COMPOUNDING A REALLY BAD SITUATION!

(New York Times, Traverse City Record Eagle, Frazer Chronicle)

 

Sometimes it’s comical, when people express a complete wonderment of how could this happen in our town, or, these must be really bizarre people. It happens in any town in the United States, and the people that do it aren’t bizarre or criminal types, there mostly just detached. They are driven though…..driven by a goal of wealth, and personal frivolous worldly goods.

 

An editorial in my old hometown newspaper, the Traverse City Record Eagle caught my eye and I vaguely remember a 60 Minutes episode a while back about drug companies on the east coast producing what are called compounded drugs for patients with unique needs.

 

Reading the editorial in the Traverse City newspaper kind of interested me about the whole subject, and I knew that there was a worthy blog somewhere in the story of dozens of people in Michigan who were treated with injections of a tainted steroid medicine.

 

Turns out that steroids are used to either cure or dull all sorts of physical ailments, the list runs into the hundreds and makes steroid use kind of like a panacea and a wonder drug for everything from a hang nail to asthma, to arthritis, to all sorts of skin conditions…..a kind of miracle drug.

 

There are different strains of steroids, actually a hormone that is produced naturally in the adrenal cortex, which I understand nothing about, but never the less the steroid substance is produced by the body. When the adrenal cortex doesn’t produce enough of the corticosteroids, synthetic versions of the hormones can be administered to prevent unwanted systems.

 

Athletes use steroids for all kinds of reasons, usually for quicker recovery from an injury, but also to enhance productivity in their sport of choice. I have taken steroids, my wife has taken steroids, and I know literally hundreds of people that have taken some form of a steroid.

 

There are thousands of medications that are diagnosed by doctors every day for millions of people, and with little exception, the patient gets some sort of relief from whatever is bothering them. Medicine is a wonderful study by scientists who devise medication to treat our maladies all the time.

 

For me, I take a pill to go to bed, one to get up, another to help me make it through the day, and a pill for my heart, my blood pressure, my sugar, and even my sexual desires…..however that pill doesn’t seem to work, but my wife doesn’t seem to care.

 

“What’s my point,” easy…..folks in white coats make new and innovative discoveries all the time that help all of us survive, to ease our pain, and to make the standard of our lives more bearable. Sadly it’s why an aspirin can cost $50 in a hospital, or a band-aid $25. The industry of making medicine has discovered that it can charge whatever they want for their product…..and to boot get government grants to investigate for additional cures for our ills!

 

AND THEN THERE WAS THERESA HALL

Theresa Hall never asked to be the center of my blog, hell I don’t even know Theresa Hall, or worse, I don’t really care what happens to the women, but non-the-less she is the center piece of this blog. I will say this about Theresa Hall, she isn’t a very lucky person, last September Theresa Hall took three injections of what turned out to be a batch of tainted steroid to ease the pain of a pinched nerve in her back.

The very day that her doctor injected her with the medication both she, and her doctor thought would give her relief from the discomfort in her back, the manufacturer recalled the tainted medication. Now I ask you, “how lucky is Theresa Hall”?

 

As time passed, a strange thing happened with Theresa Hall’s back pain, the back pain became worse…..and her toes and calf went numb, it hurt to walk, or stand, in fact any movement at all was really bad. Theresa Hall was a working gal, but that became a thing of the past, that’s how intense the pain became.

 

In December doctors, (by this time there was more than one doctor) diagnosed a fungal infection in her spine and since then Theresa Hall has undergone a series of hospitalizations, testing, and medications…..and doctor and hospital bills that have run over a hundred thousand dollars. In addition, Theresa Hall has a $6,400 a month drug habit.

 

Theresa Hall and four dozen other Traverse City area individuals are considering suing New England Compounding Center for the tainted steroid, their medical bills and of course the old pain and suffering issue. Hell if it were me, I’d be suing for the tires off their Cadillac’s.

 

There is however one slight problem, maybe nobody can bring suit against New England Compounding, they might be covered by an archaic and inept law that was passed by in 1995 which states, of course in simple terms, (any drug that is FDA approved makes the manufacturer immune from any sort of a Tort action).

 

And government is always talking about TORT REFORM, I don’t think anybody had better talk about tort reform to Theresa Hall or the other four dozen people that were injected with the diseased medication.

 

PHARMACECUTICAL COMPOUNDING IN AMERICAN TODAY

Compounding pharmacies create a particular pharmaceutical product to fit the unique needs of a patient. To do this compounding pharmacists combine or process appropriate ingredients that create a medication really for one particular person, or a select number of people. The process is quite amazing to me, and a wonderful innovation to the science of medicine.

 

However one must understand that doctors, pharmacists, and scientists are doing nothing more than practicing their trade, or didn’t you ever see a sign in a doctors off that stated that the doctor was nothing more than a journeyman practitioner of medicine, or to put it more bluntly, an Artisan of the medical profession…..and if you don’t know what an artisan is…..ya better look it up.

 

This is real simple…..I like it that way, what if I went over to Theresa Hall’s house and re-roofed it, and six months later it was leaking all over the place. What exactly do you think Theresa Hall would want from me, well I’ll tell you, a quick repair…..or her money back so she could get a better roofer to re-roof her house.

 

What the hell, I’m just a practicing roofer, can’t I be covered by the same silly laws that protect a Pharmaceutical Compounding Company, I mean fair is fair, my bum roof job didn’t cost her a hundred grand and leave her with a $6,400 drug habit, I only soggied her couch and living room rug.

 

Wait…..I know the difference between New England Compounding and  my roofing business…..lobbyists, I don’t have any.

HAVE A NICE DAY!