If you're sensitive to scorpion stings, you don't want to read this

Arizona ^ | 11/14/11 | Ken Alltucker

[BlazingArizona]

(Cannot quite due to copyright restrictions)

Read here: http://www.a azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/11/10/20111110scorpion-drug-cost.html#ixzz1dje2uG1i

[BlazingArizona]

This medication, manufactured in Mexico, is vital for people who have life-threatening reactions to scorpion stings. It retails in Mexico for $100 per vial. Our wondrous pharma monopoly manages to make a dose cost $12,400 north of the border. Time to invoke the TRIPS agreement and smash the monopoly now!

[Repeal The 17th]

“...If you’re sensitive to scorpion stings...”
-
How would I know????

[Jeff Chandler]

Been stung—no problem.

(Note to self: Wear shoes when scrounging for firewood on Mexican beach.)

[Repeal The 17th]

Here’s a working link...since yours don’t.
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/11/10/20111110scorpion-drug-cost.html

[Christian Engineer Mass]

“smash the monopoly now”

So they have a patent on this drug? You want to end the patent system?

[null and void]

$100 in Mexico, expensive here because of the cost of clinical trials our FDA required to prove an known good drug works on gringos as well as it works on ‘those other people’.

[Bobalu]

At least half of that exorbitant cost is due to lawsuits over bad reactions to the drug.

The legal profession is ruining the medical profession.

[unixfox]

On two seperate incidents I stepped on one and got stung on the bottom of my foot, my wife got stung on the hand.

Both of us had swelling and felt a little nausea but other than that no big deal. It hurts like hell though, feels like burning yourself on a hot stove except longer.

[Grizzled Bear]

$100 in Mexico, expensive here because of the cost of clinical trials our FDA required to prove an known good drug works on gringos as well as it works on ‘those other people’.

Like Thalidomide ?

[sphinx]

Thalidomide was tested. If I recall correctly, it slipped through because it turns out to be a human specific mutagen, so the animal tests didn’t turn up anything, and because the incidence of damage was slight enough that it took time for a pattern to be recognized.

[crz]

Was it one of those little blond bastards?-the bark scorpion?

I had a guy tell me that the pulp from a prickly pear takes away the burn. I dont know because I make sure I use leather gloves to dig around in whatever when I am down in AZ.

[exDemMom]

I seem to recall reading that Thalidomide was never approved in the US, but only in Europe. The FDA never okayed it.

[unixfox]

Yep, the bark scorpion. Lots here in Texas.

[Ax]

The first scorpion I ever saw was in my living room in Havana. It was a big one, about 5” long. After my heart went back down where it belongs, I killed it with a running shoe, but it took me three attempts. I told a buddy at work the next day. He was the former commander of the US Special Forces SCUBA school in Panama. He said he was going through the Jungle Operations Training Course at Fort Sherman. While in the bush, he was stung by a scorpion. His trainer told him to cut the beast in half with his bayonet, then pick up the back half and rub it over the site where the stinger hit him. The trainer said that the beast had some on-board antivenon and it would neutralize the poison. I told him, that’s one theory that will go untested for me. Then a Cuban worker was my garage when we saw another one. He said the best way to keep a scorpion from stinging was to swoop down and grab it, thereby limiting the beast’s range to hurl his weapon. There is another theory that’s going to go untested.

[eyedigress]

I lived in the desert for many years and you shake your shoes and boots out every morning. You never know.

[BlazingArizona]

“So they have a patent on this drug? You want to end the patent system?”

Sorry for being unable quote the actual article, but apparently we can’t quote the largest newspaper in Arizona because of - guess what - that intellectual property bat guano.

The patent on Anascorp is held by a Mexican lab which has sold it in Mexico for years at a retail of about $100 per dose. The FDA granted a small US company exclusive right to sell in this country in return for it doing the testing necessary to qualify it here. This is the same reason why the colchicine you have been taking for your arthritis for years is now $15 per pill, up from ninety cents.

Wouldn’t the straightforward way to qualify an existing drug in the US simply be to hire the work done at a tiny fraction of the cost? Someone is getting a fat payoff under the present system.

So to answer your question: hell yes! I’ve finally come to the conclusion that just ripping the whole intellectual property system out by the roots before it stifles the whole US economy is perhaps the only way to save us. Works for China, doesn’t it?

[onedoug]

SC ping....

[Amberdawn]

You are right. Thalidomide hit the British especially hard though. Strangely enough, Thalidomide shows some promise in the treatment of Leprosy lesions.

[exDemMom]

I’ve finally come to the conclusion that just ripping the whole intellectual property system out by the roots before it stifles the whole US economy is perhaps the only way to save us. Works for China, doesn’t it?<

It works...if you don't consider the development of new drugs at all important. I think many drug companies wouldn't survive losing their patent protection, which both allows them to recoup their development costs and develop new drugs. Then drug manufacturing could end up shifting to China and other countries where there are severe quality control issues.

[eastforker]

cut the beast in half with his bayonet, then pick up the back half and rub it over the site .........................................................That very well could be true, sorta like using catfish slime rubbed into the cut or puncture from one of his fins.