RxRick’s Blog

The warning signs have been there for years: Chinese melamine in our pet food, Chinese lead in our kid’s toys. Now it has finally happened, tainted Chinese drugs have found their way into the medication supply of our hospitals. Baxter recalled their entire line of injectable heparin after nearly 500 reports of allergic reactions, including twenty one deaths.

The story in the New York Times describes a confusing network of small, unsupervised, family-run workshops that are harvesting and processing pig intestines for heparin extraction and export to the US. In today’s corporate world, it is dollars before safety, they save a penny by using an unknown source and the FDA turns a blind eye. Instead of paying a few cents more for pig intestines from our own USDA inspected facilities here in this country, they import it from some third world country, unbelievable. In their way of thinking, if it has not been shown to be harmful (yet) then it must be safe.

Also from the Times, “The Chinese factory that supplied the heparin is not certified by China’s drug regulators to make pharmaceutical products. Because the plant has no drug certification, China’s drug agency did not inspect it. The United States FDA said this week that it had not inspected the plant either — a violation of its own policy — before allowing the company to become a major supplier of heparin to Baxter International in the United States.”

I had no idea that we are getting *any* medication from China, let alone a critical life-saving drug like heparin, which is used in our sickest patients. Regardless of whether the contamination was accidental or intentional, these revelations shake my confidence in the safety of our nation’s drug supply.

This situation stems not only from corporate greed, but our own complacency and apathy. The FDA needs to be held to the fire. Under Bush, FDA has become a toothless corporate lackey. They removed all children’s cough and cold syrups from the over-the-counter market because (ostensibly) American’s are functionally illiterate and unable to follow simple directions. Meanwhile they take their eyes off the ball and let poisoned drugs into our supply chain.

Last year the Chinese executed the chief of their FDA, I think heads need to roll here too, including the corporate CEO’s. These bottom line focused CEO’s with their multi-million dollar salaries need to be held accountable for their lack of stewardship. Safety should be always be the first concern of any health care provider, not the bottom line.

But you know what will happen, they will find some lowling on the corporate ladder to blame, some grunt who was simply doing what he was told, probably working the night shift.

I’m sure 99% of the people who are reading this have no idea who Bobby Fischer was. But when I was a goofy, klutzy, pimply-faced high school geek, he was my hero.  He was a certifiable chess genius who beat the Soviets at their own game at the height of the cold war.

Bobby died last month from the complications of renal failure, after a long, slow descent into the hell of schizophrenia.  Bobby was a child prodigy who came out of nowhere to beat the reigning American chess champion when he was 13 years old. A few years later, while still a teenager, he defeated a grandmaster in only 21 moves.

His match with the Russian master Boris Spassky in 1972 was broadcast live on TV as if it were the world series.  After he won, he became an instant American hero.  He went from total obscurity to the height of fame.  But then Bobby slipped into the pit, never defended his title, and didn’t played another public chess match for 20 years.

He did return to the board in 1992 for a rematch with Spassky, and he won again.  The match was played in Yugoslavia, which, at the time, was under UN sanctions.  The first Bush declared that his participation was illegal and issued a warrant for his arrest.  He lived out the rest of his life in Iceland, still wanted by the US government.

Nobody asks to get paranoid schizophrenia, so I can forgive for some of the outrageous things he said and did in latter life, what a sad thing to happen to such a great mind. I can easily forget the bearded dishoveled madman he became.  Instead, I choose to remember the strikingly handsome young man with piercing eyes who crushed the Soviets and became a hero to all us geeks.