Tainted (China)Drugs Put Focus on the FDA

Tainted (China)Drugs Put Focus on the FDA

www.truthout.org

After a contaminated medicine from China was linked to as many as 17 deaths in the United States, members of Congress clamored for changes while regulators defended their actions.

The drug was a common antibiotic, and the year was 1999. But in recent weeks, the Food and Drug Administration has faced an almost identical crisis. Nineteen deaths have been linked to contaminated heparin, a crucial blood thinner manufactured in China. Again the drug agency became aware of the problem only after hundreds were sickened. Again Congress is investigating.

The FDA admitted that it violated its own policies by failing to inspect the China plant, and on Friday it said it had alerted border agents to detain suspect heparin shipments.

(visit the link for the full news article)



Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Heparin Made in China Might Be Tied to More Deaths

[edit on 17/3/2008 by khunmoon]

I bet Big Pharma is not too unhappy about the present maverick conditions, and what's the fuzz about..!..

"This heparin problem has happened before with other drugs," said William Hubbard, a former FDA deputy commissioner, "and it's going to keep happening until Congress fixes this problem."

Let's not forget after all it was Big Pharma in joint venture with the leadership of China State Capital --in news speak 'communist'-- that made possible those 566 plants producing goods for the US market, of which FDA unfortunately only managed to inspect 13 of. Guess the China lobby is not too unhappy about that.

The agency does not have the money to inspect many more, and the Bush administration has no plans to fix this most basic of problems. The administration's budget calls for a 3 percent increase in allocated funds next year, not enough even to keep up with rising costs.

[---]

Eighty percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients of drugs consumed in the United States are manufactured abroad; 40 percent are made in China and India. Meanwhile, the FDA has cut back on its foreign drug inspections, which declined to 341 in 2006 from 391 in 2000.

The simple quotation is that 1 out of 5 drugs handed over in the US contains pharmaceutical ingredients originating from China. However calcus is probably done on value, and as we all know things are cheaper in China, they get a lot more volume than average, so these ingredienses can very well be present in a ratio 1 : 3 rather than 1 : 5.


www.truthout.org
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 17/3/2008 by khunmoon]

China and India are big suppliers of the chemical bases of many drugs used alot in not just the US but the EU etc. I do beleive that The EU version of the FDA does a better job at screening this stuff.

I think that the FDA needs to be revamped, enlarged etc.

I read somewhere in NYT on the current case that the reason mortality concentrate on US is the higher doses applied in American medic standards than in European. There's been few related deaths in Wester Europe.

There are a lot of chemicals imported from China. Those of you that drink a lot of these new fangled energy drinks (i.e. Monster, Red Bull) should contact these manufacturers and find out where they get all those ingredients from, and see if they test all that stuff. That company that was importing all that poisoned wheat gluten used to kill all those pets also imports a lot of taurine used in those drinks, so beware.

What we should be doing is labeling all products with country of origin of all ingredients.

reply to post by FredT


The FDA is backlogged by about 20 years of research. Instead of testing drugs and supplements themselves, the companies who try to patent/pass their products do the testing.

Sounds a bit crazy doesn't it?

Enlarging the FDA would not improve their efficiency. The company's state should have localized drug administrations as opposed to relying on one branch. Its pretty ridiculous.

As for the Chinese tainted drugs, this is nothing new...

It sounds like I would be wise to research the prescriptions I have. There are often multiple choices with those that have gone generic. I wonder if it is even possible to find out the origins?

Thanks for the post

Cutting corners by unethical manufacturers, maybe even corrupted or lazy employees. Quality issues in products, these are to me simply inefficient businesses.

The FDA standards are well too familiar among almost any industries in China, and since the Mattel issue causing one greedy business man to suicide and many others to close the doors, most of the Chinese business owners sweat at hearing about quality issues. So maybe for once most of them would spend more efforts in maintaining the "requested quality" of the customers.

Maybe Americans are not very aware of it, but I can tell you that the FDA standards are compared to the EU and Japanese ones VERY low. Costprice to produce for Europe and Japan are usual 20-30% higher because of the higher required quality and standards I am talking about similar products which you require different raw material or production processes to manufacture.

Oh, might be interesting to look at the FDA news site, and check how many "issues" are related with China. Be reminded that the Chinese imports is in proportion the biggest, so chance of finding a problem related with China is also higher. Besides the chance is even higher, because usual the importers sourcing in China are more price-oriented than quality-oriented
www.fda.gov...




[edit on 23/4/08 by IchiNiSan]

reply to post by khunmoon


Yeah, khunmoon, big pharmacy is probably happy with lax FDA, but when
people start dying, focus is intense on every party involved, and who to
blame, as insurance lawyers for the deceased start to drool over liability!

I think greed of big pharma is to blame mostly, by outsourcing to China.
I'm not familiar with chemical compounds too much, but wondered about
the cause of death for the unfortunate victims:

Scientists Unravel Heparin Death Mystery