It's Not Just Zantac: American Pharmaceutical Corporations are Importing Tainted Drug Ingredients from China
by John Lawrence
Tainted blood pressure medications have been traced back to Chinese manufacturers Zhejiang Huahai Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and Zhejiang Tianyu Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. along with Hetero Labs Limited in India. Those companies then sold ingredients to generic drugmakers. I wrote 3 days ago: " FDA inspectors are unable or unwilling to provide appropriate oversight of Chinese manufacturing. In contrast to the robust testing required for approval for new prescription drugs, the FDA only requires that generic manufacturers prove that patients will absorb drugs at the same rate as the brand-name medications they copy." China and India Now Manufacture About 80% of the Drugs Consumed in the U.S. Funny all the articles on the banning of Zantac don't mention the fact that most US pharmaceuticals are manufactured outside the US where US inspection authorities can't get to them.
Even Fox News was worried. They reported:
"I have no doubt that they would consider weaponizing their dominance of the pharmaceuticals market if they felt that that would give them an advantage over us strategically," retired Brig. Gen. John Adams told Fox News. Adams is also president of Guardian Six, a defense research consulting firm.
In a worst-case scenario, experts warn, China could withhold supply of medicines like important antibiotics, or degrade the quality of our medicines -- even put lethal contaminants in them. Even when it comes to treating anthrax, China is the largest exporter of the building block to make ciprofloxacin, an anthrax antidote.
The more probable threat from China, however, is that it could make America's prescription drugs more expensive.
"In five to 10 years, when China has a complete chokehold over the United States and its supply of medicine, it's gonna be telling us how much to pay for our medicine," Gibson told Fox News. "We will lose control over how much we pay. We will be the price taker, not the price setter. And that's devastating."
We've already lost control over how much we pay thanks to the rapacity of the profit seeking American pharmaceutical corporations. Of course what the Fox News article misses is that its not China that is making huge profits. It's the American pharmaceutical companies which take advantage of cheap Chinese labor, then jack up the price on the imported drugs in order to make huge profits. That's why they don't make them here. Their profits wouldn't be as large if they did, and evidently, the American government doesn't really care about the situation or they would ban the import of drugs from other countries so they would have to make them here.
That's why we need Medicare for All and strict government oversight of pharmaceutical corporations.
