Western society so irresponsible—at just about any level one cares to look. Let’s consider just one small corner of our reality, how we take care of ourselves. For the most part (all the rubbish about staying fit through proper exercise and diet aside), we do whatever we want, and then act pretty clueless when our decisions cause some sort of a health upset. A simple example is upset stomach/acid reflux relief. Commercials show us products that let us make hogs of ourselves eating greasy, spicy, and chemical laden foods that have caused the viewer severe upset in the past. The solution is not to avoid those foods—but to take a damned pill that will mask the symptoms of doing something our bodies would rather we not.
There are literally thousands of products on the over the counter market to take care of any ache, pain, or complaint we may have. The message is quite clear—have a problem, take a pill. Instant fix, no effort or responsibility required. When we come to prescription drugs, then all bets are off. We expect them to fix any ailment or condition, regardless of how much that issue was our own doing and responsibility. Some of this might be the fault of a soft and stupid society wanting everything sugar coated and without any conviction—but there are mega-corporations out there that have spread the gospel of “pills are good for you” many decades now—regardless of whether they are or not.
It is natural to point the finger at the consumer. After all, we are the ones who ultimately make choices. But the real world matter is that we have little choice or input as to what goes into our food supply, supplements, or pharmaceuticals. These decisions are made by large multi-national corporations whose purpose is profit—and they spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year peddling junk food and questionable drugs to offset the choices that we are invited to make in the “free market”. One would think that a modicum of concern would be had for the end consumer—that bad products would not be even a consideration—but we need look no further than the tobacco or fast food industries to realize that this is not the case.
Many of us remember trouble with Tylenol in 1982, an incident that resulted in seven deaths. That was an act of malicious tampering, something that could not have been anticipated by the manufacturer. Now we are confronted with a new kind of product threat—impure, contaminated, and faulty potency pharmaceuticals. In January of this year, 52 Tylenol based products had to be recalled from the market. It seems that they were contaminated with a “fumigant” used to assure that bulk shipment of goods does not become moldy. The product still reeked of mold—making us ask the question of whether the contamination actually began at the Chinese factory that produced it. Now we have 43 additional products being pulled from the shelves due to issues with potency and impurities. It is easy to understand how one manufacturing line could cause an issue with a single product—but this points to problems with bulk supplies of ingredients used to make all of these consumer remedies. For the most part, all manufactured in China.
So far in the past decade, we have been confronted with contaminated additives, fake pharmaceuticals, and useless antibiotics. In an effort to clean up its drug production image, in 2007 China executed its State Food & Drug Administration head Zheng Xiaoyu. While good public relations, it does not seem to have done much to staunch the flow of shoddy drugs and contaminated foods from streaming into consumer nations like North and South America. So if the source of the rubbish is not really serious about issues, the onus must be taken up by the American manufacturers who package up these things and sell them. There looks to be a little problem with that—something about profit.
As an aside to better understand what is happening in our pharmaceutical markets these days, we need to step back nearly four decades and recall the Ford Pinto. As designed, there were serious flaws in the protection afforded passengers in the event of a rear end collision. The gas tank could explode, and the doors jam shut trapping riders in a fiery inferno. Ford knew of these problems from the beginning, but did a cost benefit analysis of what the liability would be paying out claims for death and injury, versus applying a production change and an $11 repair on millions of vehicles should a recall be made. Ford decided to take the risk. In the end, they paid out $6.5 million in damages—a drop in the bucket compared to the profit that was made producing and selling defective Pinto’s. A new business model was born and validated.
Just in the past year alone, big pharma has paid out fines and claims into the multiple billions—on products it knew were problematic or being promoted for off label uses. The list reads like a Who’s Who of pharma; Johnson & Johnson $81M, AstraZenica $520M, Pfizer $301M on top of a $2.3B fine several years ago, and so many more it becomes sickening. These anticipated costs are built into the general costs of doing business—without any regard whatsoever for the intent of the laws or the ultimate welfare of the consumer. After all, these costs are passed off the person who ends up buying the product. So we can begin to see how cheap Chinese rubbish helps to offset the cost of bad medicines. Who cares if they are safe?
Where is our FDA in all of this? Why busy cozying up to companies, lobbyists, and collecting hefty fines that subsidize their operations. Meanwhile nasty goodies flow from foreign sources, shoddily made and contaminated with who knows what—into our food and medicine supplies. Consumer awareness is not an answer—for all we seem to care about is the cost and taking magic pills to make our inconveniences go away quickly and without effort. So if government regulation of drugs, fines, and bad PR for the drug companies is not the answer, what is? All of this is giving me a headache, so I think that I will take a couple Chinese aspirin, and eat a few Fig Newtons—which curiously are now made in Mexico…
© 2010
