Showing posts with label pharmaceuticals. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pharmaceuticals. Show all posts
Sunday, June 17, 2007
This Washington Post story ties in the quality control problems in China to the huge new market for generic drugs from India and China. Inspections from the FDA are nearly non existent, and the market is growing exponentially fast.
Here is where I am stumped. We can not import cheap drugs from Canada. The Bush administration says they can't be assured as being safe. The pharmaceutical industries profits have nothing to do with it. Yet at the same time, we are just hoping the Chinese manufacturers don't put fertilizer, or engine coolant in a growing number of generic medications. Maybe we should give them to our pets first to see if they are ok. No. Not really.
Unsafe isn't the only problem. No actual drug may be another. China is going through an unfettered capitalism phase. By this I mean, they have a lot of business people who are unencumbered by regulation so they may press some corn starch together and call it a blood pressure medication.
Let's let the market settle this one. Congress might revisit the Canadian drug issue on these grounds.
Oh, and most vitamins these days are being produced in China. Maybe there is some ground dehydrated tiger penis in the mix now for extra vitality. Mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm, mmm.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Seattle pediatrician Rupin Thakkar's first inkling that the pharmaceutical industry was peering over his shoulder and into his prescription pad came in a letter from a drug representative about the generic drops Thakkar prescribes to treat infectious pinkeye.
In the letter, the salesperson wrote that Thakkar was causing his patients to miss more days of school than they would if he put them on Vigamox, a more expensive brand-name medicine made by Alcon Laboratories.
"My initial thought was 'How does she know what I'm prescribing?' " Thakkar said. "It feels intrusive. . . . I just feel strongly that medical encounters need to be private."
He is not alone. Many doctors object to drugmakers' common practice of contracting with data-mining companies to track exactly which medicines physicians prescribe and in what quantities -- information marketers and salespeople use to fine-tune their efforts. The industry defends the practice as a way of better educating physicians about new drugs.
The industry happens to be full of crap. Just saying.
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