Saturday, May 24, 2008

Drugs are "made in China"

Not long ago, the FDA warned Americans not to buy prescription drugs from Canada because they might be "contaminated by terrorists." What the FDA didn’t bother to mention, however, is that most pharmaceutical drugs purchased in the United States are manufactured in places like China and Puerto Rico.

Foreign drugs were dangerous, the FDA warned, because they were not subjected to rigorous quality control requirements -- the implication being, of course, that brand-name pharmaceuticals sold in the United States are not contaminated.

This has been proven to be yet another lie. Heparin, a blood-thinning drug made by Baxter International, was recently discovered by consumers to be manufactured in China, where the quality controls were so low that this FDA approved, brand-name drug was apparently deliberately contaminated with an adulterated chemical.

It has now resulted in the death of dozens of consumers in the United States. The very scenario dreamed up by the FDA to warn consumers away from pharmaceuticals purchased in Canada or Mexico turns out to be true -- for a brand-name drug sold at monopoly prices in the United States.

The FDA has not inspected 93 percent of the factories that manufacture pharmaceuticals outside the United States, and many of the pharmaceuticals manufactured for U.S. drug companies are contaminated with metal parts from the gears of processing machines or flecks of paint from factory walls.

Many brand-name drugs are NOT tested for contaminants before being sold to consumers in the United States, Canada and other countries, regardless of where they were manufactured.

Source