Why everyone should be allowed to donate blood, including gay men

Home In All Lands: Why divestment is more symbolic than effective

As you may have read last Friday, the Orient investigated irregularities in the petitions circulated by Bowdoin Climate Action (BCA), a student group “dedicated to climate justice by campaigning for fossil fuel divestment.”
In a scathing editorial, the Orient editorial board questioned the circumstances under which BCA was able to meet with the Board of Trustees earlier this year. Although in a subsequent statement BCA denied ever claiming a “mandate” from the students, the group nevertheless used its petitions as leverage to meet with the Trustees.
I am not saying I oppose the idea of BCA meeting with the Trustees. We certainly have the right to petition the highest decision-making body at the College when it comes to important issues. What I challenge is not just BCA’s methods but also the very cause for which it stand: divestment.
To be clear, like BCA, I believe that the effects of climate change have been worsened by human activity. Like BCA, I also believe that reducing atmospheric pollution and seeking ways to remove existing pollutants is the best approach to facing this challenge. We differ, however, when it comes to how to meet these goals.
Divestment proponents argue that divesting from fossil fuel companies will put pressure on the industry to act more forcefully against climate change. Although the basic logic behind divestment is valid and has been tested in other cases before (big tobacco, apartheid in South Africa), the financial clout of energy companies reduces the impact that divestment would have.
According to a report from the University of Oxford, “of the $12 trillion assets under management among university endowments and public pension funds—the likely universe of divestment candidates—the plausible upper limit of possible equity divestment for oil and gas companies is in the range of $240-$600 billion.”
For the average person, this amount of money is staggering. But it isn’t for the major fossil fuel companies of the world. Companies like ExxonMobil, BHP Billiton (the world’s largest mining company) and BP have $400 billion, $191 billion and $133 billion, respectively, in market capitalization (total value of shares).
If Bowdoin divested its fossil fuel holdings tomorrow, the impact on the College would be far greater than the impact on the energy companies concerned.
“[Bowdoin] would need to redeem from almost 40 percent of [its] portfolio investments [because] the endowment [is invested] in commingled funds, not individual securities,” Paula Volent, senior vice president for investments, wrote to me in an email this week. Essentially, commingled funds are collections of assets derived from various sources, which allows investors to diversify beyond individual securities.
Ultimately, this distinction is important. Although BCA argues that “Bowdoin should [divest] the Bowdoin way,” the group cites Stanford University as one example of successful divestment. However, Stanford was invested directly in coal companies, whereas the College’s investments are indirect.
Another difficulty for divestment is that finding commingled funds free of fossil fuel revenues is tricky, in part because oil, coal and gas companies provide good dividends and good return on investment, making them attractive prospects for many investors. This complexity explains why divesting could cost the College “upwards of $400 million” over the next ten years, according to an estimate made by Volent.
In a study of Pomona College, investment advisory firm Cambridge Associates found that Pomona would have to reduce endowment spending by at least $6 million annually and would lose endowment value to a degree similar to Volent’s estimate. These numbers aren’t just conjecture or fear-mongering; they are based on sound financial assessments. Instead of supporting all-out divestment, the College should consider other ways to tackle climate change.
For example, Associate Professor of Economics Guillermo Herrera proposed last week that the College should consider a self-imposed carbon tax, which would encourage us to reduce our emissions. The money collected from such a tax could be used to fund research into green technology like tidal electricity and carbon capture, or local, environmentally friendly projects. These are concrete steps that the College and the community can take to tackle climate change. Divestment, by contrast, is a largely symbolic gesture. We will not find the change we need by hurting the health of this College. No matter how small, tangible efforts to reduce emissions are the way forward in this long fight against climate change.

Home In All Lands: Americans abroad should not be forced to pay United States taxes

At the State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Obama proposed a change to the tax code that, in his words, “truly helps working Americans trying to get a leg up in the new economy.” Whether or not you agree with the president’s plan, it is clear that America’s tax policy is far too complicated and unfair to millions. Perhaps the most staggering aspect of American taxes is the concept of taxation by citizenship rather than residency. In other words, US citizens and green-card holders must pay the IRS no matter where they live. The US essentially stands nearly alone in practicing this bizarre approach to taxation; Eritrea is the only other country with a similar policy, according to the Wall Street Journal.
There is no compelling argument that justifies penalizing Americans who have made the decision to work and live overseas. A large number of US citizens abroad are ambassadors for American enterprises, researchers at the forefront of their fields or retirees enjoying their post-work years. They are not all, as the Democratic Party would have you believe, fat-cat billionaires seeking to use offshore havens to hide their money. There seems to be an illusion amongst the political class, both left and right, that the sole purpose of moving abroad is tax avoidance. Now, I do not dispute that Americans who reside permanently in the United States should pay taxes based on their wealth, no matter where it may be held in the world. But to suggest, as this policy essentially does, that a tycoon is somehow analogous to a middle-level manager at a major international firm is laughable.
Americans who live overseas are unnecessarily burdened by a tax bill twice over: once from their country of residence and once again from the IRS. In some cases, treaties between the United States and other countries help to mitigate the yoke of double-taxation. But this does not change the fact that these hard-working Americans are subject to a financial cost greater than that of their neighbors and of their compatriots stateside. Unfortunately, a recent law has only made their lives more difficult. In 2010, the Democratic-controlled Congress passed FATCA, the “Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act.” Ostensibly, the law sought to prevent US taxpayers from concealing their wealth in offshore accounts and shell corporations. This is, in and of itself, an entirely reasonable proposition. If you live in a country, you should pay the taxes that are required of you. But the law has had an unintended consequence: Global News has reported that this act has made it more difficult for millions of Americans to open bank accounts, begin mortgages, or take out loans overseas. Indeed, FATCA includes extremely harsh penalties for banks that, in the IRS’ determination, have allowed Americans to avoid paying taxes, an issue The Economist has reported on. Again, I wish to emphasize that Americans residing in the United States have to pay their fair share, and the financial institutions that enable them to dodge their due should be rightly punished. By making it tougher for overseas Americans to support themselves, Congress has essentially said that Americans should just stay home. What kind of message is that for the small startup that wants to expand? Or for the young woman recently promoted to her company’s head office in Singapore?
In response to these growing challenges, many Americans have decided to follow a drastic path: renouncing their citizenship. As the vice has tightened, more and more Americans are casting aside an important part of their identity. At U.S. diplomatic posts in several countries, the waiting lists for renunciation are many months long, according to Forbes. Rather than recognize that an idiotic tax policy is at the heart of Americans coming to this painful decision, the government recently increased the fee for renouncing citizenship by 422 percent from $450 to $2,350; which strikes me as a cynical attempt to squeeze out every last dime before you stop feeding the IRS. In recent years the number of renunciations has exploded, from only hundreds annually in the 1990s to a record 3,000 in 2013, according to the Washington Post. It is unreasonable and cruel for the government to place so many Americans in such a difficult position.
Some may argue that paying taxes is a sign of continued patriotism to the United States. But if we are going to be using tax payments as a metric for loyalty, then quite a few individuals and corporations should probably be charged with treason! And besides, if you are not using the fruits of taxation on a regular basis, why should you have to pay for them? Except for Eritrea, every other country on Earth knows that this is too much to ask in our modern, interconnected world. It is time that the United States realized that as well.

Home In All Lands

Why everyone should be allowed to donate blood, including gay men

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Jean-Paul Honegger

Columnist

November 21, 2014

Thirty-five million people around the world live with HIV, including over one million Americans. One-tenth of global patients are children, the majority of whom contracted HIV in the womb. Although anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) have significantly reduced annual mortality rates, HIV/AIDS is still responsible for a staggering number of annual deaths.

In 2013, an estimated 1.5 million people died from AIDS-related causes; that’s greater than the population of Maine. Thirty years after French and American researchers identified HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS, we are still far from finding a cure. With World AIDS Day just ten days away, we have an opportunity not only to take stock of HIV’s massive toll, but also to pledge ourselves to fight the disease and the discrimination that has accompanied it since its discovery.

One of the biggest problems facing AIDS awareness campaigners is getting the message out about the devastating impact of the disease. According to my calculations based on information from the Center for Disease Control, on average more people die from HIV/AIDS in a week than have died in all of human history from Ebola, SARS, avian flu and swine flu combined. However, the attention-deficient media industry only focuses on “exciting” illnesses. These diseases deserve coverage, and we are right to be concerned about the latest pandemics. Media coverage of pandemics, unfortunately, is not driven by public interest. It seeks out the flavor of the day to the detriment of illnesses such as HIV, hepatitis and diabetes.

Take Ebola, for example. The likelihood of contracting Ebola in the United States is 1 in 13 million. By contrast, the CDC estimates that the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS, depending on the type of contact, varies from six in 1000 (from sharing needles) to one in 100 (for unprotected anal sex) to one in 1000 (unprotected vaginal sex). I suspect that part of the media aversion to discussing HIV has to do with its primary mode of transmission, sexual contact.

When doctors first noticed that gay men in San Francisco and New York had compromised immune systems, they treated it as a “gay-only” disease. In the press, the term GRID (gay-related immunodeficiency) gained traction. As a response to the prevalence of HIV among men who have sex with men (MSM), the FDA prohibited blood donations from homosexual males beginning in 1977. Eventually it became apparent that anyone, regardless of gender or sexuality, could get AIDS.

In spite of this, the FDA has not reversed its ban. On November 13, a panel advised the US Department of Health and Human Services (the parent agency of the FDA) to partially reverse the ban for homosexual males, provided they were celibate for at least a year.

Although this was hailed in some circles as a step forward, it is anything but. As Human Rights Campaign Director David Stacy remarked, the policy change “continues to stigmatize gay and bisexual men, preventing them from donating life-saving blood based solely on their sexual orientation.”

I can understand the FDA’s caution: after all, MSM are statistically more likely to contract HIV. “The problem is that ‘high-risk’ should not be defined as ‘gay,’” commented Jamie Weisbach ’16. Indeed, high-risk behaviors do not permanently exclude heterosexuals from giving blood. Why should the opposite be true for MSM?

Given that we can now identify HIV much more quickly, it is not beyond the capacity of medical technology to “quarantine” blood while testing for disease. The standard HIV tests used to determine the presence or absence of the virus take up to of 3 weeks, well within the 6-week period that blood can be refrigerated. In addition to screenings for diseases like malaria, TB and typhoid, the American Red Cross also screens for HIV. Thus the fear that MSM may donate blood that is infected is already accounted for in standard donation procedures.

To be blunt, allowing MSM to donate blood won’t solve frequent blood shortages faced by hospitals across this country. It will reverse a discriminatory practice that is medically unsound and provide an opportunity to educate people about HIV/AIDS. Without a reliable supply of blood donations, nine people would die every minute in the US alone. By opening blood donations to people of all sexual orientations, we can help save lives now.

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