Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk continues to provide financial backing for the US right-wing public policy organisation ALEC (The American Legislative Exchange Council), an advocate of issues such as the right to kill in self-defence, the abolishment of abortion on demand, and anti-environment campaigns.
Novo contributed $15,000 to ALEC last year because, according to the company’s US spokesman Ken Inchausti, ‘it holds conferences that give us the possibility of meeting legislators from throughout the USA’.
He said Novo, the world leader in insulin production and diabetes care, with sales approaching $5bnin North American alone, is currently lobbying southern US states, where the number of diabetics is rising at a fast rate, to pass laws forcing the public sector to develop strategies for preventing and treating diabetes.
Although a number of big-name US companies, led by Coca-Cola and McDonald’s, have pulled their support over the past few weeks as they don’t want to be associated with the party’s extreme-right image, Mr Inchausti said Novo has no intention of following them.
“If we only worked with people who agreed with us on everything there would be very few who we could cooperate with and we would be incapable of promoting our diabetes agenda,” he said, stressing at the same time that Novo also contributes to organisations on the opposite wing such as the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People), the National Foundation for Women Legislators, and the Centre for American Progress, which has close links to the Obama Administration