Pharmaceuticals / Drugs Quotes
This is a classic example of a legislator, concerned about the ethics and morality of certain types of scientific experiments, and not understanding the scientific meaning of the terms used, would also make illegal existing and important technologies and cures. In this case, he thinks of cloning as reproducing another exact human being, but we clone human cells every day to produce many of the beneficial medicines we use commonly. And the combination of animals and humans is common in many aspects of modern medicine. For burns the tissue of pigs is used to cover the wound and act as a scaffold on which human skin cells grow. There are millions of people in America and the rest of the world who are leading a normal life with a pig or a cow heart valve. There are ethical problems to be sure but most legislators have little clue as to what they are, and tend to want to outlaw whole areas of science out of their ignorance in in reaction to public pressure from others who do not understand what it is that they want to prohibit.
This principle justified the Government in allowing a local Indonesian company to manufacture anti-AIDS drugs without paying licensing rates demanded by the drug companies that held the patents. The principle is that patent rights and the desire to profit should not supersede the rights of people to continue to live because they cannot afford the drugs to keep them alive. The local manufacturers provide the drugs to the government at cost of manufacture which is a tiny proportion of the price the patent owner charges.
Shortly after the Cuban revolution, the U. S. placed an embargo on the Fidel Castro regime. Medicine was one of the critical items that hurt Cuba the most. However, the Cubans, facing the problem of inability to import any U. S. patented medicinals, moved to a two pronged approach to health care. First since the could not get the medicines for the ill people, the places an enormous emphasis on preventive medicine which U. S. medical experts have always advocated, but America has been slow to implement. The second effort was to create their own drug research and manufacturing industry. They were amazingly successful at both even as the rest of the communist regime was crumbling. At the time of this quotation, Cubans had a HIGHER average lifespan than Americans, and the Cuban drug industry had become the 3rd largest in Cuba earning hard currency for the country. The had over 200 international patents on medicines and were selling to 57 countries.
Despite huge lobbying and political pressure, Dr. Kelsey would not sign off on the drug initially because she found information on her own about Thalidomide that the company, Merrell, must have known about and didn't reveal to her and her staff or in their applications. She was aware that the drug had been approved by England, Canada, and many nations of Europe, but she saw little data in the Merrell submissions and responses and that made her suspicious, and caused her to demand more. During the time the company was to submit more data, the reports of the deformed newborns were starting to come in from the countries that had approved the drug. When she gathered that information, she rejected the application and prevented thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of children to be born with missing limbs because their mothers had been treated with Thalidomide. In 1962 she was awarded the highest civilian medal by President John F. Kennedy.
There was U. S. criticism that the same technology could be used to make biological weapons. In addition there are continuing intellectual property disputes with international pharmaceutical companies who believe their patent rights preclude Cuba from making some of the vaccines.
Dr. Van Sim tested the drug, quinuclidinyl benzilate known as BZ, on himself rather than expose soldiers to it. Van Sim received the Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service because he tried many new drugs on himself, before exposing them to American soldiers. The CIA, in contrast, was not so responsible and exposed innocents, both military and civilian, to dangerous drugs without any knowledge on their parts, much less permission. See XXX.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Observation of the number of pharmaceutical companies that raised the price over by huge percentages on one or more of their high selling, life preserving drugs. There were some who claimed that there was a plan by the pharmaceutical industry to take advantage of the fact that certain drugs were necessary to preserve life. The quotation however was an excellent description of how the general public makes decisions about many aspects of economics, crime, corruption, and many other aspects of our society. The principle not only seems to generally hold for negative things but also positives such as whether a government program is working or whether a company innovates great products.
The major killer diseases such as malaria and sleeping sickness are not contracted by Americans, and America is the only large country in the world where the Governments allow the drug companies to charge such high prices and make such huge profits. So any drug that Americans might pay for is a better potential profit generator than one that would be critical to the lives of millions where the governments to preserve lives would force the prices down or allow other companies to also make the drug. See {628648} for other factors affecting drug company priorities.
American’s were purchasing more and more of the medicines from Canada which had been doing a much better job of price controls on medicine that the United States had done. Some pharmaceutical companies were blackmailing the minister and Canada by threatening to limit the sales so that if Canadians exported drugs they might not have that drug for Canadian citizens.
The cost of health care had become so great that many people—especially those on fixed incomes were not able to afford the costs. The majority of all bankruptcies in America are caused by a family medical problem.
This quotation is notable as it shows that problems that are not dealt with in one generation can continue for generation after generation. Today we have the exact same problem with overly expensive drugs. In a capitalistic system, every business with good products and sales should make profits. But products that people need to say alive, most people think, should not make larger profit percentages than almost any other business. But this problem is over half a century old in America.
The Bayh-Dole Act (Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act) for the first time allowed universities which held patents obtained as a result of Government Funded Research to enter into agreements with corporations to develop new drugs from those patents. The theory was that, the number of new drugs brought to the market would substantially increase beyond only the hundred or so that appeared each year. Unfortunately, the legislation did not have the desired effect. By the first decade of the 21st century, the number of annual NEW drugs being brought to market was under 30 and in 2010 was only 10. The cost of going through required trials for FDA drug approval has reached hundreds of millions of dollars, and most organizations cannot afford to even make the attempt. Even if a drug is very promising, the drug companies will not invest the money unless there are enough people suffering from the malady the drug treats and the medicine has to be taken for a long time as with chronic conditions. The system works poorly for the society and the health system. Reforms are needed.
1st Baron Macaulay. This issue is still debated in America. Until the latter part of the 20th century, businesses could sell supposed medicines without any proof of efficacy or safety. The Government or others had to prove that there was something wrong with the product. Then, that shifted, and the burden of proof fell on the developer and seller of medicines as Macaulay favored, but sellers of vitamins and dietary supplements were exempted and operated under the previous American (anti Macaulay) position. Ironically, political opponents of requiring the drug company to prove safety and efficacy claimed that this was a radical new, untested idea that would inhibit development of medicinals. They did not realize that 150 years earlier, this was a standard, accepted point of view in England. Even into the 21st century, America operated with the inconsistent difference between vitamins and supplements, many of which have no beneficial effect whatsoever, and medicines.
In 1988 a French pharmaceutical firm developed a drug that would produce an abortion with less risk to the woman than previous methods. Anti abortion groups threatened the company with boycotts, and the firm withdrew the drug from the market. The French government then ordered the company to release the drug, but vehement political opposition in the U.S. made availability in America problematical.
