I Want a New Drug, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

March 24, 2012 Martha Thomases 30 Comments

This column is being written in a hospital waiting room.  There isn’t any Internet.  I won’t be able to provide any links to back up my arguments.  I won’t be able to use a search engine to find out how to correctly spell the words that Spellcheck doesn’t know.

But I’m mad.  Good and mad.  And an angry woman with a deadline is a dangerous person to thwart.

Last week, my husband had a stent put into his right lung to correct a blockage that repeatedly caused the lung to collapse.  When we left the hospital, the doctor gave us a prescription for acetylcysteine, a drug to be taken via nebulizer.  The purpose of taking this particular medication is to thin the mucus in the lungs so it can be carried through, since the stent prevents the cilia from performing this task.

The doctor apologized that he couldn’t give me any to take home, but the hospital didn’t have any, nor did any nearby pharmacies.  The nurse told me that the manufacturer sometimes stopped making it so that it would be scarce and they could raise the price.

I called my local drugstore, to tell them we would need it and see if they had any.  No, they said.  Their supplier couldn’t get it.

The doctor said a day or so without it wouldn’t be a problem.

The next day, I went to talk to my pharmacy.  They would ask around.  Later that afternoon, they called to say they had spoken with an out of state supplier, and we could  pick up the prescription as soon as they received it in the mail.

Monday, my husband couldn’t breathe.  We had to call an ambulance.  His lung is filled with mucus.

The doctor at this hospital says that the acetylcysteine wouldn’t have made any difference.

I don’t care.  I’m still furious.

This is not a new drug, nor is it only used for people who get stents put in their lungs.  It is also used when people get CT scans, to flush the dye out of their kidneys,  in other words, there is steady demand, and the manufacturer has had plenty of time to make a profit on their investment developing it.

Since I’ve started raving about this to anyone who will listen, I’ve heard ask tons of similar stories.  The worst (not that this is a competition, at least not one you’d want to win) is from a mother of a child with neuroblastoma, a cancer.  Apparently, there was a vaccine developed that would prevent the disease from returning in kids who had it.  It was complicated, using each patient’s genes to tailor the drug specifically, but it worked, she said.  The company (German, I think she said) stopped producing it.  Not enough money in it

The part of me that watches legal dramas on television wants to sue.  Get me Erin Brockovich!  But I’m not going to.  They’d bring out the doctor who said it wouldn’t make any difference and get the case dismissed.  And then, they’d use whatever they spent on lawyers to justify raising their prices again.

I’m not really a socialist.  I like owning stuff.  I like making money for my ideas.  However, this makes me wonder why medicine is a for-profit industry.  Sure, your plastic surgeries and boner pills are discretionary, and there is room there to soak vain, rich people.  Breathing, not so much.    If the private sector can’t do it’s job of supplying crucial medicines, maybe the government should.

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Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, is glad to see Spring, even if it is frighteningly early.