Separated at birth
Can someone explain what this is all about? How is this a good thing for the public at large?
Preventing preterm births just got 150 times more expensive, now that KV Pharmaceuticals has gained exclusive rights to produce a progesterone shot used to prevent premature births in high-risk mothers.
Although the shot has been available in unregulated form from specialty compounding pharmacies for years for $10 a pop, the Food and Drug Administration recently granted KV Pharmaceuticals sole rights to produce the drug, which will be marketed as Makena and cost $1,500 per dose — an estimated $30,000 in total per pregnancy.
Related link on FDA corruption.
Found by Al Cole.
Well, after all, the FDA was established due to the lobbying of the pharmaceutical and food processing industries.
But it IS worth noting that the drug in question is used in treatment of an intentionally acquired condition (pregnancy) for which there are many preventative measures, and, a even cures.
Reducing the surplus population since 1962!
@spsffan – and by making this drug more expensive you are also preferentially reducing the population of poor people so overall this is good for the economy.
#2. If we ever do get a government run health care system, then it will have nothing to do with the poor’s ability to pay. We will all pay dearly.
Any pretense that the FDA was regulating based on science and safety, rather than corporate profits, was thrown out the window by Bush’s FDA director appointments.
The FDA is one of the GOP’s elimination targets. It’s an easy argument to say they’re worthless when they’ve been run this way for a decade.
Do the math. Low income women are at a higher risk for premature births. However, those drug companies do need the money to do their research since anything else would be socialism.
Anything else would be a liberal plot. Someone should just tell Sherrod Brown and those other freedom hating bastards to shut up.
Watch “Food Inc.”
Ok, all bashing no facts. Not (not surprisingly) in the snippet of the article.
Facts that change the story:
1)Makena is given to women at risk of delivering prematurely. It went off the market in the early 1990s because of side effect concerns and worries about overall efficacy…
Now, if there was a story about FDA not studying drug enough and prematurely allowing it without proper studies… NoAgenda crowd would yell CRIME and endangerment of those poor mothers and babies. FDA knew of potential side effect problems.
2)There is an official FDA program offering market exclusivity to companies that are willing to take up such non-approved therapies and give them the full clinical and regulatory treatment.
In order to really find if drug is safe and usable and PROTECT customers, FDA grants exclusivity in exchange for serious side effects and efficiency tests. Company gets rights but with RISK included. If extensive tests find (as suspected in 1990s) that the drug is dangerous – they just wasted a lot of money on research. Hence the exclusivity and price. Someone must pay for studies and take that risk for some benefit. Total benefit is still at consumer side. Drug will be properly tested and vetted. Consumer will be protected. At the cost. There must be cost. This is not a free World for all.
So Obama is going to help, Poor/Hispanic/White/Black Americans who tend to be more likely to need these shots have a lower birth rate?
Anybody who doesn’t think this admin is one of the most corrupt in the history of the nation is suffering from dementia.
Also if any brain dead partisan wants to point out that many in GOP are also corrupt feel free. It doesn’t make these people any less corrupt or you any less foolish for supporting them.
I expect to hear a lot more screaming about how evil the FDA is now that they have taken on Big Tobacco. Few if any government decisions are made without input from corporate interests- that’s just how it is. However, corporate interests don’t always take precedence over public health. When Commissioner Hamburg decided to start regulating the tobacco industry, the wolves began to form a pack and now they are looking for blood.
Reformers need a crisis to achieve their reforms. More premature births = more infant deaths, giving a crisis.
FDA is now also considering cost instead of safety when they make their recommendations.
And how many shares of KV Pharm would it take to shut you up. greed plan and simple
#7 Damn you, you interject logic and facts into a wildly speculative bashing of the FDA. You are obviously a shill for the drug companies double damn you.
One of the many problems with having a government capable of making cheap things expensive and expensive things cheap.
I like questions in the headline’s format.
“Are you stupid or just ignorant?”
“Do you use shit for toothpaste or has your tongue just died?”
“Is this a corrupt, irrelevant blog or is it just for laughs?”
Yawn. “I’m shocked that there’s gambling going on…”
It has been at least a decade now that I use the FDA and USDA stamps as certification that said stamped product is not to be trusted.
I agree that the FDA, as it stands now, should be dismantled. The illusion of safety is worse than no safety.
Hey! What happened to the link I provided to the original article? I think it was comment 5 – grrrrrr
I daily consume 12 products approved and regulated by this outfit. It has become a game of mix-and-match to see if I will puke or lose consciousness.
The high cost and low availability of certain medications along with the best lobby efforts determine my available course of treatments. Of that I am sure.
KV took a $10/dose drug that has been in production for 50 years and already studied by NIHto $1500/dose. ($30k for the 20 treatments). Many will die because of this. Not even the company will benefit if they don’t change the price structure..as the increasing deaths are laid at their feet, they will be sued out of business. Hopefully the daily increasing backlash will make them reconsider the pricing. There is still time but it’s running out.
The wicked witch (green) was actually a very hard-working actress who risked her life repeatedly making the Wizard Of Oz, and like a true trouper carried on gallantly after she was badly burned while doing a dangerous fire scene.
The other one not so much.
One word – lawyers. At $10 a pop, there is no money to be had and barring gross negligence in preparation, there is no money in suing the pharmacists. At $30k per treatment course, there is plenty of money in suing the drug company if a woman loses her child and that equates to a nice payday for the lawyers representing them.