#918 Taint So Pure

The other day I was joking to a friend that they’ve finally solved the product problems they’ve been having in China. They’re now glazing their toys with melamine and thickening their milk with lead.
Okay, not so funny, but then I read this headline in a science magazine. “FDA tackles tainted drugs from China”
What? Drugs from China?
I read it fully expecting to see some expose about pesticides affecting the opium crop or something. Nope.
We import all sorts of pharmaceuticals from China.
That’s right. Drugs to fight illness and stuff. And the FDA is having to fight with the Chinese government so they’ll allow us to inspect their drug making facilities.
Incredible. I mean, the FDA in this country puts drug companies through such a vigorous colon-twisting it leaves them uncertain which orifice to poop out of. But we let un-inspected drugs in from China? Drugs we swallow and stuff?
And we can’t just say, “let us inspect them or we won’t buy them”? You can bet American drug factories are inspected at least as often as Armour meat-packing facilities.
And really, does it do any good to put the major drug developers through 10 years of clinical trials to determine if incremental doses will cause the ever popular bloating and diarrhea, if we then turn around and let people ingest a jolt of poison from a foreign factory?
Hey, I’m all for globalization. I like foreign cars. I love a plump summer squash from Chile in the middle of the winter. I’ll even go so far as to say I enjoy an occasional French fry.
But pharmaceuticals from a land so lacking in oversight that they allowed melamine to be added to their own baby formula?
So my next question, can you clearly see “Made in China” on your prescription label? Or only on the pharmacist’s giant jar?
Good news, though. Between 2002 and 2007 the FDA inspected 80 drug plants in China. Bad news. There are 714.
That we know of.
Who knows if some back yard apothecary isn’t cooking up a batch of Viagra next to where he’s melting down computer motherboards.
Lead in your pencil anyone?
America, ya gotta love it.