4 ms·

Both honestly and sadly, I think nobody is actually legitimately surprised by this. The pharmaceutical industry is a profit machine that will do anything to ens

Both honestly and sadly, I think nobody is actually legitimately surprised by this. The pharmaceutical industry is a profit machine that will do anything to ensure that it remains profitable. If anyone hasn't seen John Oliver's latest video, it's on the whole marketing to doctors thing and touches upon the pharmaceutical industry and I highly recommend watching it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQZ2UeOTO3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQZ2UeOTO3I - he sums it up perfectly.

refurb 12y ago
The pharmaceutical industry is a profit machine that will do anything to ensure that it remains profitable. But this isn't about the pharmaceutical industry, it's about the FDA. The FDA is clearly catching these companies doing wrong, so why are they covering it up? And if you think the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry are in bed with each other, I would have to disagree (coming from the industry). The company I used to work for would never mess with the FDA since you could be shutdown in an instant. To be honest, I think a lot of the FDA failings come from a lack of resources. Most of the drugs people take in the US and EU are made in places like India and China. The FDA is just starting to think about inspecting those plants. They just don't have enough inspectors to make sure each and every manufacturer is doing things by the book.
- hurin 12y ago
  > (as someone coming from the industry) What do these particular failings referred to in the article have to do with the FDA's lack of resources? From what I can see all you are doing is trying to change the subject of discussion away from the industry.
  - Intermernet 12y ago
    I personally think @refurb asked exactly the right question (whether he's from the industry or not). >The FDA is clearly catching these companies doing wrong, so why are they covering it up? This deserves more research. Don't get distracted by "big pharma", ask why the FDA aren't doing anything about the wrong-doing they're uncovering. Occam's razor cuts towards lack of funding. Next question: Who is in charge of FDA funding? How can this be changed?
    - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
      I'd expect uncovering the evidence to be the hard part - but then I remember how messed up the USA legal system is ...
  - jerf 12y ago
    I think the point here is that it's pretty obvious that when people start beating up on "industry" they're basically calling for "more" regulation, but we have the regulation, the authority, the ability to assess penalties, everything you could possibly already want with "regulation". What's being done is already illegal and already being detected by an authority with the power to do something. So the usual handwavy appeal to "regulation" that is so common I'm comfortable implicitly reading it into the above criticism despite it not explicitly containing it is not enough. I'm generally libertarian, but behind that libertarianism is not the belief that the government "can't do anything", but more the observation that a lot of people go through the following process: 1. Identify a problem. Maybe. (Accuracy is optional at this stage.) 2. Claim we need "regulation". No details given. 3. Case closed! and a great deal of my libertarianism doesn't come from "faith in markets", but the fact that it's not that easy. You can't just assume into existence massive regulatory regimes, with significant costs and oversight issues, and then just assume that the problem is solved without evidence, precisely because of stories like this and things like "regulatory capture". It's explicitly not that I have a magical solution (and if you feel inclined to reply, please read that three times first), it's that I believe the problems we face are way harder than airy handwaves about "regulation", case closed, problem solved, why can't people just understand that regulation will just solve everything and let's politically attack anyone who says otherwise. Nope, it's a hard problem. It's a lot of hard problems, and people who just attack industry and handwave haven't even properly engaged with the problems, let alone solved anything. The fact that there is such widespread belief in the airy handwaves of "regulation" is itself a primary cause of things like this sort of dysfunction... it becomes a political attack to claim that the regulation has a problem because of course it's working, how can it not? It is literally inconceivable, and to emphasize, I mean, literally not expressible in the relevant neurons in people's brains. People treat it as an atomic entity that can not be further investigated, rather than as a complicated mechanism in a complicated system that requires systemic analysis, and the resulting possibility that on occasion, yes, the regulatory agents will be broken. (From a positive perspective, my libertarianism comes from the observation that markets are freaking powerful and regulatory regimes, since they are created by people whose thinking is biased into an "us vs. markets" modality rather than the aforementioned "systemic analysis" often screw up, either by missing chances to harness the power of the market, or by fighting them in ineffective or inefficient (in the usual sense of the term, not EMH) ways. This blindness results in regulatory regimes that start from day one by first dropping their most powerful tool on the ground. Unsurprisingly, this often results in less effective regulation. We need regulation because not even I want to live in a raw market-dominated world, but nobody wins when it's done stupidly because of preconceived moralistic notions about markets, which are in many ways best conceived of and treated as natural forces rather than demonic embodiments of pure evil or something equally silly, and thus something best harnessed properly, not fought and pilloried. In this case, I'd suggest that a more market-comprehending regulatory regime would understand that transparency and openness are key to properly keeping the system functioning properly, and that the top priority the first time they received any information like this should have been getting word out to people. But, that's not part of how they think, because the idea that this could have been nipped in the bud much earlier by harnessing the power of information flows in a market simply isn't in their DNA. In all likelihood they wouldn't hardly have needed to do much of anything else, but instead the inevitable logic of a market-fearing regulator, through several steps I'm not explaining, leads to this sort of coverup with distressing frequency.)
- hga 12y ago
  "The FDA is just starting to think about inspecting those plants." Fortunately it's a lot better than that. They have been inspecting them for a long time, but infrequently and preannounced, and even then caught some in the act. After the gross, top to bottom fraud of Ranbaxy, they started doing unannounced visits, which has resulted in every one of their plants in India being shut down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043423
  - refurb 12y ago
    Your are correct. My statement was an exaggeration. The FDA has been inspecting foreign plants, but from what I've read they only have enough inspectors to inspect any given plant maybe once every few years. Certainly not ideal. The FDA is looking to ramp up hiring so that they can get much better coverage.
- atom-morgan 12y ago
  > But this isn't about the pharmaceutical industry, it's about the FDA. The FDA is clearly catching these companies doing wrong, so why are they covering it up? There's some overlap, right? http://geke.us/PharmaVenn.001.jpg http://geke.us/PharmaVenn.001.jpg

refurb 12y ago

The pharmaceutical industry is a profit machine that will do anything to ensure that it remains profitable. But this isn't about the pharmaceutical industry, it's about the FDA. The FDA is clearly catching these companies doing wrong, so why are they covering it up? And if you think the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry are in bed with each other, I would have to disagree (coming from the industry). The company I used to work for would never mess with the FDA since you could be shutdown in an instant. To be honest, I think a lot of the FDA failings come from a lack of resources. Most of the drugs people take in the US and EU are made in places like India and China. The FDA is just starting to think about inspecting those plants. They just don't have enough inspectors to make sure each and every manufacturer is doing things by the book.

hurin 12y ago
> (as someone coming from the industry) What do these particular failings referred to in the article have to do with the FDA's lack of resources? From what I can see all you are doing is trying to change the subject of discussion away from the industry.
- Intermernet 12y ago
  I personally think @refurb asked exactly the right question (whether he's from the industry or not). >The FDA is clearly catching these companies doing wrong, so why are they covering it up? This deserves more research. Don't get distracted by "big pharma", ask why the FDA aren't doing anything about the wrong-doing they're uncovering. Occam's razor cuts towards lack of funding. Next question: Who is in charge of FDA funding? How can this be changed?
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    I'd expect uncovering the evidence to be the hard part - but then I remember how messed up the USA legal system is ...
- jerf 12y ago
  I think the point here is that it's pretty obvious that when people start beating up on "industry" they're basically calling for "more" regulation, but we have the regulation, the authority, the ability to assess penalties, everything you could possibly already want with "regulation". What's being done is already illegal and already being detected by an authority with the power to do something. So the usual handwavy appeal to "regulation" that is so common I'm comfortable implicitly reading it into the above criticism despite it not explicitly containing it is not enough. I'm generally libertarian, but behind that libertarianism is not the belief that the government "can't do anything", but more the observation that a lot of people go through the following process: 1. Identify a problem. Maybe. (Accuracy is optional at this stage.) 2. Claim we need "regulation". No details given. 3. Case closed! and a great deal of my libertarianism doesn't come from "faith in markets", but the fact that it's not that easy. You can't just assume into existence massive regulatory regimes, with significant costs and oversight issues, and then just assume that the problem is solved without evidence, precisely because of stories like this and things like "regulatory capture". It's explicitly not that I have a magical solution (and if you feel inclined to reply, please read that three times first), it's that I believe the problems we face are way harder than airy handwaves about "regulation", case closed, problem solved, why can't people just understand that regulation will just solve everything and let's politically attack anyone who says otherwise. Nope, it's a hard problem. It's a lot of hard problems, and people who just attack industry and handwave haven't even properly engaged with the problems, let alone solved anything. The fact that there is such widespread belief in the airy handwaves of "regulation" is itself a primary cause of things like this sort of dysfunction... it becomes a political attack to claim that the regulation has a problem because of course it's working, how can it not? It is literally inconceivable, and to emphasize, I mean, literally not expressible in the relevant neurons in people's brains. People treat it as an atomic entity that can not be further investigated, rather than as a complicated mechanism in a complicated system that requires systemic analysis, and the resulting possibility that on occasion, yes, the regulatory agents will be broken. (From a positive perspective, my libertarianism comes from the observation that markets are freaking powerful and regulatory regimes, since they are created by people whose thinking is biased into an "us vs. markets" modality rather than the aforementioned "systemic analysis" often screw up, either by missing chances to harness the power of the market, or by fighting them in ineffective or inefficient (in the usual sense of the term, not EMH) ways. This blindness results in regulatory regimes that start from day one by first dropping their most powerful tool on the ground. Unsurprisingly, this often results in less effective regulation. We need regulation because not even I want to live in a raw market-dominated world, but nobody wins when it's done stupidly because of preconceived moralistic notions about markets, which are in many ways best conceived of and treated as natural forces rather than demonic embodiments of pure evil or something equally silly, and thus something best harnessed properly, not fought and pilloried. In this case, I'd suggest that a more market-comprehending regulatory regime would understand that transparency and openness are key to properly keeping the system functioning properly, and that the top priority the first time they received any information like this should have been getting word out to people. But, that's not part of how they think, because the idea that this could have been nipped in the bud much earlier by harnessing the power of information flows in a market simply isn't in their DNA. In all likelihood they wouldn't hardly have needed to do much of anything else, but instead the inevitable logic of a market-fearing regulator, through several steps I'm not explaining, leads to this sort of coverup with distressing frequency.)
hga 12y ago
"The FDA is just starting to think about inspecting those plants." Fortunately it's a lot better than that. They have been inspecting them for a long time, but infrequently and preannounced, and even then caught some in the act. After the gross, top to bottom fraud of Ranbaxy, they started doing unannounced visits, which has resulted in every one of their plants in India being shut down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043423 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9043423
- refurb 12y ago
  Your are correct. My statement was an exaggeration. The FDA has been inspecting foreign plants, but from what I've read they only have enough inspectors to inspect any given plant maybe once every few years. Certainly not ideal. The FDA is looking to ramp up hiring so that they can get much better coverage.
atom-morgan 12y ago
> But this isn't about the pharmaceutical industry, it's about the FDA. The FDA is clearly catching these companies doing wrong, so why are they covering it up? There's some overlap, right? http://geke.us/PharmaVenn.001.jpg http://geke.us/PharmaVenn.001.jpg