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opinion:
our view
Profits over people
Recent reports regarding
the pharmaceutical industry show an impending health care crisis.
Pharmaceutical
companies are lowering production on less profitable drugs
used primarily in hospitals in favor of more expensive outpatient
drugs. Why manufacture painkillers used only for respiratory
disorders when you can manufacture Viagra at $10 a pill?
As a nation, we
are already over-medicated.
From people running
to the doctor after developing a sniffle to doctors prescribing
antibiotics for said sniffles to drug companies whose representatives
bombard doctors with free samples to entice more prescriptions;
it is easy to see why the pharmaceutical industry is a billion-dollar
behemoth.
The problem with
over-medication has even infiltrated childhood. At the slightest
sign of a short attention span, something that childhood used
to be associated with, doctors want to get children started
on a regimen of Ritalin. This will just be the first of many
drugs required to help us adapt as we travel through our lives.
So, in a way, the
pharmaceutical industries' actions are akin to those of a
street-corner drug dealer. They get us hooked on a handful
of drugs and then either raise prices or phase out production.
One of the stumbling
blocks to solving the problem is that the Food and Drug Administration
has no authority in requiring that pharmaceutical companies
make certain drugs.
We are loath to
recommend more government regulation of yet another industry,
but when the issue is public health the government needs to
do something to alleviate the problem.
Whether the FDA
is the agency to do this is another question, as the recent
Pulitzer Prize winning exposé in the Los Angeles Times
showed a marked lack of judgment by the agency when dealing
with the pharmaceutical industry.
The exposé
showed the agency approved drugs without sufficient testing
and warnings were ignored when drugs proved unhealthy.
Of course, left
to the Bush administration, the essence of capitalism will
reign supreme. In defense of the almighty dollar, drug companies
will be allowed to discontinue any product that is not sufficiently
profitable, no matter how many people depend on them.
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