Tag Archives: Pharmaceutical industry

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Has Specific Issues He Wants To Target

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is an interesting addition to the Trump team. I am sure there are places where the two seriously disagree, but I suspect there are also places where they strongly agree. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has said for years that he distrusts the pharmaceutical companies who push vaccines and that is concerned about the chemicals being put into our food supply. While I don’t agree with all of his ideas on either subject, he does have some good ideas.

On Saturday, Zero Hedge posted an article about one of the good ideas.

The article reports:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent decades as an environmental lawyer fighting polluters and supported ‘green’ organizations for environmental justice. He is now setting his crosshairs on the pharmaceutical industry and cleaning up the nation’s food supply chain of ultra-processed foods and seed oils that poison consumers. He has determined that suspending his presidential campaign to team up with former President Trump will be necessary for the strongest success rate in making Americans healthier again, not through big pharma’s Ozempic shots but instead revitalizing small farms and shaking up corrupted federal agencies.

Lifelong liberals like RFK Jr. backing Trump is one of the strongest indicators of just how extreme the ticket, unoriginal Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats have become. Harris’ team recently announced their first proposed economic policy, which was rooted in communism and included disastrous price controls. It appears the far-left ticket is being advised and heavily influenced by Marxists. 

The article concludes:

Mega corporations, some of which are part of the ‘green’ cult, want greater and greater control over the nation’s food supply chain. Some are even pushing insect-based diets.

The big takeaway from RFK Jr.’s support of Trump is that he believes the correct path to restoring America’s health is not Ozempic shots but revitalizing the nation’s local food supply chains by making small farms great again. He wants to reset the food supply chain system and purge it of ultra-processed foods and seed oils that are killing consumers. He also proposed shaking up federal agencies in health and food that have close ties with ultra-processed food companies. 

For years, we have told readers that it’s critical to support local farmers and put the food supply chain back into the hands of the people—not corrupt mega-corps that flood store shelves with cancer-causing junk food.

Henry Kissinger famously said, “Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”

It’s time for Americans to regain control of the nation’s food supply chains by making small farms great again. Also, boycotting the processed food industry and buying local food is critical.

If Trump wins, RFK Jr. will likely provide tailwinds for small farmers. And Europe will take note as corp/gov’ts have also waged war on small farms. 

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. This would be very good for all Americans.

Follow The Money

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On Sunday, The New York Post posted an article about the relationship between the National Institutes of Health and the pharmaceutical industry during the Covid pandemic.

The article reports:

During the pandemic, the American people started to feel that Big Government was very cozy with Big Pharma.

Now we know just how close they were.

New data from the National Institutes of Health reveal the agency and its scientists collected $710 million in royalties during the pandemic, from late 2021 through 2023. These are payments made by private companies, like pharmaceuticals, to license medical innovations from government scientists.

Almost all that cash — $690 million — went to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the subagency led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, and 260 of its scientists.

Information about this vast private royalty complex is tightly held by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). My organization, OpenTheBooks.com, was forced to sue to uncover the royalties paid from September 2009 to October 2021, which amounted to $325 million over 56,000 transactions.

We had to sue a second time, with Judicial Watch as our counsel, to pry open this new release.

Payments skyrocketed during the pandemic era: Those years saw more than double the amount of cash flow to NIH from the private sector, compared to the prior 12 combined. All told, it’s $1.036 billion.

It’s unclear if any of the COVID vaccine royalties from Pfizer and Moderna, the latter of which settled with NIH by agreeing to pay $400 million, is even included in these new numbers. NIH isn’t saying.

Anthony Fauci is currently testifying before a House subcommittee hearing about the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the origins of the virus. There are a lot of things that the American people are entitled to know about the virus, its origins, the effectiveness of the vaccine, and the dangers of the vaccine. Hopefully these hearings will provide some of that information. However, if the public was intentionally misled, there need to be consequences. We have had an awful lot of hearings on various subjects and very little consequences.

Crippling The Free Enterprise That Made America Great

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I am currently involved in a book study of a book called The 5000 Year Leap. The book is about the founding of American and the role that free enterprise played in the success of America. Just for the record, what we have now resembles crony capitalism more than it does free enterprise. Both Jamestown and Plymouth we started as socialistic societies which almost failed before they switched to a free market system. As flawed as America’s healthcare system is, when it is allowed to be a free market, it flourishes. Now the Biden administration is working to change that.

On Friday, The Epoch Times reported the following:

The Biden administration has proposed a new rule that would allow federal authorities to seize the patents of costly drugs that were developed using taxpayer dollars and to let third parties use those patents to make the drugs available more cheaply.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, on Dec. 7 published a set of draft guidelines for government agencies to evaluate when it might be appropriate to invoke what are known as “march-in” rights under the legal framework of the Bayh-Dole Act.

The Bayh-Dole Act, which is shorthand for the University and Small Business Patent Procedures Act of 1980, grants the government the authority to suspend the patents of products of inventions that were developed with federal funding if those products or inventions are not made available to the public.

I agree that Americans pay too much for drugs, but this rule would have a serious impact on research and development and would eventually cause a downward spiral of healthcare in America.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. I realize that the pharmaceutical industry has not behaved well in recent years, but we need to clean up the industry–not destroy it.

When The Government Overrides The Free Market

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On Wednesday The Wall Street Journal posted an article about the current controversy about the cost of an EpiPen. Anyone who understands free market economics has been scratching their head trying to figure out why there was no competition to manufacture this product (and thus a more reasonable price). Well, The Wall Street Journal article provides an explanation. For the moment, I am going to overlook the fact that the company involved made a large donation to the Clinton Foundation and that the person in charge of the company is the daughter of Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.

The article at The Wall Street Journal explains:

In a statement, the Democrat (Hillary Clinton) assailed the “outrageous” cost of EpiPen, an emergency treatment for allergic reactions known as anaphylaxis, and she demanded that drug maker Mylan “immediately reduce the price.” Federal and Senate investigations are pending into these spring-loaded syringes filled with epinephrine (adrenaline) used primarily by children with life-threatening sensitivities to food or insect stings.

Mylan has raised the price of EpiPen in semiannual 10% to 15% tranches so that a two-pack that cost about $100 in 2008 now runs $500 or more after insurance discounts and coupons. Outrage seems to be peaking now because more families are exposed to drug prices directly though insurance deductibles and co-pays, plus the political class has discovered another easy corporate villain.

Still, the steady Mylan rise is hard to read as anything other than inevitable when a billion-dollar market is cornered by one supplier. Epinephrine is a basic and super-cheap medicine, and the EpiPen auto-injector device has been around since the 1970s.

Thus EpiPen should be open to generic competition, which cuts prices dramatically for most other old medicines. Competitors have been trying for years to challenge Mylan’s EpiPen franchise with low-cost alternatives—only to become entangled in the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory afflatus.

Approving a generic copy that is biologically equivalent to a branded drug is simple, but the FDA maintains no clear and consistent principles for generic drug-delivery devices like auto injectors or asthma inhalers. How does a company prove that a generic device is the same as the original product if there are notional differences, even if the differences don’t matter to the end result? In this case, that means immediately injecting a kid in anaphylactic shock with epinephrine—which is not complex medical engineering.

But no company has been able to do so to the FDA’s satisfaction. Last year Sanofi withdrew an EpiPen rival called Auvi-Q that was introduced in 2013, after merely 26 cases in which the device malfunctioned and delivered an inaccurate dose. Though the recall was voluntary and the FDA process is not transparent, such extraordinary actions are never done without agency involvement. This suggests a regulatory motive other than patient safety.

The article concludes:

Mrs. Clinton claims the EpiPen price hikes show the need for price controls, and she says she’ll require drug makers to “prove that any additional costs are linked to additional patient benefits and better value.” Somebody in Congress should require the FDA to justify how its delays are advancing the same goals.

Price controls are not the answer–a government agency that cannot be corrupted by special interests is the answer. The FDA has been interfering with the free market, and the price of the EpiPen is exhibit A in the case against the FDA. I am all for safe drugs and clinical trials, but I am tired of federal agencies being used to pick winners and losers.

It’s Good To Have A Friend

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The Washington Free Beacon reported today that giving money to the Clinton Foundation has many benefits.

The article reports:

Drug companies that have donated to Hillary Clinton’s foundation received most of the contract money from an international tuberculosis initiative after the foundation was brought on to manage the initiative’s procurement operation, public records show.

Two of every three dollars spent acquiring anti-tuberculosis drugs through the program, which is administered by the World Bank, have gone to two companies—Swiss health care giant Novartis and Indian drug company Lupin Ltd.—that together have donated up to $130,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

Clinton and her allies have pointed to the foundation’s international charitable work to deflect allegations of cronyism. However, the millions of dollars in contracts awarded to the two drug companies illustrate how foundation donors profited from laudable causes.

The article also points out:

Clinton has pointed to her foundation’s work in promoting access to pharmaceuticals in the developing world as an example of its laudatory humanitarian mission.

However, critics have noted how beneficiaries of other foundation-backed pharmaceutical access programs have made large financial contributions to the group. Companies that received funds from the foundation to provide low-cost HIV drugs, for instance, were donors to the foundation.

In many cases, the same companies were also lobbying the State Department for lucrative international health contracts while Clinton was secretary of state.

Despite years of collaboration with the industry, Clinton has described pharmaceutical companies as her “enemies,” even as lobbyists for the industry bankroll her presidential campaign.

Unfortunately, this kind of corruption has been going on with the Clintons for a very long time. It needs to end. If she is elected, the Clinton Administration will be a money-making scheme to enrich the Clintons while ignoring the problems and needs of America.

Another Industry Suffering From Overregulation

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The Washington Examiner posted an article today on the government-caused drug shortages America is experiencing. Yes, you read that right.

The article reports that prescription drug shortages tripled from 2005 to 2010 and reached record levels in 2011 as manufacturers ceased operations or ran into production problems.

The article reports:

Last year, nearly half of hospitals reported experiencing a drug shortage on a daily basis, according to a survey of 820 hospitals by the American Hospital Association. About 82 percent of hospitals said they delayed treatment because of a shortage, and 35 percent of hospitals said patients experienced “adverse outcomes.” The survey did not categorize those outcomes, a spokeswoman said.

So what is going on? The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has increased its enforcement efforts. The article explains:

…the FDA’s “zero tolerance” regime is forcing manufacturers to abide by rules that are rigid, inflexible and unforgiving. For example, a drug manufacturer must get approval for how much of a drug it plans to produce, as well as the timeframe. If a shortage develops (because, say, the FDA shuts down a competitor’s plant), a drug manufacturer cannot increase its output of that drug without another round of approvals. Nor can it alter its timetable production (producing a shortage drug earlier than planned) without FDA approval.

We elected this government. We are responsible. The only way to fix this is to unelect everyone who has worked toward bigger government and more regulation and elect people who want smaller government and less regulation. It’s up to us.

 

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