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Big Pharma: Scariest Thing This Halloween


Imagine you are sitting in the clinic with your four-year-old child. Now imagine your child has cancer. Something that is not only earth shattering but overwhelming.


Now, imagine that your doctor comes in and tells you your child can't have the medicine they need because there is a shortage. Imagine that your child can't have the medication because the doctors have to start rationing it. Because this backbone of medication is on backorder because a big company decided to stop making it.


Welcome to the reality that thousands are facing today. Vincristine is a needed medication in childhood cancer cure rates. There are no substitutions for this medication either. This is where the issue is, there is no substitute and no way to speed up the process for this life saving medication that many are now without.


Pfizer is the one that is trying to make up for the shortage left behind by Teva. The company, Teva, is the one who stopped making Vincristine in early July and have not made any comments about why they did. With only two manufacturers making this drug having just one stop it leads to this shortage despite Pfizer's best efforts.


The issue that this brings up is where is the compassion for these children. It isn't as if there are just a few hundred no, there are 19,000 children that need this medication. That is a number that is even hard to fathom. 19,000 children are going to suffer because of big pharma. Do the people in these big companies not think about the lives that are at risk? Do they not think that the lives they are risking matter? When I imagine these people in the office it is hard to think they are human. Yet that is exactly what they are. Humans who have made the choice to not make this life saving drug over money. So, where is the humanity here?


I'm afraid that the human part of the equation just doesn't exist. Not when it comes to money. This is the sad truth. There are children that are going to go without this drug.


A young boy, age four, is going through treatment for leukemia. His mother states "he will have to go every 12 weeks instead of 4 due to this shortage." Now tell me how someone fighting leukemia has the time to wait that long between doses? Truth is, they don't. They don't have that time and yet many are already going to have to face this fact.


Cancer is already scary, this just made it worse.


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