Bill would toughen compounding pharmacy oversight

The Food and Drug Administration would have greater oversight over large volume compounding pharmacies like the Massachusetts company that triggered a deadly meningitis outbreak, under federal legislation winning bipartisan support.

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, the Democratic chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, said Wednesday that the bill calls for an “unprecedented tracing system that will track prescription drugs from manufacturing to distribution.”

The FDA would be able to monitor the pharmacies much the way they regulate drug-makers, including through inspections. The system would replace what critics say is the existing patchwork of federal regulations over the pharmacies. …

What the public doesn’t yet understand is that contaminated drugs are the result of draconian regulations that limit free market competition. By restricting drug making to only those controlled by incompetent bureaucrats, the inevitable result will be shortages, poor quality, and high prices.

As I write this article, one of the challenges in dealing with the NECC catastrophe is that there may be new shortages of injectable drugs because there are not enough drug factories in the US to meet patient demand. Shortages create opportunities for unsavory companies to dump even greater amounts of overpriced and contaminated drugs into the bodies of unsuspecting victims.

This kind of problem would not continue in a free market, but ever-increasing regulations are exacerbating the problems of drug shortages, deadly manufacturing practices, and obscenely high prices.

You’ll read in this month’s issue about the quality-control standards we at Life Extension insist on. Unlike those involved in pharmaceutical manufacturing, I and most everyone else at Life Extension consume these nutrients ourselves and would never tolerate the deplorable conditions that exist in certain American drug factories today.

For longer life,

William Faloon