BY
NORMAN J. CLEMENT RPH., DDS., WALTER R. CLEMENT MS., MBA., MALACHI F. MACKANDAL PHARMD, JOSEPH SOLVO ESQ., NORMAN L.CLEMENT PHARM-TECH, JELANI ZIMBABWE CLEMENT, BS., MBA., WILLIE GUINYARD BS., BRAHM FISHER ESQ., MICHELE ALEXANDER MD., BERES E. MUSCHETT, STRATEGIC ADVISOR
CHINESE DISSIDENT: ARTIST AL WEIWEI
“I cannot live in fear, we must live by the law,”
THE MANIFESTO OF THE NORTH STAR PROJECT
“When you see THROUGHOUT LIFE most of your friends, colleagues, and classmates who are of degree being sanctioned, terminated, harassed, arrested, jailed, and imprisoned for the most minuscule violation of a regulation, or for just doing what they’ve been trained to do.
Then at some point, you are compelled to ask yourself when
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
At some point in your life, you have to say and proclaim enough is enough and what are you going to do about it.
Then we must stand and fight as soldiers together or die like mice.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
to me, that idea that some United States Attorney is going to tell me pharmaceutical compounding is manufacturing makes it’s worth the fight.”
WE ARE NOT POWERLESS AND THROUGH OUR WRITINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS WE WILL EXPOSE THE ABUSES AND TYRANNY OF UNITED STATES DRUG ENFORCEMENT AGENCY TO HOUSE AND SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE AND BRING THEM TO JUSTICE AND CLOSE THIS AGENCY OF GOVERNMENT.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
The common man or woman has very little understanding of how so-called drug policies directly affect their daily living, until they become are diagnosed with some chronic illness or have a loved one who may be facing death. Then, the importance of chronic illness and disease states is ever so critical. These warnings remain ever so obliterated, and one cannot ignore the function of how algorithms widely used in US hospitals to allocate health care to patients has been systematically discriminating against black people. (1)
THE ECONOMICS OF MEDICAL RED LINING
One cannot ignore race or the factors of race in the decision-making process or ignore the economic injuries when Black doctors (physicians and dentists) are reimbursed by third-party insurance payors differently based solely on zip code. This is precisely why an increasing number of medical/dental/pharmacy providers are electing to do business solely in cash, credit cards, or debits to ensure their healthcare practice economic stability. SEE THE VIDEO SANCTION BY ZIP CODEMEDICAL RED LINING
BEING BLACK BY ZIP CODE
Physicians, dentists, pharmacists who are black owners and display their shingle in certain zip codes are further humiliated and challenged by third-party payors to justify their diagnoses and treatment plans. These practitioners are likely to be reimbursed slower and at lower payment rates based solely on zip code which further undermines the practice of medicine/dentistry/pharmacy service in their communities. They are more likely to be audited, sanctioned by third-party payors, and reviewed by State and Federal licensing authorities.
WHEN THOSE WHO ARE BLACK AND CARE FOR THOSE WHO ARE BLACK ARE TARGETED, WHO DO YOU EXPECT TO LOSE ??
Translating into a broader sense for the everyday community, for every $10 a white person makes, black folk gets $1 and this includes your black professionals of any medical/dental/ pharmacy filed who dare to complain too loudly risk being sanctioned. This type of institutional disparity ensures that generational wealth will never be passed along within any black community.
However, Government and State Regulation Boards can easily prevail against a Black-owned Pharmacy despite any facts or laws we present because the built-in institution of racial injustice, particularly within the Judicial System or in the field of medical science, sports, politics or the military, will default to all knowledgeable, educated Black persons as arrogant and uppity. We see this in our history, particularly in the United States, when one is right and dares to challenges the morae within the system.
ARROGANCE DEFINED BY THOSE HAVING WHITELMENT AND PRIVILEGE
Arrogance is rate-limiting, defined all by a preconceived standard of what we are expected to know and further based on a preconceived level of knowledge, expectation, and skill of what one should have obtained. This is likely an eighth-grade education. Anything beyond that becomes suspicious, surprise, unearned, and requires further examination of one’s credentials, instead of being well versed, you are detested. Arrogance stops one in their tracks to be undervalued, underestimated, and marginalized. (7) This is a reality that all Black professionals face, especially those who are licensed in any profession, which we only quietly discuss this among ourselves.
YET, THE PEOPLE AREN’T AS STUPID AS THE DEA THINKS WE ARE!
The authors of this article have learned one thing:
” in America, you either stand for something or nothing at all.”
If standing against DEA’s abuses by redefining medical science procedures, their lies, and deceptions perpetrated by this Federal Institution (DEA), then we are one more set of uppity arrogant Black N-Word SOB’s the DEA, DOJ or anyone else just don’t have to like.
Because we stand and rise against to oppose this system of injustice, which treats licensed Black pharmacists as common drug dealers, we will put an end to the United States Drug Enforcement as an agency of Government, through Congressional Oversight and wisdom and put an end automatically defining degree people of color as arrogant. We have learned from our ancestors, “just to sit still would be a sin:”
“There is no human activity you can ever perform that will ever lift the shroud of this racial constructs in this system the restraint is the color of your skin”
THE VIDEO GARDENS OF MEDICAL APARTHEID
A POWERFUL VIDEO(SEE VIDEO TARGETING OF LOW HANGING FRUIT, CALL AL SHARPTON )
DEA PERMISSION TO TARGET
The idea of drug enforcement on license Pharmacy is to create a trap by creating Federal laws that are vague in their understanding of “doing it right.” (see the video “DEA WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU, PHARMACIST”
Jack Folson, Clinical Pharmacist expert from Michigan states;
” The rules are so subjective now, that any healthcare practitioner can find themselves on the wrong side of the DEA for doing what they are supposed to do — treat patients. Currently, algorithms, averages, “norms” and traditions are more important than the individual patient, prescriber, or dispenser.” (3)(4)
“But, what bothers me the most is the selective prosecution, lack of transparency of investigation and the fact that if a healthcare provider asks for guidance they are met with no clear understanding of exact procedures that fall into grey areas until they attack a provider and prevail in their court. If an administrative law judge makes a suggested ruling (the ultimate ruling comes from the director of the DEA) in favor of the registrant, I have heard that they are fired. So, instead of the federal standard of proof that the prosecution must meet the standard of preponderance of evidence, the quasi-judicial standard in the DEA court system is prove your innocence beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
The DEA, as one non-black owner pharmacist stated that a DEA Diversion Investigator acknowledged, ” it would cost us millions to shut down a doctor so it is easier for us (DEA) to shut down a pharmacy.”
Therefore, we can only conclude Black own pharmacies like At Cost Pharmacy, Ft. Meyers, Fl., Gulf Med Pharmacy, Cape Coral, Fl. et al. become easier enforcement targets which permit them to justify their agency’s activities.
LIFE OR DEATH
Denying to fill a prescription to a patient can result in death (SEE VIDEO Micheal Jackson CEO of Florida Pharmacy Association.)
BACK AND FORTH
THE DEHUMANIZATION OF HEALTHCARE
THE ALGORITHM
According to Heidi Ledford in the October 24, 2019 issue of Nature Magazine, titled;
“Millions of Black People Affected by Racial Bias in Health-care Algorithms”
“An algorithm widely used in US hospitals to allocate health care to patients has been systematically discriminating against black people, a sweeping analysis has found. (1)
The study, published in Science on 24 October, concluded that the algorithm was less likely to refer black people than white people who were equally sick to programmes that aim to improve care for patients with complex medical needs. Hospitals and insurers use the algorithm and others like it to help manage care for about 200 million people in the United States each year.
This type of study is rare because researchers often cannot gain access to proprietary algorithms and the reams of sensitive health data needed to fully test them, says Milena Gianfrancesco, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied sources of bias in electronic medical records. But smaller studies and anecdotal reports have documented unfair and biased decision-making by algorithms used in everything from criminal justice to education and health care.” (2)(3)
“The researchers found that the algorithm assigned risk scores to patients on the basis of total health-care costs accrued in one year. They say that this assumption might have seemed reasonable because higher health-care costs are generally associated with greater health needs. The average black person in the data set that the scientists used had similar overall health-care costs to the average white person.
But a closer look at the data revealed that the average black person was also substantially sicker than the average white person, with a greater prevalence of conditions such as diabetes, anaemia, kidney failure and high blood pressure. Taken together, the data showed that the care provided to black people cost an average of US$1,800 less per year than the care given to a white person with the same number of chronic health problems.
The scientists speculate that this reduced access to care is due to the effects of systemic racism, ranging from distrust of the health-care system to direct racial discrimination by health-care providers.” (1)
THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS MUST BEGIN INVESTIGATIONS TO PUT AN END TO MEDICAL APARTHEID IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND STOP THE TARGETING OF BLACK PHARMACIST AND DEFUND THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF DRUG ENFORCEMENT (DEA) IMMEDIATELY
FOR NOW YOU’RE WITHIN THE
NORMS
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03228-6
- https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05469-3
- The Algorithmic Justice League’s mission is to raise awareness about the impacts of AI, equip advocates with empirical research, build the voice and choice of the most impacted communities, and galvanize researchers, policymakers, and industry practitioners to mitigate AI harms and biases. We’re building a movement to shift the AI ecosystem towards equitable and accountable AI.
- Actionable Auditing: Investigating the Impact of Publicly Naming Biased Performance Results of Commercial AI Products, Inioluwa Deborah Raji University of Toronto 27 King’s College Cir Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3H7 deborah.raji@mail.utoronto.com, Joy Buolamwini Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Ave Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02139 joyab@mit.edu
