While your national networks have been breaking the latest developments on Octomom and Joaquin Phoenix, transportation and profitability problems are beginning to create commodity shortages in the pharmaceutical industry;
Last week a Wegmans pharmacy in upstate New York ran out of OxyContin® and several other prescription medicines. Customers were told that Wegmans’ supplier did not have the ingredients to make several medicines and did not know when they would have them. Wegmans isn’t a mom-and-pop corner store with no buying power. It’s a 71-store chain on the east coast, is one of the largest private companies in the US and had sales of $4.8 billion in 2008.
Tasmania and India are the largest producers of thebaine, the active ingredient of OxyContin®, which is one of 20 alkaloid compounds derived from the opium poppy. Alkaloids cannot be stored by law, so each year’s crop size is limited by the expected sales. However, it’s only February so the shortage in the US is not due to exporters’ supplies having run out.
There is a worldwide shortage of acetonitrile, a critical chemical ingredient used in the purification of pharmaceutical compounds. Acetonitrile is a by-product of the automotive industry and is in short supply due to the worldwide slowdown in that industry, which, in turn, has caused chemical production facilities to close.
Another drug in critical short supply is leucovorin, a generic used in the treatment of colon cancer. Its shortage, too, is due to “manufacturing” delays, according to the suppliers. In an interview with Forbes, Michael Katz, chair of a committee of patients that advises the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group, said, “I’ve never heard of anything like it.” The ECOG group of doctors, who have played a key role in testing new cancer medicines, recently started hearing from hospitals that they were almost out of leucovorin. There is a fear that shortages will occur more frequently with generic drugs because the margins are so thin. Even worse, many of the most important cancer drugs have gone off patent, according to Katz. Further, he wonders why there is no system to catch these shortages before they harm patients or halt clinical trials. The shortage is so acute in Florida that many cancer patients are receiving lower-than-prescribed dosages or none at all.
h/t Shaken.
Hey Kate --
Is Iceweasel a cool browser, or what?
Which Linux are you running? Just wondering.
Thanks -- Lickmuffin
PS: No, I'm not a stalker. It's just that your client info is showing up in some of your hyperlinks. Just wanted to mention it!)
Rationing...the Obama years begin:
http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/etc/medialib/docs/Sigma-Aldrich/General_Information/acetonitrile_shortage.Par.0001.File.tmp/acetonitrile_shortage.pdf
Don't forget the media have been busy with the Mike Duffy non-controversy.
It's OK Tanebris , when the One computerizes all things medical, it won't be called rationing , it will be known as the efficient allocation of resources .
Let's see if I understand this. An acute shortage of opiate derived painkiller Oxycotin... while at the same time U.S./NATO strategy is to start spending billions bombing, raiding and burning the opium fields in Afghanistan.
Would it be cheaper and more efficient to simply buy the opium poppy crop from the farmers, fly in and scoop it quickly? I bet they'd be happy with less than the Australian(Tasmanians). Only the drug lords shipping it to Western nations high priced drug habits would be upset.
Columnist/Esprit d'Ecorps editor Scott Taylor advocates this tactic, too.
Oh, and is this a time to invest NATO countries citizen's money in inefficient, futile endeavors?
The only MP who might raise a question like this would be...
Dr. Keith Martin, the M.P. who introduced a private members bill to stop the CHRC from violating freedom of speech.
I'm starting to lose confidence in everything. The shortage will no doubt increase as panicked patients will try to get their drugs elsewhere (Canada for example).
From within the industry...
http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2009/01/22/the_great_acetonitrile_shortage.php
Please please don't make this public. Politicians will then get involved. The problem will be studied, argued about and legislated upon.
Which will stop dead in it's tracks any solution that smart people are working on as we speak.
Derek
As has been said for years. Buy up the Afganistan crop. It will never happen though. These people like shortages. Thus the fanatcism down in the uS. It bites into propits & the tax, base having a grey market. In the end the fools end up creating a black unregulated economy.
JMO
I'll have to cut back on my dosage!!!!
I see an opportunity here. But, perhaps, it has been a set-up.
Why not pay the Afghans to produce opium, that we Western pharmacuticakl companies will buy to use as raw input to their drugs. The locals are happy, they get money from us for traditional crops, and the islamo-fascists are shut out.
In fact, I don't give a damn if I've been set up. This scheme seems so simple it's no wonder government bureaucracies have ignored it.
Let me play the conspiracy theorist,
Obama is creating a shortage of oxycontin to punish Rush Limbaugh.
It's an inside job!!!
Larry - I agree with the Afghan solution for opium.
It’s somewhat mystifying as to why it’s not just being bought up and used in the medical field. Kill three stones with one bird – alleviate the shortage, uplift the Afghan farmer and deprive the Taliban of resources. The reasons for this not being done must be political somehow...
RW ha - beat me to it!
Can't they just produce more thebaine in Afghanistan?
'Obama is creating a shortage of oxycontin to punish Rush Limbaugh.'
The only drug addict the left can hate.
It's all in Atlas Shrugged.
"Further, he wonders why there is no system to catch these shortages "
Why? For the same reason everything else eventually either get screwed up or completely falls apart ... it is the myth of management. That there are competent people overseeing important stuff.
It is a myth. We are on our own and always have been. Up until recently there at least were financial incentives to keep shit flowing through the pipes, but now that we are on the verge of central planning ala Obama ... what's the point?
Ever wonder why socialist countries have very young average age demographics? Because it's really hard to live to be old in those brutal, but oh-so caring places.
Oh, c'mon, there are more important things to talk about.....like poor old Rhianna and her womanbeater boyfriend....now -that's- news!
/sarc off
So maybe they have studying our health care model . . . keep costs down by rationing services and just wait for the patients to die off.
If it works for surgical treatments, why wouldn't it work for medications ?
Just a couple of Republican chickens come home to roost...
The War on Drugs and the Free Market in healthcare.
In the USSR there were never shortages of medicines. Never. The little bottles always showed up, labels on, just like clockwork.
Of course what was actually -in- the bottle varied considerably, depending on how things were going back at the factory. Sometimes they actually had the right medicine in them, and it was even formulated correctly. Sometimes not.
When you take the profit motive out of things, either by force like the Communists or by cutting margins to the bone like generics, bad things tend to happen.
Having lived in a second-world country, just out of third-world status, what I'm seeing in North America has me thinking we're headed in the same direction: corruption, lies, incompetence, cover-ups, astonishingly disintegrating roads and infrastructures everywhere, beat-up cars not repaired, the list goes on and on.
It sure seems like nobody's in charge ... and as happens in third-world countries, the rich get rich and the poor get poorer...
I don't think it has to be like this, but seeing as the population has been lulled and brainwashed into depraved passivity and won't fight back even though it's fight or be damned, it looks like we're destined to be damned ... you know? ... going to Hell in a handbasket with no push-back.
Where's the Resistance?
when working for peanuts means, there aint much freeboard for mistakes.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021303420.html
Couldn't this problem somehow be blamed on global warming, er climate change? To hot, to cold, to dry or to wet for a good poppy crop?
Scratch a shortage, find a socialist action. This is quite possibly an unintended consequence of some sort of intervention in the market of the materials in question.
Let's see if there's another way of looking at this: OxyContin® is a favourite stoner drug amongst young addicts. It's by far the best, almost as good as Grade A heroin. Now what could be causing a shortage of such a popular narcotic? Maybe teenagers & dealers with pockets full of the stuff?
The issue isn't with the poppy crop. Without acetonitrile it simply cannot be processed cheaply/reliably/safely(pharmaceutical standards) into other forms.
Grow all the barley, hops, etc. you want. Without yeast you can't turn it into beer.
Hmm... maybe this will explain Jokin' Phoenix's extra-moonbatty behavior on Letterman the other night...