Untreatable Form Of TB

by Stephanie Nebehay - Jun 22, 2007 - Reuters

Up to 30,000 have new untreatable form of TB: WHO

GENEVA (Reuters) - A new, untreatable form of tuberculosis is striking up to 30,000 people a year, the World Health Organization said on Friday, and warned it could spark an "apocalyptic scenario" if unchecked.

For the last 40 years, democrats have been waging a fairly successful battle to destroy America's pharmaceutical industry. Through the campaign to make generic drugs cheaper, they have wiped out most of the generic drug manufacturers. Through their campaign to restrict profits on patented drugs, they have driven mergers which have reduced the number of new drugs coming to market. It seems the consequences of the democrat's war on the pharmaceutical industry has been to exacerbate every problem they have attempted to correct.

Jimmy Carter learned the same lesson back in the 70s when he tried to reduce gasoline prices and instead drove them to record levels. Government controls rarely work. They usually produce the opposite of the intended consequence.

What is frightening about this article is the knowledge that untreatable TB is just one of a number of serious health problems that only a strong pharmaceutical industry can fix. The same problem is evident with the strains of HIV-AIDS in Africa for which we have no drug regimens. It has become common to think that AIDS is under control. It isn't. The next surge in AIDS cases will return to a period of massive death because of the lack of drugs.

The solution proposed by democrats is to punish the drug companies for making money off the existing drugs and to discourage the companies from investing in research on the strains for which no drugs exist. How is this supposed to help?

There is a looming health crisis caused by the willingness of many to focus on supposed excessive drug profits. When they or a loved one are dying of some untreatable disease, they will be equally willing to curse the drug companies for not having a drug that will save them. They will never connect their current opposition to drug profits to the lack of research that will kill them.

It just seems bizarre to me that having wiped out 90% of the generic drug companies and more than half of the major drug research companies is not considered to be the result of the governments efforts by democrats who legislated the efforts. Anyone with a brain could see that it is.