Shortages are Getting Worse-- the "New Normal"

In an odd way, I was pleased to see a report on NPR on October 3, 2011 that the drug shortages are worse than initially reported. I have been shouting "the sky is falling" since August, very concerned about the shortages affecting drugs like carboplatin, cisplatin and taxol, which are mainline treatments for several cancers (including taxol for  the ubiquitous Pinks who should join our bandwagon during Breast Cancer Month). The NPR report emphasized that there appears to be only a month's supply left of taxol at Mass General, a major U.S. hospital.

The NPR report also shone a light on the fact that these shortages, now up to 213 drugs, do not just affect people with relatively rare cancers or just people with cancer in general. The shortages include anesthetics, IV propofol used for intubation when someone cannot breathe,  injectable antibiotics such as streptomycin,and norepinephrine and labetalol  which regulate emergency cases of  low and high blood pressure respectively.  So these shortages may affect any of you (or me if I develop other health problems) and  most likely in an emergency setting when you rely on hospitals and medical personnel having the medications necessary to keep you alive.

And more important, as I pointed out in The Real Death Panels?, the shortages are leading to rationing--by the drug manufacturers like Ben Venue who are using an allocation system of only providing Doxil to a limited subset of those who already were in treatment with it, and by the hospitals or infusion centers who are deciding who more critically needs the drug.  (see my blog post Drug Shortages, Ethics and the Scramble to Stay Alive)  For example, as the 10/3/11 NPR report states, hospitals are taking from some patients to give to others.

One reason that Kevin Zakhar [a fifteen year old boy] hasn't been able to get the calcium solution he needs is that hospitals have been reserving it for patients who need it even more desperately than he does. 

Kathy Gura, a pharmacist at Children's Hospital in Boston, points to one of those patients, a tiny infant born only 23 weeks past conception, as premature as a baby can be and still survive. And he wouldn't have survived without the same kind of IV feeding that Kevin Zahkar gets.

Gura and caregivers at other hospitals say they have had to divert scarce electrolytes from other children and adults to save the lives of fragile preemies. Gura calls it "robbing Peter to pay Paul."

See also here for a discussion of one breast cancer fighter's experience with drug rationing.

And as shortages of one drug occur, other substitute drugs have increased demand which then can lead to their shortages.  No relief seems to be in sight.  As NPR says, drug shortages are "the new normal".  My reaction continues to be: how can that be possible in the United States which is known for innovation in science and medication development?  How can it be possible in any civilized society-- to leave your most vulnerable citizens without needed medications?