By John & Kat
The magnitude of this trove speaks for itself. Nothing added will obscure the conclusion.
?Medication Shortages In America by Linda S. Carbonell
According to the conservatives, America has the �greatest health care system in the world.� The fact that we�re only ranked 37th by all measures of health care delivery never breaks they unflinching faith in our medical system.
Maybe this will��
In 2005, we had critical shortages of 70 widely used drugs. By the end of last year, that number had grown to 211. Though some shortages have been resolved, another 89 drugs were added to the shortage list in the first three months of 2011. Dr. Eric Lavonas of the American College of Emergency Physicians said that �It�s just a matter of time now before we call for a drug that we need to save a patient�s life and we find out there isn�t any.� The drugs that are in short supply range from treatments for cancer to cystic fibrosis to cardiac arrest.
Most of the shortages are in injectable medications used in hospitals. The shortages can last from weeks to many months, placing patients in jeopardy. A shortage of cytarabine caused delays in treatments for luekemia. Shortages can be caused by recalls for contaminated vials, trouble importing ingredients, increases in demand or factories shut down for quality upgrades. Factories can also be shut down because they have been manufacturing improperly prepared drugs and the FDA has had to step in, which was the cause of a 2009 shortage of generic metaprolol, a medication that regulates heart rhythm.
?Shortage of Leukemia Drug Forcing Hospitals to Turn Some Patients Away by Kim Carollo
ABC News department with two-minute video following a 30-second ad.
?Special Report: Drug Shortages and Patient Risk by Kenneth Artz, The Heartland Institute's Health Care News
Article includes the following factoid.
Manufacturers use what's known as a just-in-time inventory, stocking fewer raw materials to save money and improve efficiency, but this approach creates some risk of instability in the pharmaceutical market. Also, some manufacturers have discontinued products rather than invest money to meet regulatory requirements of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
I guess If it ain't in the inventory then it cannot be in short supply. And it sure won't fail FDA requirements.
?Senators rail at big pharma's secretive lobbying By Nancy Cordes, CBS News
Two influential U.S. senators have urged the FDA to require physicians groups and doctors to disclose their financial ties with drug-makers.
CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes reports that the senators detail how one pharmaceutical giant urged doctors to contact the FDA and raise concerns about a cheaper generic version of one of their drugs.
One of the drugs at the center of the controversy is Lovenox, a blood-thinner injections used to combat deep vein thrombosis. It is a condition that sends dangerous blood clots from the leg to the lungs. Up to 600,000 Americans are afflicted every year, and as many as 100,000 die.
Lovenox earned its maker - the French company Sanofi - more than $2 billion per year. So when the FDA began considering a cheaper, generic version of the costly drug in 2007, Sanofi sprang into action to try and slow the process.
Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) called Sanofi's actions "an outrage," adding that "frankly we've got to find ways to stop it."
Sen. Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee, which issued a report this week accusing Sanofi of "paying off doctors to lobby the FDA against generics."
?Drug shortages threaten patient care Mike Wilkinson/ The Detroit News
Cancer patients are facing a critical nationwide shortage of a chemotherapy drug called Cytarabine.
Oncologists say they can successfully treat about 40 percent of patients with acute myeloid leukemia with Cytarabine when they combine it with other drugs.
Without it, they say the cure rate is zero.
"The shortages of Cytarabine have in my opinion affected life and death situations in the United States over the past six months," said Dr. Hagop Kantarjian of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
The Food and Drug Administration said the shortage has been so severe that there were several weeks earlier this year when there literally wasn't any Cytarabine in production.
"There were committees that had to make decisions to give the drug to one patient over another," Kantarjian said.
The three U.S. companies that make the drug have cited manufacturing issues and have had to recall some of the medicine because of crystallization in the product.
Cytarabine is a generic drug and some experts point out it's uncommon for more profitable brand name drugs to be in short supply.
According to the FDA, those companies are slowly resuming production.
The shortage extends to many other drugs as well, including electrolytes used in IVs.
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Last night I heard "climate change" and "global warming" both said out loud on the ABC Evening News. I cannot say for certain that this was a first for the networks, but I can say with confidence these are two phrases that have been carefully avoided. As we watched reports of record snows, storms, floods and now fires I thought those who report the "news" would strangle in their contorted efforts to avoid speaking those apparently forbidden words. It remains to be seen if ABC, NBC, CNN or CBS have the courage to follow up on that issue.The Climate Zombies have intimidated far too many ignorant people and the time is way past when responsible people in leadership positions should be speaking out.
In case no one noticed, the current record heat has started killing people. That last reverence to electrolytes is not a trivial concern.
So the answer's simple. If private industry refuse to make life-saving drugs, have the govt. do it and provide it at cost + 5%. That'll help the deficit too. Too bad money is more important than lives.
ReplyDeleteSeems obvious, doesn't it? I'm sure there are legions of lobbyists and bought and paid for elected representatives who would never allow such a rational move.
ReplyDeleteI only learned a couple years ago that the tax-supported NIH which does the heavy lifting for scientific and medical R&D, doesn't treat their discoveries as "public domain" resources. Instead the results are "auctioned" at some "wholesale" rate to be exploited for profit by private corporations. Drug companies and the like do "research" but it is more interested in data mining and number-tumbling than actual hand-on research.
Pisses me off even to write about it.
One would think that "generic" might include at least a few tax-paid-for new discoveries but one would be wrong. Nothing becomes generic until the patent runs out and the market has been squeezed dry.
(On the bright side, the advantages of brand names over generics are usually too small to make any serious difference. And some of the expensive new ones even turn out to be harmful.)