take your interval

Popular Mechanics has an article about the shortage of snake and insect antivenin in the US.

Unfortunately, after Oct. 31 of this year, there may be no commercially available antivenom (antivenin) left. That’s the expiration date on existing vials of Micrurus fulvius, the only antivenom approved by the Food and Drug Administration for coral snake bites. Produced by Wyeth, now owned by Pfizer, the antivenom was approved for sale in 1967, in a time of less stringent regulation.

Wyeth kept up production of coral snake antivenom for almost 40 years. But given the rarity of coral snake bites, it was hardly a profit center, and the company shut down the factory that made the antivenom in 2003. Wyeth worked with the FDA to produce a five-year supply of the medicine to provide a stopgap while other options were pursued. After that period, the FDA extended the expiration date on existing stock from 2008 to 2009, and then again from 2009 to 2010. But as of press time, no new manufacturer has stepped forward.

This is how our system ‘works’. Drugs that are unnecessary or have deadly side effects can easily get approved, as long as the drug companies think there is a big enough market for them to justify paying for ‘approval’. That’s how you end up with anti-depressants that cause suicides and sleeping pills that cause unconscious people to drive their cars.

On the other hand, drugs that are absolutely necessary but have a niche market are dropped because pharmaceutical companies simply won’t bother spending the millions to billions of $ on testing and regulator ‘lobbying’ necessary to get it approved. It’s not that FDA testing is strict, effective or uncorruptible; it’s just expensive.

If we could only find a way to make getting bitten by deadly snakes and insects cool, we could create the demand needed to justify saving people’s lives.

The average potency of marijuana, which has risen steadily for three decades, has exceeded 10 percent for the first time, the U.S. government will report on Thursday. -CNN

It’s amazingly coincidental that this ‘new’ government study citing the dangers of superweed is released a week or two after the first signs of serious calls for legalization and regulation of marijuana in the US. And as always, they’re just worried about ‘the children’. Of course, no one is advocating legalization for children, but if you want to scare a voter away from an issue, go after their kids.

I suppose it’s better than the old reasoning, though:

The dominant race and most enlightened countries are alcoholic, whilst the races and nations addicted to hemp and opium, some of which once attained to heights of culture and civilization, have deteriorated both mentally and physically. -Dr. A.E.Fossier 1931

Drink up kids, it’s the key to enlightenment.

From the NORML blog:

The medical records will show that he died due to complications associated with massive liver failure. He would have likely survived longer if he received a timely organ transplant but was denied access because he followed his physician’s recommendation, used medical cannabis during his treatments for liver disease, therefore testing positive for THC metabolites and rather than receive the gift of a potentially longer life—instead doctors at the University of Washington deferred to federal prohibition laws and mores, handing Tim a death sentence.

There are no pharmacological or physiological reasons why Tim Garon, or any medical marijuana patient, should logically be denied access to life-saving or life-enhancing organ transplants.

In my view, commonsense and humanity were completely lacking here on the part of the doctors who denied Tim and his family a chance at a continued life together.