrat. Democrats are always good for us. You know, this is an example, if you’re believing that, watch what happens on this drug. Right?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. And this is, again, it’s terrible because this drug has been listed on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines. This is essential for many people.
Mike Papantonio: To live.
Farron Cousins: To live. And the Biden administration, knowing that we already created this drug, the drug company did not, my taxes paid for it. Your taxes paid for it. We’ve all in this country already paid for this drug and they’re still charging us, they didn’t list the exact number, but we are the highest price on the planet to buy this specific drug. If you get prostate cancer in Europe or you get it in South America, you’re gonna get this drug at a reasonable price that is not gonna send you to the poorhouse.
Mike Papantonio: Okay. So, oh my God. We’ve talked nice about Reagan. We’ve talked bad about Bill Clinton. We’ve talked bad about Biden because he has a long history of signing up with the drug companies. So when you unsubscribe, feel free to do that because that’s what this show is about. We don’t take sides. We call balls and strikes. If it’s Democrat, we’re gonna call it. If it’s Republican, we’re gonna call it. So feel free, we’re gonna be okay without you, I promise you. Thanks for joining me. Okay.
Farron Cousins: Thank you.
