China Owns Our Drugs

This from Joseph Bast:

" Mansour noted how the coronavirus outbreak in China has exposed America’s dangerous dependence on Chinese production of pharmaceutical and medical supplies, including an estimated 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed for domestic drug production.” But this is the result of "free trade,” so I guess we can’t object.

Expert: China Has ‘Global Chokehold’ on Medicine, Can Shut Down Our Pharmacies, Hospitals in Months

From the article:

China could effectively shut down America’s healthcare system within months given the one-party state’s "global chokehold” on the manufacturing of medicines and medical supplies, explained Rosemary Gibson, author ofChina Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine.

Gibson, senior adviser at the Hastings Center, offered her remarks on Thursday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host Ed Martin.

Mansour notedhow the coronavirus outbreak in China has exposed America’s dangerous dependence on Chinese production of pharmaceutical and medical supplies, including an estimated 97 percent of all antibiotics and 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed for domestic drug production.

A word from Tim:

America's out of control legal system has made it too expensive for American companies to produce antibiotics. Research and development costs are very high, and then they may be disapproved by the FDA in the end. And if they ARE approved and there turn out to be side effects the trial lawyers will sue the drug companies into oblivion. So the drug companies concentrate on drugs that will make them money over the long term - pain killers, palliatives, anything that can be taken repeatedly. Antibiotics are good for one course of treatment and then (hopefully) not be used again, so there isn't enough money in pursuing research and manufacture of such drugs.

So China, with nothing to lose, is happy to do it for us. But there is a price to be paid for letting a rather unfriendly trade partner provide your needs.

Trade can be used as a weapon, and "free trade" can be a trap; it only works if both parties adhere to the rules and are fair and honest with each-other.

The Muslims used trade as a weapon, and it was quite effective for a long time. They embargoed spices and silks from China and the orient. Yes, the West eventually sent out ships to find new routes to the Orient, but it took centuries and in the meantime the Arabs had Europe over a barrel. If you wonder why the Europeans never really got behind the Crusades, or why they failed to launch new ones, it was because they could not afford to close the spice trade.

China could essentially close the Silk Road if it chose.

(I wonder; how many readers have read Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories?  Trade was a powerful weapon used by the Foundation to annex territory and colonize regions in those stories.)

At any rate, we have become way too dependent on trade, and that was by design. The internationalists wanted an interdependent world, and if you doubt that just look at Europe, which saw an economic Anschluss of the German and French economies after the Second World War. Now Europe is dying as a culture, and that because it threw away it's own distinction in a quixotic quest to comingle. And this was an archetype of what these people wanted for the whole world.

Remember when Madelein Albreight, Clinton's Secretary of State, bemoaned the fact the U.S. was the lone superpower on Earth? She was echoing the sentiment of the Foggy Bottom types, who believe that the way to peace is through world government and global socialist economics. You can't have a nation that is dominant in too many fields.

So they set out to create a counterweight to America, and they have used free trade to promote the Chinese as that counterweight. And they've succeeded. China is now capable of fighting us and possibly winning in a major war. And China has a strong hold on our economy via our lust for cheap goods. And we let China do things "Americans just won't do" - because our own government stifles us.

So now we are facing a medical situation and we have to buy our treatment from the Chinese. Great.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 10:54 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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