NOTES IN THE NEWS
them ("humane: kind, tender, merciful, considerate"): % Plague (the frightful Black Death of the Middle Ages). % Anthrax ("ulcerations of the skin, enlargement of spleen, general...
...Anthrax ("ulcerations of the skin, enlargement of spleen, general collapse...
...The Senate investigation into the high cost of tranquilizers—now the most prescribed drugs in the United States—followed closely the lines of its earlier inquiry into cortisone and other drugs, discussed here in last month's issue...
...Foreign Policy vs...
...And the great propaganda power of "germ warfare" in foreign policy should be indelibly impressed on American minds after the considerable success of the false Communist charges against us in the Korean War...
...Carter licenses American Home Products to sell the same drug—at the identical price—under the trade name Equanil...
...the Military Representative Kastenmeier is attempting to prevent the Army from gaining exclusive control of this Pandora's box of miseries through a resolution now before the House...
...But it is the patient who foots the bill many times over...
...Nor does it soothe the nerves to know that in France you could buy the same medicine for eighty per cent less...
...KJohn Blair, Anti-Trust Subcommittee economist, estimates Carter's profits at the astronomical figure of fifty-five per cent of net worth...
...And the retail price hits as high as fifteen times basic production costs as huge profits, $140,000 a year salaries, million dollar stock option bonuses, and ultra-generous retirement pensions are piled on top of a basically plentiful, inexpensive product that has become an important element in modern day medicine...
...The price pyramids as the druggist adds his normal percentage markup to an already inflated cost...
...Much of the promotion expense involves what one drug executive calls "aggressive communications"—a Madison Avenue term which, translated, means convincing the doctor, by personal call, by mail, and by elaborate clambakes, that he should prescribe a particular brand name drug rather than another, though they are identical...
...The company disputes this, but admits to the still tidy sum of forty-three per cent...
...And it is not content to develop them as last ditch defensive weapons, but rather is pushing hard for a green light to use them first, as offensive weapons, whether an enemy resorts to them or not...
...The Wall Street Journal ventures the opinion that "there is no apparent evidence the drug companies are considering any significant changes . . . ." But in the midst of the uproar, the Justice Department slapped an anti-trust suit against Carter Products for "competitive" bidding on a government contract that matched American Home Products' bid to the thousandth of a cent...
...It is clearly a foreign policy matter involving also our whole political philosophy . . . not merely one of military tactics...
...The drug firms defend this practice as necessary education of the doctor, who learns about new drugs, they say, from the drug salesman...
...The same patterns of monopoly, enormous profits, and fantastic sales and advertising costs were revealed...
...This was proved dramatically by the testimony of Myron Panzer, president of Panray Corporation...
...Some doctors agree, some disagree...
...The investigation continues, and what will come of it (besides more sales of tranquilizers) is anybody's guess...
...This is a modest enough goal, considering the universal loathing of the peoples of the world for the use of these deadly weapons under any conditions...
...Fortunately, there are still clear heads who see the issue in its true perspective...
...The resolution would reaffirm our traditional policy forbidding the use of chemical or germ warfare unless first used by an enemy against the United States...
...Nazi Threat In Germany Harry Golden, the affable editor of the fabulous Carolina Israelite, says that anti-Semitism really started 75,000 years ago, long before there were any Jews, when a man shifted a wearisome burden from one shoulder to another and sighed, "Ah, what a relief...
...The President replied that he had asked the Defense Department— not the State Department—to review the matter...
...f Acute brucellosis ("long-persist ing, characterized by an undu lating fever, profuse perspira tion, pain and swelling in the joints...
...He told of selling resperine, one of the major tranquilizers, at $6.25 wholesale for one thousand tablets...
...This is the chamber of horrors the Army is trying to sell the Administration, Congress, and the American people...
...Are we now to adopt the very policy which so discredited us—falsely—in the eyes of so much of the Oriental world...
...This is why Kastenmeier reported he was "puzzled" by a letter from President Eisenhower in response to his request that the President restrain the demands of the Defense Department...
...Promotion and sales costs run from one-fourth to one-third of gross sales...
...f Carter Products, Inc., holds the patent on the drug meprobamate, sold under its own trade name, Mil-town...
...In the House, Kastenmeier's resolution was referred to the Foreign Affairs Committee...
...Tularemia, Q fever, encephalitis, dysentery, and glanders, and others unnamed for "security" reasons...
...A Pill By Any Other Name . . . If you are one of the millions of Americans who each year consume a grand total of two billion Miltown and Equanil tranquilizers, you were probably not calmed by the news emanating from Senator Estes Kefauver's Anti-Trust Subcommittee hearings that you are paying more than ten cents for a pill produced at a cost of less than a penny...
...To escape responsibility, to shift the blame, to find a scapegoat, Golden is saying, is as old as man, and in Westehi-Christian culture, the...
...In comparison, the automobile industry, which is no slouch in the advertising game, spends about two per cent of its gross sales income...
...What puzzles me," said Kastenmeier, "is that the matter should be left to the Defense Department...
...The druggist pays $100 for the identical tablets under the trade name Serpasil, produced by a firm which employes an army of men to canvass physicians, persuading them to prescribe drugs bearing the Serpasil brand name...
...Thus Carter has a complete monopoly of the American market...
Vol. 24 • March 1960 • No. 3
