American Thinker: Concern over China’s territorial, military, and economic aggressiveness has been building over the past decade as the country is increasingly perceived as a threat to the United States, U.S. Asian allies, and the West. In China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine (Prometheus Books, 2018), authors Rosemary Gibson and Janardan Prasad Singh explore yet another peril: China as the largest global supplier of ingredients for many prescription drugs, over-the-counter products, and vitamins.
In their alarming book, the authors report how China has become the largest supplier of the active ingredient in aspirin and acetaminophen, present in more than 600 over-the-counter and prescription medicines. China is also the dominant global supplier for the essential ingredients to make penicillin and for vitamin C, used in vitamin supplements, cereals, soda, and hamburger buns. It is also the largest exporter of medical devices, with close to 20,000 products for sale.
They argue that because of this, China represents a grave threat to the U.S. and its strategic position in the world. American jobs, businesses, and national security and the general health and welfare of its citizens are compromised as the U.S. increasingly loses control of the supply of critical medicines, drug ingredients, and even medical devices. The loss of manufacturing capability and U.S. dependence on a single source could result in manipulative shortages as critical drugs are withheld for a political or economic quid pro quo. American consumers could become the victims of price manipulations and compromises in product efficacy and quality.
Gibson and Singh begin their book explaining that drug manufacturing has changed dramatically in the past two to three decades, with China achieving primary global supplier status. Part of that rise, according to the authors, occurred after Chinese companies dumped penicillin ingredients on the global market in 2004, forcing Western countries, who couldn’t compete on price, out of business. Eventually, China instituted a major price increase on these vital ingredients.
In 2005, Chinese firms allegedly created an artificial shortage of vitamin C in the U.S. by restricting production and exports. A class action suit, with overwhelming evidence of collusion presented at trial, resulted in an eight-year battle that found Chinese companies guilty of conspiring to fix prices. China was ordered to pay $162 million in damages to U.S. firms. The Chinese government, which has investigated U.S.-based companies for antitrust violations in the sale of drugs in China, appealed the decision under the pretext that the U.S. was interfering with China’s sovereignty and its laws that set minimum export prices and production targets.
The authors also explore the role of U.S. drug companies in China’s pharmaceutical dominance, citing the lack of transparency in drug labeling, which enables drug companies to hide the country of origin of active ingredients. Typically, a domestic pharmaceutical company will source drug components from other countries and manufacture the finished product in the U.S., thereby earning a “Made in America” label and avoiding full disclosure to patients. more
I think we’ve been dependent on India for meds for quite a while now.
Can’t wait for the carcinogen laced fentanyl.
That’s right. Ladies, check your pill container for counterfeit vitamin C’s that sit in your Chinese pleather makeup bag, inside your Gucchey handbag.
Get your vitamins from food and screw those ‘made in America’ *Wink wink* pills.
If your vitamins are in a formula inside your rx meds, well, that may be a problem. How do you get a manufacturer to tell the truth?
Market economy with commie ethics. What’s not to trust? At least the Soviets were disastrously consistent with the Communism.
@MJA – you have to trust the vitamin seller to use high-tech lab equipment (like gas chromatography) to verify that the ascorbic acid (the chemical name for vitamin C) they are using is pure. It looks like almost 95% of ascorbic acid is manufactured in China while the US only manufactures 1%. The good news is that the US could ramp up pretty quickly to produce a lot of these things if necessary as the chemical formulae are known and the manufacturing process is relatively simple.
The problem with getting vitamin C from food is that only a few foods contain it and they don’t contain a whole lot of it. Oranges are considered one of the richest sources of vitamin C in nature, but an orange only contains about 60 mg of vitamin C – so you’d have to eat 8 oranges a day to get close to 500 mg of vitamin C. The body needs a couple of thousand mg daily for all the things that vitamin C does in the body (anti-oxidant, collagen production, build hydrogen peroxide in the bloodstream as part of the immune system, etc.). I find it a lot easier to take a couple of 1,000 mg tablets than trying to eat 30 plus oranges everyday LOL,
I personally use Puritan’s Pride, Swanson’s Vitamins or NOW Foods for vitamins for the most part. Your point is taken though ……. never buy vitamins at the dollar store because you really don’t know what you might be getting other than it is probably cheap chinese shit.
Their Meds, their Food, their Products – they all suck, and are created to undermine infrastructure and health. Ask why a furnace or heat pump only lasts 10 years and the answer is China. Whoever runs that place should be choked to his expiration date.
Do NOT blame China. Blame the American Trial Lawyers.
Don’t blame the American Trial Lawyers. Blame American Manufacturers that continually loosen specs so their quality department will accept really cheap shit. Watched that happen many times.
Funny thing about Chinese opiates: take one, and an hour later you’re hungry for more.
Bubba’s Brother- I just imagined an IV drip full of OJ.
I’m not really worried for myself as I refuse to take any vitamins. I can’t tolerate any of them. Not even C.
But zinc is important in producing some medicines, as an example.
You never know who the manufacturer is getting it from. I doubt they’re going to let me sit in while they’re cooking it. lol.
MJA – there is a lot of bad stuff coming from China in the medical supply chain that we know of (how much we don’t know is what is scary). About 10 years ago, they “substituted” a much cheaper, counterfeit substance for the blood thinner “heparin” for a US medial supplier (the drug was mostly used for heart surgeries). Dozens of people died from it and hundreds were seriously sickened by it. Naturally, the FDA denied any responsibility and basically covered it up (it wasn’t a big story in the mainstream press).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_heparin_adulteration
There were also several reports of brand-name prescription drugs that had impurities in them like wood fibers and metal shavings from the machinery used to make them, along with various other debris including insect parts. Again, the FDA protected the drug companies claiming that they simply didn’t have the funds to do inspections in foreign countries (and of course they didn’t make the drug companies accountable for such lousy manufacturing practices).
It really is a long standing and continuing problem for a number of reasons. I think some of the vitamin manufacturers do better testing of the raw materials than the drug companies (most of the vitamin “powders” used to make pills / tablets are imported from China by drug companies). The drug companies have already paid off the FDA for protection …….. the vitamin manufacturers have no such protection and are always held more accountable for any bad products, so the better vitamin companies do more stringent testing.
You’d think that someone would have learned a lesson after all the pets that were killed by their “pet food” garbage!
Gilroy , California is the garlic capital, yet supermarkets buy garlic grown in China sewer farms.