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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| It's strange that back in the fall there was one story after another in every country that Big Pharma was finished with antibiotics. | |
| No more research on new drugs to replace those that bacteria have developed resistance. | |
| And they were going to focus solely on viruses and vaccines. | |
| It was strange enough that they would declare they were no longer even concerned about controlling bacterial infections. | |
| What you may not have noticed is the skyrocketing price and limited availability of doxycycline, a common antibiotic. | |
| Oxycycline is often prescribed in the early stages of exposure to Lyme disease, as a prophylactic for malaria, as a follow-up to dental work, and many other uses. | |
| And a prescription that used to cost $4 to $5 now costs between $160 and $200, if you | |
| can find a supply. | |
| There was an abrupt spike in cost about a year ago. | |
| The LA Times reported on it. | |
| Then a couple of months later, the CDC pointed out that there was a shortage. | |
| But after a year, the price is still holding firm at about a 50-fold increase. | |
| If there were a free market, a competitive free market, in generic drugs, companies would enter the market, increase supply to take advantage of the higher price, and the price would go down. | |
| But not in the consolidated cartel of pharmaceuticals. | |
| And it's not a case of restricting generics in order to drive people to new, more expensive drugs. | |
| In this case, they're not interested in providing new antibiotics. | |
| So when a commonly used drug increases 40 to 50 times in a price spike and stays there, the question is, is the pharmaceutical cartel simply price gouging? | |
| Or is this a part of a push to get people to buy more medical insurance? | |
| Or is it something more sinister, like are they removing all antibiotics to intentionally leave the population helpless to a superbug, or to a weaponized bacterial outbreak? | |
| Whatever's behind this, antibiotics have been overprescribed, they've been misused with livestock, and now we have strains that are created that are drug-resistant, and the response of the pharmaceuticals is to gouge people on price and abandon research. |
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