EMAIL FROM AMERICA (5): Pharma's slaves, by Paddington

Tracking the chaos...

Insulin was discovered in 1921 by Sir Frederick Banting, Charles Best and J.J.R. Macleod at the University of Toronto and was later purified by James Collip. This discovery allowed millions of Type I diabetics to have a relatively normal life, when previously they would only live a year or so after diagnosis.

Banting refused to have his name on a patent because he felt that it was unethical for a doctor to profit from saving lives. Best and Collip sold the patent to the University for $1, citing similar feelings.
Fast forward a few decades, and many hedge funds have invested heavily in pharmaceutical companies, including every manufacturer of insulin in the US. In order to make the most of their investments, they have bought political influence to make competition more difficult, and have increased prices to maximize their profit.

Bearing in mind that the standard explanations of development costs and safety checks really do not apply for a drug developed 100 years ago, in which the newest changes are over 20 years old, one can note that the price of a vial of insulin in the Humalog brand went from $21 in 1999 to $332 in 2019.
And those costs have not risen at the same rate elsewhere. In 2018, the Rand corporation listed the 10 countries where insulin was most expensive: The USA $98.70, Chile $21.48, Mexico $16.48, Japan $14.40, Switzerland $12.46, Canada $12.00, Germany $11.00, South Korea $10.30, Luxembourg $10.15 and Italy $10.03.

On Friday, the US House of Representatives voted on a bill to reduce the copay (what the consumer pays) of insulin to $35. This move to reduce prices is part of the GOP platform, yet only 12 Republicans voted for the bill, and 193 voted against it.

And insulin is just the tip of the iceberg.

Hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli bought the rights to Daraprim, a decades-old drug used to treat a fatal parasitic infection, and raised the price for a pill from $13.50 to $750. He went to prison shortly thereafter - not for this disgusting behaviour, but for defrauding some investors in his hedge fund.

Mylan purchased the rights to the EpiPen self-injector (to treat life-theatening allergic reactions) from $50 per unit to $300 over a few years, resulting in massive increases in profits and huge rewards for CEO Heather Bresch, who just happens to be the daughter of quasi-Democrat Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The latter has been one of the two Democratic senators responsible for blocking much of the people-oriented legislation that the Biden administration has tried to pass.

Legal slavery ended in the US in 1865, but our lives and our health are still for sale.