Sunday, March 05, 2006

The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Tamiflu

I was surprised to hear that the US government was planning on moving forward with stockpiling of tamiflu.

The U.S. government ordered 12.4 million courses of the antiviral drug Tamiflu from Roche Holding AG and 1.75 million of Relenza from GlaxoSmithKline Plc, raising the country's stockpile to almost 20 million courses of treatment. The government's pandemic readiness plan calls for enough Tamiflu to treat one in four Americans, or about 75 million people.

But Dr. Koop reports:
Tamiflu and Relenza ... appear to be ineffective against seasonal flu outbreaks and should only be used in the event of a serious epidemic or pandemic, the study authors report in the Jan. 19 online edition of The Lancet.

And even in the context of an epidemic or pandemic, these medications may simply not be enough on their own, the researchers say.

In other words, they may help. But so might chicken soup and hot lemonade my mother's favorite).

The financial magazines think the stockpiling is the greatest news to hit in a while. I'm sure Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is thrilled, but I'm not sure the world health organizations are as happy about spending this money on a drug that may or may not help.

Since people don't have a defense against bird flu it is a dire threat. But since very few cases of species jumping have occured, and none show a predeliction of jumping human to human, I'm more worried about getting the vaccine industry in general up and running better. So let's quit making the rich richer, and make the people healthier.


posted by don1one @ 7:25 PM

1 Comments:

At 1:55 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

My name is Mike Conlin and i would like to show you my personal experience with Tamiflu.

I am 26 years old. Have been on Tamiflu for 5 days now. This stuff ROCKS. I was running a 104 Fever ... felt like I was doing to die, was snapping at everyone, etc. I got home and took my first dose along with a dose of Robotussin for my cough. I woke up 3 hours later and my fever dropped from 103.7 to 99.3. It fluctuated a little after that but remained under 100. Body Aches were gone. I was sweating like a mad man but that was probably the fever breaking.

I have experienced some of these side effects-
Mild nausea .. almost puked on first dose. Also had mental fog going on. Concentration was difficult but my doctor forwarned me it makes you 'loopy'.

I hope this information will be useful to others,
Mike Conlin

 

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