Blood Thinner Might Be Tied to More Deaths

[deminks]

Source: New York Times

Amid indications that more people may have died or been harmed after being given a brand of the blood thinner heparin, federal drug regulators said Thursday that they had found “potential deficiencies” at a Chinese plant that supplied much of the active ingredient for the drug.

Baxter International, which makes the brand of heparin associated with the problems, and buys supplies from the Chinese plant, announced that it was expanding a recall to include virtually all its heparin products. Though Baxter produces much of the heparin used in the United States, regulators said the other major supplier would be able to meet the demand.

The Food and Drug Administration said the number of deaths possibly associated with the drug, made from pig intestines, had risen to 21 from 4. But it cautioned that many of those patients were already seriously ill and that the drug might not have caused their deaths.

The F.D.A. emphasized that it had yet to identify the root cause of the problem, and that it had not concluded that the Chinese plant was responsible. The agency also said it was investigating two Chinese wholesalers — also called consolidators — that supplied crude heparin to the Chinese plant, Changzhou SPL, as well as those that sold raw ingredients to the consolidators.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/29/us/29heparin.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

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So, I repeat, globilization helps me how? (I am still waiting for an adequate answer.) Toys and lead were bad enough.

[dipsydoodle]

1. Toys and lead were bad enough

How about cars ? : http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3203892

[sybylla]

2. At least it wasn't any of those "dangerous" Canadian drugs...

I'd like to see the little Repiggies make that assertion again.

[wryter2000]

3. Right on

I remember Dr. Dean's response to those idjits who called Canadian medicines pond scum.

"Do you really believe Canadian parents give their children bad medicines?"

[Quakerfriend]

4. Obama or Hil would do well to speak to these kinds of

issues. The American people want answers.

I heard yesterday that dentists import most of their materials for making crowns etc from, you guest it...China- and, that this is now a concern. Having some of these toxins placed permanently in your mouth.:bounce:

I check the label on everything I buy now.

[salin]

5. and yet there goes McCain campaigning on the need for fewer regulations on corps

in his lower taxes rhetoric.

[Stargazer99]

6. Another reason we the people ought to tell business that

stuff will be made in America where we the people can control the safety of our goods. The worship of free trade and unbridled competiton is the root of the problem.

[TheMadMonk]

7. Problem with that approach is that it is exactly the same...

...sort of restriction, which limits your source of supplier.

Better approach would be to make them absolutely responsible for guaranteeing the safety of the product supplied, as if they'd produced the product themselves.