President Nicolas Sarkozy has promised “the most complete transparency” on how a drug which is now suspected to have killed up to 2,000 people was officially approved, and subsidised, for 33 years by the French health service.
Despite repeated warnings from scientists in France and abroad, the Mediator drug was prescribed to 5,000,000 French people, originally to fight diabetes and later as an appetite-suppressing, slimming pill. A report from the French health inspectorate, due in mid-January, will investigate why successive French health ministers, of the left and right, failed to heed advice that the drug – produced by the French pharmaceutical giant, Servier – was at best useless, and at worst highly dangerous.”
Hmmm, I wonder if that would have happened in a free market where people were encouraged to choose their provider and be well-informed about their options. I suppose, though, this might be the lazy consequence of when government gets in bed with corporations and legislates their interests. When healthcare was being passed, I was naturally most concerned about the atrophying of rights and choices. With this French news, though, I wonder if the age of watchdogs be trounced as well! Will programs like Obamacare manifest in a similar sense of apathy and an acceptance of government choices? Will we have headlines like the French in thirty years?
Seemingly more importantly to the press, Lady Gaga was shopping pant-less in Paris earlier this week.
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Comments
When government gets in bed with the pharmaceutical companies & maybe even healthcare providers. Yep, this is what to expect and much more. Great timing by the way with the recent announcement that Obama has brought back the Death panels with even more regulations then before. Sorry Mildred, your too old to be saved. Thumbs down.
You have a good point. When the government is the primary – or only – watchdog responsible for health and safety and other good things, safety is an illusion. People may make the lazy assumption that everything is being looked after for them but it is not necessarily so. Worse, the single point of failure can damage thousands or even millions of people who would have been better protected by a more open, free market system.