5 ms·

I don't really think you know all the history here. There are other companies who have/are attempting to create competitors to EpiPen. A few of them weren't abl

by DSMan195276 10y ago

I don't really think you know all the history here. There are other companies who have/are attempting to create competitors to EpiPen. A few of them weren't able to get passed by the FDA, and one of them passed the FDA in 2012 but was recalled because of the product misfiring. The EpiPen problem seems to be much less an FDA problem then it is a problem with manufacturing, other companies don't seem to be able to make products that work nearly as well as EpiPen. If the FDA wasn't in the picture, you would still have the problem that there aren't any other reliable replacements for EpiPen even though companies have tried. IMO, I also don't see how your solution would solve any real problems. People shouldn't have to ask themselves "Do I buy the one that is 600$ with a 100% success rate, or the one that's 100$ with a 95% success rate?". That sounds like a pretty bleak state of affairs, and could easily encourage cutting corners to cut costs. "How much does a death cost us?"

derekp7 10y ago
What about buying 5 of them that are $20 bucks a piece? Maybe they can be made in a stackable format, so it would be easy to carry 5 of them. If one misfires, snap it off and use the next one in the stack.
- DSMan195276 10y ago
  That only works if you can actually tell if it misfired or not - if you're administering it to someone else, you may simply not be able to. With that, part of the problem was that the misfires would deliver some of the drug but not all, and only sometimes would completely fail to deliver any of the drug. Telling if you got 50% vs. 100% would probably be tough - and even if you could, if you took two because the first gave you 50%, you might end-up getting a big overdose or still get an underdose. So having multiple of those pens really just doesn't solve the problem if the pens themselves are unreliable.

derekp7 10y ago

What about buying 5 of them that are $20 bucks a piece? Maybe they can be made in a stackable format, so it would be easy to carry 5 of them. If one misfires, snap it off and use the next one in the stack.

DSMan195276 10y ago
That only works if you can actually tell if it misfired or not - if you're administering it to someone else, you may simply not be able to. With that, part of the problem was that the misfires would deliver some of the drug but not all, and only sometimes would completely fail to deliver any of the drug. Telling if you got 50% vs. 100% would probably be tough - and even if you could, if you took two because the first gave you 50%, you might end-up getting a big overdose or still get an underdose. So having multiple of those pens really just doesn't solve the problem if the pens themselves are unreliable.