- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- usa@lemmy.ml
Something very very wrong is happening with pharmaceuticals all around the US right now. No one is saying anything and every organization is pointing fingers at each other, but there is a massive shortage of a huge range medication, ranging from Tylenol, Zyrtec, and Advil all the way to antibiotics, Adderall, Chemotherapy drugs, and Diabetes medication. People with debilitating illnesses and disorders like Type 1 Diabetes and ADHD are being left high and dry without any answers other then pharmacies saying that they are on “backorder” (I.e. They’re all out).
Its not just one company either, for example in the case of Adderall-Dextroamphetamine, in a worst case scenario it can be substituted with other drugs of a completely different makeup such as Vyvanse or Ritalin which are produced by different companies. The one problem is that they are ALL out of stock. On top of this, because a vast majority of these drugs are held in copyright, many of them do not have generic forms, and other companies are not legally allowed to try to develop them.
Something is going very wrong and it seems like the US pharmaceutical industry is collapsing. I’m very scared what this means for people that rely on medication. Diabetes? Hormones for transitioning? Heart medication? Chemotherapy? What happens to those people?
Look at the link… 233 medications already are gone.
You do also realize that anal based delivery of medication is vital in patients that cannot metabolize drugs correctly right? Or patients with a damaged mouth, esophagus, stomach, or intestines? Or patients that have been intubated? Or patients in comas? Suppositories are an extremely important delivery method for many medications and patients, especially in situations where using an IV might not be possible, or ill advised. For example in the situation of the Valium rectal cream you mentioned, how possible do you think it would be to get a patient in an active seizure to swallow a Valium pill?
Also 600ml of painkillers are not your everyday drug store variety, those are purposefully made to that high strength so that they can still be very effective, meaning that a doctor will not have to prescribe or use opioids or more dangerous painkillers, which may not be possible to prescribe if the person is a recovering addict or pregnant.
Ketamine is also a common surgical anesthetic and “knockout drug”.
All of the drugs you mentioned are extremely valuable and required daily in hospitals, and all of their shortages at once are terrifying.
As I said this is a bad situation but thankfully some of these medications can be swapped out while this crisis is happening, such as Diazapam for Clonazapam for example.
This is one of those situations where what we have is what we have but more needs to be done. Seizures have always existed, I am sure countries which aren’t heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical industry here have other options to treat seizures which are healthier for the patient without sacrificing anti-convulsivity. Especially when medicines with such risks are managed by the never-ending profit class who continually manufacture uses for these medicines causing addiction, misuse, and side effect (primary effect?) related issues throughout our society.
I do concur though, diazapam and other benzodiazapines appear to be the go-to medicines for seizure control, as well as panic attacks, mariuana intoxication, and other issues. This though is due to our overreliance upon these medicines whose risks have been experienced and documented since their widespread usage, not to their supreme use value within this scope, so for this reason I will leave it on the list with benzos in general as the first list within the joking format was listing medicines we should do away with in time which is where benzos belong imo. I do concur it is a problem that diazapam is low as it’s needed though.
Diazapam and benzodiazapines in general are drugs which carry risks which outweigh the benefits (when used outside of an emergency room and considering their issues outside of this scope I doubt their risk level within this setting as well, although I lack sufficient knowledge to say for certain)
The 600MG tablets are nothing more than x3 200MG tablets combined into 1 medication. It is a method of extracting more profit from a commonly used medication. Can you tell me, what is the difference between a prescription for 600MG Ibprofen and a bottle of 200MG tabs over the counter besides the quantity, dosage per tablet, and of course 1 is chargeable to insurance or out of pocket for a higher charge than the over the counter variant? Is this medication a hybrid similar to Vicodin is a mixture of acetaminophen and Hydrocodone? If it has no material difference, then what are the economic implications?
Ketamine being used as a drug for depression caused by the material conditions of capitalism is what I was alluding to in my criticism, not it’s use value within a hospital setting. The same goes for Fentanyl. Thankfully again there are alternatives to this, there are many other knockout drugs still available. I would be more concerned about this specifically if 2 or 3 anesthetic stables were missing, but with it added to the list it aids in increasing the heaviness of the scenario.
I agree, the sudden loss of so many vital medications is highly alarming and signals a problem in the production process originating no doubt in the management of the industry by the capitalist class. I really hope these problems subside, things would get very bad very fast here if the medicines became absent on an even larger scale.