Posted on 02/12/2020 8:14:30 PM PST by Pelham
“Without firing a missile or hacking the electric grid, China can take America down by disrupting access to essential drugs,” write the authors of this important book.
This book is a fine piece of investigative journalism that educates the reader about the genesis of China’s grip on our supply of medications. China is now the largest global supplier of the active ingredients and chemical building blocks needed to make many vitamins, and prescription and over-the-counter drugs. These include antibiotics, steroids, and cancer drugs.
Until the mid-1990s, the U.S., Europe, and Japan manufactured 90 percent of the global supply of key ingredients for the world’s medications. Now more than half of the 4,000 active ingredients needed to make a make a pharmaceutical depend on China.
Our weakness for bargains has created a monster. The authors note that hospitals and retail pharmacies have become “like the big box stores, stocked with made- in-China items.” China’s winning formula is for a company—with the help of the government—to undercut the price of drugs or components; the artificially low price forces other companies out of the market; then the company is free to manipulate the price and supply at will.
But the authors warn that “cheaper drugs required a cheaper way to make them.” A light was shined on China’s poor manufacturing practices of ingestibles in 2007 with the well-publicized dog and cat-food recall. More than 4,000 pets died from renal failure due to contamination with melamine, an industrial chemical used in plastics manufacture.
The outrage over this “economically motivated contamination” of pet food dissipated while in the next year a far less-publicized drug contamination took human lives. Although “manufactured” by an American company (Baxter Healthcare Corporation), heparin was made in China under substandard conditions and was sold to unwitting hospitals with tragic consequences. One-third of the batches of heparin from China were contaminated. The book fully explores the heparin debacle, telling how it happened and what our government has done about protecting us in the future.
From the start, the authors received robotic, scripted, unhelpful replies to the straightforward question: where was this drug made? Searching for the answer, the authors delve into the loopholes in treaties and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations that have allowed shoddily manufactured drugs for human consumption to be used in the U.S. Moreover, politics was interjected. The Transparency in Drug Labeling Act was introduced in 2008 to force drug labels to disclose where the drug was produced, not merely the location of the parent company. The law went nowhere, and it appears that the power of the drug company lobbyists prevailed over safety. Did this signal to China that the U.S. could be influenced by special interests, sometimes to the detriment of its populace?
China’s latest Five-year Plan for National and Social Development includes entering (and cornering?) the market on medical devices. The centralization of global supply in China leaves the world vulnerable. Not only can they disrupt the supply chain and cause shortages but purposefully create shortages or adulterate drugs. Keep in mind, the active ingredient for ciprofloxin to treat anthrax is in China’s hands.
This meticulously researched book is disturbing, but it is required reading for anyone who takes or prescribes medications. It is a real page-turner that reads like a novel and includes real-world scenarios. The authors included a detailed index, making the information readily accessible for repeated reading.
The Chinese think ahead with their well-known “five-year plans.”This book is a wake-up call for America to start planning for our future as well.
Review by Marilyn M. Singleton, M.D., J.D., Redondo Beach, Calif.
We are dependent upon China.
And if their ability to supply gets disrupted due to the Coronavirus we have maybe a one month supply of critical medicines and then that's it.
Bannon's pandemic podcast spoke about this today:
https://pandemic.warroom.org/ep-15-practical-preparedness/
Those of us that are members of AMAC (the conservative, patriotic alternative to the leftist AARP), read about this in AMAC’s monthly magazine, too...
This isn’t the AARP.
This is the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons. AAPS
You totally misunderstood my post.
Some name brand made drugs made in China have recently been recalled due to cancer causing contaminates.
Faisel, Nandibas, and Sanjay can do it in India!
Here’s what I have seen again and again, over and over in my industry in the last 20 years
Wall Street Private equity / hedge funds buy a long-standing private (usually family-run) American company using their access to super-cheap debt (thanks to the Federal Reserve)
The company gets loaded up with debt. Huge fees paid to new management
Financial wizards looking to squeeze every last $$ move production overseas (not always China, but often enough)
Something unexpected happens, and company experiences trouble. Bankruptcy declared and suppliers and workers get screwed
Its become so common, if we see a customer has been bought by “private equity” we begin a plan to study risk of default.
If we’d been dependent on Germany before World War II, we’d be speaking German today...
The question is: Do you want your children speaking Chinese?
Some of that sounds right. But private equity firms and hedge funds invest their own money and the Fed isn’t a commercial bank that makes loans.
India sources many of their precursors from China.
China has become the sole source provider for too many medicines.
Sorry. My bad.
Making another country dependent upon you has a whole lot of military value. We used to understand this.
The Pentagon used to have an office that kept track of vital industries to make sure that they weren’t purchased or put out of business by foreign powers.
This is may have been allowed to wither away after the end of the Cold War. Bush Jr filled his often empty head with nonsense like “The End of History”, a dangerous fantasy popular among his neocon brain trust. And Obama certainly had no interest in protecting this country.
Fortunately, we tend to be very good at quickly ramping up production here & in other places abroad when needed...hope there is a plan to deal with this.
Central banks have surpassed interest rates to long-term historical lows
No, its not a “glut of savings.” It global QE, Repo and money-printing, all funneled through primary dealers.
But, but, it’s so cooooool to be all globalist and stuff!!
Central banks can only set the shortest of interest rates, their own discount rate.
Long rates are determined by bond buyers in the open market.
Something made very obvious to the doubters in the 1970s when the Bond Vigilantes exerted their power.
Printed money is a negligible portion of the money supply. Repos are usually overnight loans, And QE has already been unwound. China has a huge and still increasing savings glut that keeps a lid on our long rates whether you choose to believe it or not.
“But, but, it’s so cooooool to be all globalist and stuff!!”
Clinton, Bush and Obama. The 3 stooges except that there is nothing funny about what they inflicted on America’s manufacturing power.
We grew up in the era of American corporations with overseas subsidiaries. Over time these were replaced by Global corporations with zero interest in or loyalty to America.
Here’s the major problem - why are people taking all these drugs ? you don’t need them
In fact many of these drugs are probably harming you
I’m guessing that you didn’t graduate from medical school.
Using chemicals from China.
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