What could possibly go wrong? “The crucial ingredients for nearly all antibiotics, steroids and many other lifesaving drugs are now made exclusively in China.”
What could possibly go wrong? “The crucial ingredients for nearly all antibiotics, steroids and many other lifesaving drugs are now made exclusively in China.”
…and those who are on the most medication are at the greatest risk.
Too late to wish you had taken better care of your health, eh?
oh right, they have a pill to fix anything you get.
China is the world’s oldest civilization, they play the long con.
China conquered North America in Mal Wart, and got paid to do it.
Here is a fairly extensive list of drugs made in China. Interesting.
http://www.dogster.com/doggie-style/want-to-know-which-drugs-are-made-in-china-check-out-this-list
One of the drugs named is Ciprofloxacin. I took it a few years ago due to stomach pains and within a day I started having serious mental stability issues. Not good when driving a big truck, it took me a few hours to figure out what was happening. I literally wanted to run everyone off the road, serious road rage.
Perhaps it is related to this. My doctor said it wasn’t a known side effect.
A half-hour later and you’re hungry again (for more drugs).
good list, a lot of people would have a tough time avoiding those
Good one!:)
There are some very familiar names on the list…Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Methyldopa, Penicillin, etc. I’m sure there will be more.
Any thing made in China is suspect. Boycott China. Stop buying Chinese products. Bring it all back home. I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZKtB6WynFY
Holy crap, I did not know that.
Kate, I have been posting comments saying this for a few years now. Let’s just say I have good insight into the supply chain for pharma precursors.
Now that I have your attention, consider also where our processed food industry sources most of its critical non-food ingredients – such as stabilizers, emulsifiers, sequestering agents, etc.. Same story: China.
Most of the plants producing precursors in North America have been mothballed. It’s one thing to have the facility still in place, available, but also another to have nobody left that knows how to operate the plant.
Premature death is a small price to pay for lower prices.
The total dependence of the US on Chicom organic chemical precursors is so idiotic that one wonders if it was a deliberate attempt to cripple the country. It’s a sad situation when illicit chemists are producing a higher quality product than one can obtain in pharmacies. The only exports which should be allowed from China and India are bulk drugs where it is possible to test the purity of the product taking multiple samples from the drum of a bulk drug. If these pass the test, only then would the drug be made into tablets or IV solutions.
A major problem with many 3rd world manufacturers is that their primary expertise lies in creating high quality copies of labels and tablets which are basically very expensive placebos. It’s far harder to detect fake drugs when they are shipped in tablet form compared to bulk drug form.
Not only is there a problem with fake drugs, but there have been scores of drug shortages recently and the number only continues to increase with time. A large part of this is due to bureaucracy which makes it next to impossible to produce acceptable drugs given the myriad of regulations in place. There is only a single manufacturer of IV drugs in Canada, Sandoz, and there are almost daily notices in the hospital about which drugs are in critical supply. Pharmacists have forgotten how to perform the simple operation of dissolving a drug in saline, buffering it to pH 7.4 and sterilizing it by running it through a millipore filter.
Just another “benefit” of the increasingly fragile “global economy” which serves only to enrich banksters and put people out of work in N. America.
The total dependence of the US on Chicom organic chemical precursors is so idiotic that one wonders if it was a deliberate attempt to cripple the country.
…but of course, that’s been China’s game all along to control the USofA economically. China knew Americans would pick cheap over quality. They found America’s weakness and used it to advantage. China conquered America in Mal Wart, and got paid to do it. China can now screw with America’s food and drugs, and there’s little anyone can do about it, except avoid buying processed stuff, and avoid the drugs they’ll eventually be taking if they keep eating processed ‘food’. The choice is theirs, China isn’t forcing them. In the long con, China is after America’s land and daughters. It’s never been a fair contest. It’s like a chess master playing with someone who only understands checkers.
Wealthy Chinese are buying up America at 10 cents on the dollar, and they’ve got lots of dollars they have to convert in to real estate before it’s worthless paper.
Maybe shouldn’t have sold out to China in the aisles of MalWart, eh?
North America brought this on themselves by their insatiable lust for the cheapest products available, while refusing to pay a bit more for domestic products that kept their neighbors employed.
Well they got that cheap lifestyle they asked for.
How d’ya like the shoddy products and contaminated food and drugs?
That’s a bitch yer neighbors are out of work and their kids vandalize the neighborhood. Unintended consequences of a cheap lifestyle.
Better hope yer kids can learn Mandarin or Cantonese.
“while refusing to pay a bit more for domestic products that kept their neighbors employed”
No. While refusing to be gouged by unions run by communists which used the union dues to fund socialist political campaigns.
Neighbours my ass. Being neighbours with a union member is a one-way relationship.
What a way to start my day. Thanks Kate! lolz
“lifesaving drugs are now made exclusively in China.”
I used to wonder why after drinking Chocolate drink and taking my medications I had such a heavy heart.
Now I know its the frigging Lead..
Loki, it’s not just the organics. It’s the basic inorganics as well – the simple carriers in most tablets, for instance. All we do in North America is mix and compress. As the last disruption to container traffic took place (remember, the tainted dog food), the razor-thin supply chain of even the most basic components dried up in a week, leaving many manufacturers scrambling to find product. All that is required to cause severe health crises or deaths in North America is to impose delays to shipping, either on the source or receiving end. We are that fragile.
“North America brought this on themselves by their insatiable lust for the cheapest products available, while refusing to pay a bit more for domestic products that kept their neighbors employed.
The North American worker is trying very hard to price himself out of the labor market. You probably have heard the saying: ‘GM is
essentially a pension plan that makes cars on the side.’
In any case, the US owes China a trillion dollars, so the Chinese are under their thumb. So, stop worrying and start enjoying, everyday low prices.
Besides dosing us with unsafe vaccines, untried drugs that cause more ailment than they cure and psychotropic which have spawned a rash of mass murderers, Big phama is atively recuiting junk science and the pressitutes to defame their only real competition – the viamin and herb inductry with fear mongering propaganda –
Big government, Big Money, Big Pharma, Big media – not your friends
http://www.examiner.com/article/big-pharma-backed-study-discredits-vitamins
What Oz said times 10! The unions are the first line culprits and the greedy workers who thought the gravy train would not end for them.
Oz, well said. Bin there and noticed that.
Do we want to go to the root cause or, as usual, are we contented to stab at the symptoms? The root cause was thae abandonment of the gold standard. Governments and banksters are happy to rob the citizenry of all wealth and then keep them in serfdom thereafter. That’s what fiat money does – it permits the thievery and enslavement of all but the ruling class and their financiers, the banksters.
While gold is money, it performs other functions as well. First, it cannot be printed to cause inflation. It acts as a governor by maintaining equilibrium. In addition it does not allow trade imbalances to develope, meaning that no country could export to point of causing harm to other countries. Similarly, importing countries would soon eliminate their trade imbalance wothout resorting to tariffs or other impediments to trade. Gold would keep evrything in balance, naturally.
o
The sooner we abandon Keynesian and Friedmanite fraudulent theories and return to the gold standard, the sooner we can return to sound economies and to producing wealth.
Drugs are not the only problem. We are completely dependent on China for almost everything we take for granted in day to day living. Even the very few mechanical/electrical things that are still made on home soil contain Chinese parts. It’s a symbiotic relationship that can and will change, as China has the population and expansion capacity to dominate the world by simply putting a embargo of all products to the west. I doubt if that’s in the near future but if relationships sour it’s conceivable. Look at a partial list of what we have outsourced:
http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/popups/exporting.america/content.html
Even our military has been compromised :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8876656/US-weapons-full-of-fake-Chinese-parts.html
Something as simple as the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute could set of a chain of events that quickly spin out of control.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2014-02/11/c_133106090.htm
Look at almost everything in a Walmart store and then try to visualize a Chinese embargo on all those products. Try to find something made in Canada or the USA. Remind yourself that it all comes from a communist country with its eye on world domination. Hope we stay friendly. Just don’t count on it. I agree with North of 60 that we play checkers while they play chess. Chess involves critical thinking and that’s been outsourced too.
Hi – I have taken Ciprofloxacin several times, once for a three-month stretch, and had no mental effects (I was
crazy before, crazy during, and crazy after 🙂 ), so your guess is quite likely correct.
The correct way to handle the FDA thugs is shown by Sandoz, with a Canadian plant which produced something
like one-third of the North American market of one particular pharmaceutical, and who ran afoul of the FDA.
So they closed the plant, and kept it closed until the “regulators” were thoroughly satisfied – while increasingly
desperate cries from those who needed the medication mounted. Sandoz even threatened to keep the plant closed.
In the early phases there was the usual anti-business propaganda, but that dwindled as the need for the drug
became increasingly patent.
A perfectly decent free-market option exists with respect to the Indian and Chinese drugs –
import the bulk pharmaceutical to North America, and do quality
assurance on this side of the Pacific. But the present US “government” isn’t about to think of such a possibility,
let alone embrace it.
As for over regulation, there was a discussion in this forum about three years ago in which it was noted that
even neutral saline has been in short supply at times. That is something which any competent pharmacist –
even a competent third-year chemistry student – should be able to make; but isn’t allowed to, if it is to go
in someone’s veins.
And we needn’t touch on the lack of research into antibiotics, which will render our concerns about antibiotic
quality moot …
yes the unions and their ridiculous demands was a factor but not the only one as you tried to imply; not every N.American worker was in a union.
people and their insatiable lust for more disposable material crap is the main factor
Skweeker, splendid comment.
Not 1 in a 1000, 10,000, understands your cryptic diagnosis.
Least of all the party economists.
Even many SDAistas who tend to follow the “you can’t eat gold” meme.
Nice to see you include the great conservative/libertarian Friedman with Keynes.
I too have made this observation in earlier outings here.
All Friedman’s free market advocacy is nullified by his love of 100% fiat money.
No, I did not imply it was the only factor.
Please try not to read into other people’s comments ideas which are not there, mmm-Kay?
Unionism was, however, the main factor and a factor which you missed entirely.
And in case you think all those jobs were outsourced only to China, (just in case now) they were not.
Many countries which do not have union labour got those lost jobs. Mexico and India and Indonesia; just a few examples, got quite a few of those jobs too.
The big factor was the need for non-union labour.
Loss of union jobs for neighborhood unionists was a feature, not a bug. Savvy?
Cheap consumer materialism has nothing to do with it.
You must have missed what happened to Hostess Brands, Inc. last year.
They’re drinking our milkshake.
North of 60’s on a roll lately.
The Chinese are long term planners; they’ve had plenty of lessons in history and the present to walk all over our fat doe-eyed Affirmative Action loser behinds.
They’ve had plenty of opportunity to build a modern well healed army, while filling our pathetic neighborhoods with any sort of spy and espionage agent they felt like sending.
They bought or stole our technologies, indebted us beyond repayment and made our economy entirely dependent on their whims.
Couple that with a one child police that ensured that they had millions of horny cannon fodder to unleashed when needed, we pretty much f*cked ourselves over greed and liberalism.
BTW I have shopped at Wal-Mart exactly twice in my life, once a quick stop when caught up out of town, and once to see what the fuss was about around 25 years ago. They’ve gotten no more than $20.00 out of my pocket at best.
Cheap consumer materialism has nothing to do with it.
yes, that’s how the cheap uber-consumers try to shift the blame away from themselves.
Better than a million man excess to women in china in the 15 to 25 demographic, the most violent and horny demographic and now exportable to a third world country near you
Things are made in China because its too expensive to make them here.
Its too expensive here because of twin problems: excessive regulation and excessive taxes. Unions were a problem thirty years ago, but of late the only remaining unions of any consequence are -public- sector.
Chip fabrication for all the big Silicon Valley outfits have gone overseas. This is a huge problem for them, as they need to be able to oversee and tweak processes on the fly, and that’s a lot of traveling when your head office is in Southern California. It costs them a very great deal of money and effort. So why do it, when the total labor cost involved in a chip fab is tiny compared to the investment and even the travel bills?
Intel for example. They do it because there is literally no amount of money in the world that will get them a green-field chip factory built in California. Building a chip fab in any US state has now become prohibitively expensive due to regulations of all sorts. Intel’s latest greatest 35 nanometer chip fabs are all overseas. So are AMD’s.
Why are all Apple products assembled by illiterate Chinese peasants at Foxcon in China? Couldn’t they be assembled a lot easier and cheaper by illiterate Mexican peasants in Cupertino California? That’s how it used to be, right?
They don’t build in Indonesia and China and Taiwan and Mexico because it is cheaper. It isn’t cheaper for them when you look at how big a pain in the @$$ a remote factory location is for a high tech firm. They build over there because the government has made it impossible to operate in the USA. They literally can’t do it here, and they have no competition from anywhere else in the world.
How about Canada? Did you know you can’t buy a hockey stick made in Canada? Unless its a custom one-off, all hockey sticks are made in China/Indonesia/wherever. Because Even using local wood and local labor, avoiding all the international shipping and tariffs and brokerage, nobody can run even a completely automated factory in Canada that delivers a hockey stick to Sports Authority at a price even close to that of the Indonesian factory. Because taxes, electricity, land, regulations, etc.
Woodworking machines and tools? General was the last holdout who still made stuff in Canada. They had a protected, pampered, politically favored plant in Quebec that produced the finest machines in the world. Until a couple years ago, anyway. Now they buy machines made in Taiwan and distribute those instead. Their web site says they still make the 10″ cabinet saw in Canada, but I’d be surprised to find out they still make all the castings and parts here. More like they do final machine work and assembly on Taiwanese castings.
Do you guys know the only plant still making welding gas in Eastern Canada in in Montreal? Welding gases are what you call a strategic commodity. You can’t make, build or fix pretty much anything at all without welding gases. The only reason there’s still one in Montreal is because its protected by being in Montreal. If it were in Hamilton Ontario it would be gone long since. I know this because Liquid Air used to have a factory making welding gases and all sorts of things on Burlington Street in Hamilton, and it is now a storage site for stuff they buy from the Americans. Who get it from overseas, often as not.
And finally, do you know that one of the things rich Chinese people in China spend a whole lot of money on is American manufactured breakfast cereal? They do. They pay big bank for Cheerios and Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. Because they know the American factories don’t put rat corpses and melamine powder in the food like they do in Chinese factories.
My advice? Buy the thing that says “Made in Canada” if you can. Pay more, it will be worth it.
“Buy the thing that says “Made in Canada” if you can.”
Because the Chinese don’t make knockoffs of those little “Made in Canada” stickers and put them on their goods. Nuh-uh!
Look, if the government won’t insure good commerce and that consumers can buy safe quality goods then Pffft! we’ve lost the game and government has no legitimate right to govern us.
What we need is government to lock out foreign made garbage or lock up domestic made garbage makers/importers, either or both…government’s first responsibility is to protect the governed.
The family is the main enemy of the state colluding with banksters for mutual benefit. Both despise competition, so destruction of family values is crucial to advancing their agenda. The monetary system is our state religion based on upon greed, jealousy and envy – it seeks to minimize if not destroy any and all other functional religions.
Ruling classes reside in a gated tribal environment, where they continue practicing traditional religion and honouring the importance of family, while the lower classes are thrown into the social meat grinder where they are ground up into little pieces. After all, it is the lower classes that have their lives regimented by mandatory statist education, (or rather inculcation), punch clocks, tract housing and other myriad industrial imperatives while the upper classes are insulated from that process.
Of course there’s a down side. Putting family and community into an economic meat grinder and grinding them into ever smaller pieces paves the way to potentially rebuild society on a different basis.
I feel that statist multi-culturalism destroys any pre-existing culture. Similarly our bankster-dominated system deliberately weakened all other previous economies, like the gift economy and the barter economy.
One can hope that perhaps what goes around comes around. A question from a sublime point of view – What becomes of the nation after all traditional religions, community and family cultural values have been systematically ground down to unrecognizable bits ???