{"id":187172,"date":"2013-05-27T20:49:00","date_gmt":"2013-05-28T01:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/05\/27\/how-worship-of-the-unbridled-market-is-taking-the-united-states-to-3rd-world-nation-status\/"},"modified":"2013-05-27T20:49:00","modified_gmt":"2013-05-28T01:49:00","slug":"how-worship-of-the-unbridled-market-is-taking-the-united-states-to-3rd-world-nation-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/05\/27\/how-worship-of-the-unbridled-market-is-taking-the-united-states-to-3rd-world-nation-status\/","title":{"rendered":"How Worship of the Unbridled Market is Taking the United States to 3rd World Nation Status"},"content":{"rendered":"

Premature babies are dieing of starvation<\/b> because feeding babies is not profitable enough for sufficient stocks to be maintained<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Because of nationwide shortages, Washington hospitals are rationing, hoarding, and bartering critical nutrients premature babies and other patients need to survive. Doctors are reporting conditions normally seen only in developing countries, and there have been deaths. How could this be allowed to happen? <\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> Except for a mind-boggling problem that Atticus\u2019s [A child born 4 months early, and currently in the NICU]<\/span> hospital\u2014one of the most prominent in the country\u2014has been powerless to solve: Atticus isn\u2019t receiving some of the critical nutrients he needs to survive.<\/span>

<\/span> Doctors and pharmacists say that because of nationwide shortages caused by a combination of factors\u2014manufacturing problems, a market with few incentives for companies to produce low-profit drugs, and the government\u2019s delayed and inadequate action\u2014thousands of patients are being malnourished.<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> Experts call the nutrient shortage a public-health crisis and a national emergency\u2014and are astounded that the government and manufacturers have let the situation become so dire.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cChildren are dying,\u201d says Steve Plogsted, a clinical pharmacist who chairs the drug-shortage task force of the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (ASPEN). \u201cThey\u2019re not getting any calcium or any zinc. Or they\u2019re not getting any phosphorous, and that can lead to heart standstill. I know of a neonate who had seven days without phosphorous, and her little heart stopped.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cI\u2019ve never seen anything like this in my entire career, and I\u2019ve been a pharmacist for 40-some years,\u201d says Michael Cohen, president of the nonprofit Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) and a 2005 MacArthur Foundation fellow. \u201cThis should never be allowed to happen.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> There are 300 drug, vitamin, and trace-element shortages in the US, the highest number ever recorded by the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which began tracking national shortages in 2001. Approximately 80 percent of these are generic injectables, or drugs given intravenously.<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> The nutrients in shortage aren\u2019t rare. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about zinc, phosphorous, calcium\u2014trace elements,\u201d says CHA president Mark Wietecha. \u201cThese aren\u2019t the latest genetically modified drugs or something coming out of modern high-tech environments. These have been around for decades.\u201d <\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> Some hospitals have resorted to bartering with one another to secure even a small supply of nutrients, and many are rationing.<\/span>

<\/span> At least one NICU in the District is administering some trace elements only three days a week instead of seven. At Atticus\u2019s hospital, no patients heavier than 2\u00bd kilograms (5\u00bd pounds), including NICU babies, are getting intravenous phosphorous. \u201cYou could have a brand-new, full-term baby and they don\u2019t qualify,\u201d a staff member says. \u201cThere are really sick babies and one-, two-, three-year-olds that don\u2019t get anything at all because we\u2019re rationing it for our tiniest preemies.\u201d<\/span>

<\/span> \u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span> When Miguel S\u00e1enz de Pipa\u00f3n, a neonatologist at a prominent hospital in Madrid, arrived in the US for a research visit, he was stunned by the nutrition shortages.<\/span>

<\/span> \u201cIt\u2019s crazy,\u201d he says. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t happen in Europe.\u201d He noted that the US relies on a 25-year-old lipid emulsion, which is in shortage, while European hospitals use a newer version that\u2019s readily available. Rather than import the newer emulsion, the US has left many patients without any lipids at all.<\/span>

<\/span> The only shortage S\u00e1enz de Pipa\u00f3n could recall in Spain occurred two years ago when a Canadian factory stopped making trace elements. His hospital pharmacy immediately secured the product from a Swedish manufacturer and had it for patients within two days.<\/span>

<\/span> Hospital staff wonder why the FDA hasn\u2019t already put a process in place to streamline foreign inspections and certifications so that labs abroad can manufacture emergency supplies on short notice.<\/span>

<\/span> Jensen says the FDA is working on it and that imported nutrients will be shipped soon: \u201cIt took a long time to find companies willing to do it, mainly because they couldn\u2019t meet US needs and didn\u2019t have the ability to ramp up for the US. The good news is we\u2019ve got different firms willing to do this for phosphates, zinc, and trace elements. We moved as quickly as we could.\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, moved as quickly as they could. (Not)<\/p>\n

You can be certain that a (castrated over the past few decades) FDA is consulting with the manufacturers, so as to avoid hurting their business models.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe FDA has repeatedly told us that the shortages are short-term and that they don\u2019t need to import yet,\u201d says neonatologist Steve Abrams of Texas Children\u2019s Hospital. \u201cThere\u2019s been a general sense that this problem will go away if we just wait until next Tuesday, and next Tuesday just hasn\u2019t come for the last 2\u00bd years.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They keep kicking the can down the road, because they, and the congressmen who vote on their budget, ahve been captured by pharma.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Premature babies are dieing of starvation because feeding babies is not profitable enough for sufficient stocks to be maintained: Because of nationwide shortages, Washington hospitals are rationing, hoarding, and bartering critical nutrients premature babies and other patients need to survive. Doctors are reporting conditions normally seen only in developing countries, and there have been deaths. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1005,970,1074,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-corruption","category-medical","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187172"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}