99.5 percent of hospitals reported one or more drug shortages in the last six months, and nearly half reported shortages of 21 or more drugs. Some 82 percent of those hospitals said they’ve delayed patient treatment because of shortages, or have been unable to treat patients as recommended.

Sick people are such looters. Got a tumor? Just rub some dirt on it! Shouldn’t be long before Canada puts up a wall to keep us out and/or the first boat of ‘Murican refugees shows up in Havana harbor.

So, you’re saying that the pharmaceutical industry is no longer able to make DEXTROSE SOLUTION?

I can haz Alberta Provincial Health Care Plan naow?

Any minute now we’ll hear that Pharma can’t make new drugs because of crippling regulation and we must deregulate the drug industry or we’ll all die. There have been a number of articles out recently depicting pharma’s habit of tweaking drugs instead of spending billions on creating new ones.

It was mighty nice of all the newspapers to spread the lobbyist’s propaganda, though.

Ya know, if allopathic doctors would just accept the science of homeopathy, drug shortages would never be a problem again!

Damned evidence based monkeys…

Maybe I can pray the tumor away?

Heh – now I understand your nom. If you’re successful, will you change it to ‘no mass’, or maybe Duran?

One assumes that the impending shortages of Viagra & Cialis will be the tipping point that will force Congressional investigations lest middle-aged white men begin rioting in the street.

Without Viagra or Cialis, I doubt those middle-aged white men could rise to the occasion. However, if they do, they should see their doctor is rioting persists for more than four hours.

Clearly a bailout is called for. As soon as he’s done giving away Medicare and Soc Sec in return for letting the rich keep their Bush tax cuts (such a bargain!), our progressive overlord will decide that we as a nation (read: middle class tax payers who can barely afford health care as it is) must ante up and fork over eleventy billion dollars to Merck and friends so our invincible free market can continue to show the rest of the world how it’s done.

Once the CEOs of big pharma are done wiping away their tears of laughter and incredulity, they’ll proceed to throw seven figure donations at PACs aimed at putting the Bachmann/Pawlenty train on a straight course to the White House.

Come the revolution, we’re going to need a bigger wall.

One assumes that the impending shortages of Viagra & Cialis will be the tipping point that will force Congressional investigations lest middle-aged white men begin rioting in the streets.

Coming Soon: The Strategic Pharmaceutical Reserve. Members of Congress only.

No, no, it’s not (just) the over-regulation; it’s the low, low profits pharmaceutical companies make. They just can’t afford to keep making drugs that don’t bring in the bucks, y’know.

One assumes that the impending shortages of Viagra & Cialis will be the tipping point that will force Congressional investigations lest middle-aged white men begin rioting in the streets.

Without their boner pills, they may not have the energy needed to riot!

To allege that conventional medicine is evidence-based is giving it far more credit than it deserves.

Drug approval studies are frequently ghost-written. The conclusions are written by the marketing department before any research has happened and then whorish researchers fix the data around the conclusions and put their name on these fraudulent studies.

http://blogs.plos.org/speakingofmedicine/2009/08/21/ghostwriting-documents-now-fully-available-on-plos-medicine-website/

There is also the problem of rampant off-label prescribing, which once again defies any evidence-based standard of scientific medicine.

Considering these problems, one should hope that this pharmaceutical shortage will continue, and doctors would more widely turn to treating their patients with placebos. I think the result would be a remarkable improvement in outcomes.

You can’t be serious. Do you realize how many people would die?

The entire article sited discusses shortages of drugs produced by private manufacturers, without explaining why the shortages are occurring or listing any factors that might cause a shortage. So why is this occurring?

Can I see a show of hands how many use these boy drugs? You’d think the entire male population in this country needs a boost to have sex.

So an emergency waiver to re-import drugs from Canada

Or we qualify drugs from India without doing the usual inspections?

If only viagra, the internet will take care of the problem

My late 94 yr old uncle died of a staff infection acquired at the local hospital, two years ago. Having spent nearly 5 years in a hospital in Germany after WWII recuperating from injuries sustained near the end of that conflict, though he could have enjoyed his last thirty years of life to a significantly greater extent had he gone in for hip and knee replacement, he refused to go back to any hospital.

He knew what was in store for him had he ever needed to re enter the system. This is what we call “health-care,” in this country.

Hah!

Resorting to reason, are you, Scarecrow.

Ours not to ponder “why?”.

Ours but to get sick and, dutifully, die …

When first I heard that Obama was suggesting that next month’s Social security checks might not be going out, I considered that the game was up, little did I realize that this nation faced a far more serious problem, and, in fact, a true catastrophe, way beyond the simple matter of a “spill” in the Gulf (what’s this about a “spill” in Yellowstone? … can’t ask “what?”, either?) or the breakdown of the rule of law, even many further impoverished oldsters are as nothing compared to hoardes of middle-aged? white males bereft of their Constitutional right to pill-age, not to mention the state in which their significant others may well soon find themselves, it will be Wisconsin everywhere. Which brings us to “how?”. How, ever, will we manage to survive this exceptional crisis?

At the moment, I’ll settle for a actual answer to Scarecrow’s “why?”

(Wonder if anyone has asked it? Do questions never cease? That depends upon whether answers are forthcoming … doesn’t it?)

(Peas in our time?)

DW

Whirled peas?

If we all hurry up and die that will take care of the Medicare and Social Security problwm.

Maybe a Strategic Sildenafil Reserve is the answer.

Well, Rush Limbaugh uses them when he travels to Jamaica.

Nice spin, there, Twain, Global peas, unless they’ve bean flattened out a bit, gone square, or lumpish, if you’ll pod’n my sayin’ so, ‘tho a few do end up as souper heroes it was said by some, who split …

Always wonderful to catch your comments.

;~DW

Um –

DEXTROSE SOLUTION IS NOT BEING PRODUCED.

That’s sugar and water, scout. Next up – Big Pharma Unable to Produce Saline – Petitions for Government Exemptions.

With the huge profits in the pharmaceutical industry, I also wonder whether this is a “manufactured” problem created by the pharmaceutical industry to drive up prices.

Congress passed the Medicine Equity and Drug Safety (MEDS) Act in 2000 to permit free importation of prescription drugs from developed nations. The goal was to exploit government price controls in Canada, Europe, and other developed countries. But the MEDS Act required the secretary of health and human services to certify that implementing the law would cut prices without risking safety and it never went into effect. (Also, the Congress would, in effect, be introducing pharmaceutical price controls from other countries that have price controls and the pharmaceutical companies weren’t about to let that happen).

I had occasion to look into one of these cases last week: Triam/HCTZ is a generic diuretic which has been available for decades. I have been taking it for several years, paying $5/90 days supply from target. Suddenly it is no longer available anywhere. Turns out that there are only two suppliers on the whole planet, and neither was able to offer the FDA any explanation for why they have stopped shipping it.

As it happens, my Dad, God rest his Soul, was a chemical/pharmaceutical company executive in the UK several decades ago. After I moved to the USA (around the time the Clintons were trying to tackle healthcare) we had several conversations in which he explained to me how ridiculous it is to suppose that a system with one or two suppliers and thousands of customers could ever work in the public interest. To me, this is just another in a long series of affirmations of that observation.

Whirled Peas?

I doubt it. Ron Artest isn’t doing anything with the lockout.

this will be blamed on “Obamacare”.

As it should. Obama did everything he could to keep drug prices high.

Ah yes. How well I remember when Obama signed THE MEDICARE PRESCRIPTION DRUG, IMPROVEMENT, & MODERNIZATION ACT OF 2003 you stupid idiot.

I had a dear friend who had to wait for days to go home to die because the hospital pharmacy couldn’t fill the opiates perscription. In the meantime, his wife spent his final days frantically calling every pharmacy in town to see if anyone, at any price, could make his pain medication avaialable.

Why yes, I’m stilled pissed. Now, more than ever.

I understand heroin is Afghanistan’s biggest cash crop. Maybe we should start growing poppies ourselves, just in case. Either that, or making connections with your friendly neighborhood drug dealer.

Concocted shortages. This is just plain evil.