OT: bone knitting

[Larry Blanchard]

Did you all see the article about the amino acid (IIRC), that has been known to aid in bone knitting since the 1930s? It couldn't be patented, so no drug company would pay for the clinical tests required to bring it to market. Now one has figured out how to strip out some of the parts and patent it, so it'll soon be on the market at an undoubtedly exorbitant price. 75-80 years later!

How many people have suffered needlessly because there was no profit in poividing relief?

It's not socialized medicine that bothers me, it's unsocial companies :-).

[nhurst]

It seems to me that such a thing would be a good project for a Government funded project conducted through a University. Help PhD candidates along with their education along with other support staff, gain a social benefit of global proportions.

Do you have a link to the article?

-Nathan

[J. Clarke]

If you're talking about Prostaglandin E2, then you've only gotten some anti-business loon's side of it. Prostaglandin E2 has been on the market for decades, but it has not been approved for use in assisting bone-knitting because in trials for that purpose it caused severe heart and kidney damage in a high percentage of patients.

The new med attempts to maintain the bone-knitting capability without the side effects.

Uh, why don't you tell us.

If you're going to talk about 'unsocial companies' at least find a better example.

[DGDevin]

Companies like Monsanto get patents on plants that man has been harvesting for thousands of years, or sue farmers when Monsanto's GMO seeds are carried by the wind onto a farmer's land and grow there mixed with the crop the farmer planted. I believe in free enterprise, but it seems lately things are a little out of balance.

[HeyBub]

Just last week the FDA mandated that ten analgesics be taken off the market because they had never undergone clinical trials for their efficacy, alternatives were available, and the targeted medicines had a propensity for abuse.

There was a HUGE uproar over one, liquid Morphine, and the FDA relented on that one.

So far as I know, aspirin has never undergone clinical trials either (except for the one sponsored by the AMA regarding low-dose aspirin and heart attacks - and even it was stopped early).

[J. Clarke]

It was 14 and it wasn't that they had not undergone clinical trials, it was that they had never been FDA-approved in any manner at all.

Bayer alone lists 9 clinical trials of aspirin currently in progress. The one that was stopped early was stopped because the results obtained by that time were conclusive--that was the Physicians Health Study I, which I believe was sponsored by Harvard and Brigham & Women's Hospital, not by the AMA.

[MikeWhy]

Larry, I have a $100 a day drug habit. If it weren't for ambitious little pharmaceutical chemists and greedy pharmaceutical companies, I'd be dead already after a slow and uncomfortable death. I believe in the power of capitalism and the appeal of the dollar. Socialism and other models haven't worked out so well. Maybe after we've solved all the world's problems, we can afford to sit back and marvel at ourselves.

[DGDevin]

I didn't see anyone claim that the drug companies don't develop life-saving drugs, of course they do, I have prescriptions for several of them. Unfortunately they also do things like conceal studies that show unpleasant side effects, use patients as unwitting test subjects, dump expired or banned drugs in poor nations, make insignificant changes in formulas to extend their patents, spend more on marketing than they do on research and so on. It isn't a choice between capitalism and socialism, it's a matter of imposing reasonable restrictions on corporations so they aren't tempted to screw us over six ways from Sunday and risk our well-being as they do so. I have no problem with regulated capitalism, but unrestrained capitalism leads to Times Beach and I bet neither of us would choose to live there.

[marc rosen]

Hey Larry, Would you be able to cite this article so I could read it? I'd like to see what chemical(s) they are looking at. Thanks, =20 Marc

[Robatoy]

Monsanto... now you're talking REAL bastards:

[Larry Blanchard]

It was from our local paper, copied from the LA Times. My memory was faulty, it's a parathyroid hormone, not an amino acid. Here's the reference:

[MikeWhy]

Obviously you have your own unrelated bone to pick with how they operate. I'm speaking only to incentive and effectiveness. Unless you have stats to the contrary, I'll hold to my opinion that innovation flourishes in the US of A more so than anywhere else for the best and worst of reasons: personal enrichment.

As for your other thoughts, you're talking out the side of your face if you benefit at all from the products and technologies from those same evil companies. Moral high ground is always a fiction.

[HeyBub]

Okay, they hadn't undergone FDA-approved clinical trials, then.

Well, the facts may have been wrong but the narrative was right.

[DGDevin]

Again, I didn't claim otherwise, you have quite the knack for attacking positionss that other people didn't express.

What an educational experience this is turning out to be, I've just learned that if a company does something slimy, perhaps even illegal, it's unethical to comment on it if I've ever used a product or service that company provides.

Man, unclench a little, you'll do yourself an injury.

[scritch]

Not only that, but if capitalism is so much better than socialism, then why, in this health care argument, are our health care expenditures up to twice as much per person as other industrialized nations, and our general health and life expectancies lower?

And I can't accept the whining from the pharmaceutical industry about how much research and development costs until their R&D costs exceed their advertising costs, which they don't by a long shot.

[MikeWhy]

I'm having a difficult time finding Canadian innovations and inventions. Searching for Canadian pharmaceutical patents, I find a lot of political talk about relaxing patent protections to third world regions, and also listings for Canadian Pharmacy. Seems to me, the US health care costs go at least in part to subsidize life saving drugs in socialist regimes. You bunch of bleeding heart ingrates.