December 20, 2005
From the desk of Jane Galt:Blame Canada
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I joined Derek Lowe in making fun of drug companies for pretending that drugs from Canada were somehow dangerous, because they didn't have those good old American quality controls. This is silly, though in their defense, if they offered the true arguments against drug reimportation, they would be stampeded by seniors groups who basically don't care if some young whippersnappers who don't know how to show proper respect to their elders maybe don't get any new drugs in twenty years.
But according to this WSJ piece (subscription required), I may have been wrong . . . not because Canadian drugs are substandard third-world counterfeits, but because many of the drugs being represented as "Canadian" are coming from somewhere else:
The agency looked at packages suspected of containing pharmaceuticals sent from India, Israel, Costa Rica and Vanuatu -- four countries the FDA said appeared to be sources of drugs that were ordered from pharmacies alleged to be Canadian in origin.Out of nearly 4,000 parcels examined, almost 1,700, or 43%, had been ordered from "Canadian" Internet pharmacies and were represented as being of Canadian origin. Of the 1,700 packages, 85% of the drugs weren't manufactured in Canada and came from 27 different countries.
"This operation suggests that drugs ordered from so-called Canadian Internet sites are not drugs of known safety and efficacy," Andrew von Eschenbach, the FDA's acting commissioner, said in a statement Friday. "These results make clear there are Internet sites that claim to be 'Canadian' that, in fact, are peddling drugs of dubious origin, safety and efficacy."
While Canadian drugs are just as safe and effective as American ones, there are lots of countries where that isn't true. Another reason to tell my family to steer clear of Canadian internet drugs.
If the drugs in question pass muster for delivery to Canadians, what's the problem? Reimportation has nothing to do with where drugs are manufactured. It's the quality and the cost that drive this debate.
Here's what I wrote back in July -
http://redundapundit.blogspot.com/2005/07/drugged.html
It still makes sense to me, and I can't see how this dubious statement from the FDA has anything to do with the actual issue. "Canadian" drugs aren't drugs manufactured in Canada in this debate. They are drugs imported from Canada to take advantage of Canada's advantaged purchasing arrangements with the manufacturers.
isn't it obvious that its all about differentiated pricing? Ie. charge americans more because they have more disposable income.
i bought a box of acuvue contacts, the cheapest price came from Singapore.
Why do you think our medicals cost more than the rest of the world?
Canada is not a major pharmaceutical manufacturing country. One of those '27 countries' importing into Canada is undoubtedly the U.S., since a large proportion of drugs used in Canada are manufactured here. "85% of the drugs weren't manufactured in Canada," but probably 85% of ALL drugs on Canadian pharmacy shelves weren't manufactured in Canada either!
Isn't it ironic that the FDA is complaining about 'Canadian' drugs manufactured in other countries when most of those drugs were manufactured in accordance with FDA regulations and are offered for sale right here in the U.S.? (at much higher prices, though)
Does this mean the FDA believes the drugs imported into the U.S. by Novartis, Glaxo, and all those other 'foreign' drug companies are of poorer quality?
Scare tactics.
Guys, the point was that the drugs were from internet sites NOT based in Canada - they were merely using the idea of reimportation as a cover. Now, the drugs may have been fine, anyway, but the issue of whether drugs circulating within Canada (which would indeed largely come from the US) are ok is beside the point, because the drugs were coming from somewhere else. Reading comprehension is a skill.
dan wrote:
"Why do you think our medicals cost more than the rest of the world?"
Becuase we Canadians--as well as most of the rest of the world--are free riders. We use our national government to extort lower prices from US companies. Someone has to pay for the R&D for the next generation of drugs, and that someone ends up being the US taxpayer.
If you Americans had some guts you would tell us Canadians to get bent and pay our full share for the drugs we use. Its not like we invent any of our own. But leftists on both sides of the border are wall-eyed ignorant when it comes to economics, so the status quo persists.
Mike W, yes reading comprehension is a skill. And writing things that are literally true, but imply other things all together is a highly valued skill also. If you deconstruct the language used, which I am sure was highly parsed, they never say the drugs were not ordered, and delivered, from Canadian pharmacies.
"The agency looked at packages suspected of containing pharmaceuticals sent from India, Israel, Costa Rica and Vanuatu" does not say the drugs were actually from those four countries, they were just suspected of being from them.
"four countries the FDA said appeared to be sources of drugs that were ordered from pharmacies alleged to be Canadian in origin." Nice segue that implies the pharmacies were not Canadian, but merely says that the original manufacturing site was in those four countries. Now remember that Teva, the largest generic manufacturer in the U.S. is from Israel, and manufactures many drugs there that are imported (legally) into the U.S. Costa Rica is the manufacturing site for Abbott, Astra Zeneca, Bayer, Johnson and Johnson, MSD, Pfizer and Roche. India has several pharmaceutical manufacturers who legally import into the U.S. (I have no idea about Vanuatu--don't even know where it is ;-)
"Out of nearly 4,000 parcels examined, almost 1,700, or 43%, had been ordered from "Canadian" Internet pharmacies and were represented as being of Canadian origin." Nice use of 'scare' quote marks, but doesn't actually say they weren't Canadian.
"Of the 1,700 packages, 85% of the drugs weren't manufactured in Canada and came from 27 different countries." Another nice sleight of hand which confuses the site of manufacturing with the point of sale. As I mentioned before, most drugs on pharmacy shelves in Canada were not manufactured there, and of the 27 countries, most probably the U.S. is the #1 manufacturing site.
"This operation suggests that drugs ordered from so-called Canadian Internet sites are not drugs of known safety and efficacy," Instead of scare quotes, they use 'so-called' with the same effect. Since the FDA by regulation defines all drugs imported from Canada as lacking "known safety and efficacy" it says nothing about their actual safety and efficacy.
"These results make clear there are Internet sites that claim to be 'Canadian' that, in fact, are peddling drugs of dubious origin, safety and efficacy." More scare quotes and another sleight of hand confusing site of manufacturing with point of sale, as well as the all purpose FDA disclaimer about safety and efficacy.
Given all the linguistic dancing around, I believe this is all scare tactics. Both the FDA and major pharma is petrified that the public will refuse to pay more for drugs that are identical to ones sold internationally. Where is the straightforward data, e.g., "of 1,700 packages, X% were manufactured in Country A, etc."? Of the 1,700 packages how many were from pharmacies not in Canada? How could they not have this information from their survey as described?
There is a very revealing number at the bottom of the article. Of the 4,000 parcels examined, 32 were counterfeit. Now no one wants to buy counterfeit drugs, but a rate of less than 1% is hardly a crisis.
This whole article is a spin job on a inspection that didn't give the FDA the information they wanted.
Hello??? Pharmacies in the United States are full of drugs from Israel, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Germany, Poland, India, Malaysia and many more countries. These drugs have been taken by Americans for years. Are they always as effective as some American-manufactured drugs? Probably not, but the safety issue is an obvious piece of bumf.
Yeah, so the drugs coming from Canada are plenty safe. Who is really surprised by the safety talk? I thought it was just some fact of life that whenever the US government wants to do something stupid, the politicians know that they stand the best chance of getting away with it if they convince the public that it's to protect them from some great danger.
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