Drug Making’s Move Abroad Stirs Concerns Response

I learned that United States relies on other countries to make our prescription medications. China and India play a huge part in our pharmaceutical industry. The price to make drugs is higher in the US because researchers research domestic plants more than foreign ones. When really the foreign plants are what make a lot of our medication. And if China ever stopped supplying the United States with ingredients to make our medication, and the antibiotics that they make, then we would be in a lot of trouble. A lot of people would die, and the United States would be in huge debt.

Drug Making’s Move Abroad Stirs Concerns

-in 2004 a major antibiotics plant closed down.
-the focus was the job loss that had happened
-experts are worrying that the US is relying on too many drugs that are made out of the country
-and that certain drugs need to be made in the US
-years ago most pills consumed were made in the US
-drugs plants had to move out of country because of labor costs, mostly in Asia because the environmental costs are lower over there than in the US
-most ingredients in antibiotics are now made in India and China
-also a lot of other important medicine including blood pressure pills, diabetes, and popular allergy pills
-out of 1,154 pharmaceutical plants 39% were in India, 43% in China, and only 13% in the US
- some medicines that are made are lifesaving
- half of all the Americans takes daily prescriptions
-there was an industrial-scale production of penicillin, which is an important building block for 2 different kinds of antibiotics
-in the beginning of the 1980's China bought a huge amount of penicillin
-the reason it is more expensive to make the drugs in the US is because the F.D.A researches domestic plants more than foreign ones
-Bush spent over $50 billion after the 2001 anthrax attacks, to protect the country from bioterrorism
- some of that money went to the increase of domestic manufacturing of flu vaccines
- if we did have a flu pandemic then the US wouldn't be able to survive with the supply shortages
-in the 1918 flu pandemic scientist found that most of the people who died, died of bacterial infections, not viral ones
- the centers for disease control and prevention has enough drugs for 40 million people
- if China stopped supplying pharmaceutical ingredients then the pharmaceutical industry would collapse