
In China, Desperate Patients Smuggle Drugs or Make Their Own - shalmanese
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/11/business/china-drugs-smuggled-homemade.html
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contingencies
I used to run an outbound medical tourism consultancy in China. Another NYT
China hitpiece. Fact: This is not limited to China, it is a global phenomenon
driven by the extreme profiteering of big pharma. I have personally seen
medical systems in other countries leak legitimate medicines on the open
market through fake 'patients' at hospitals. In addition: China has WAY more
drug companies than any other country, and largely freer distribution. You can
often purchase foreign medicine in China without issue. India has stood up to
the status quo with its forward-looking stance on generics. European big-
pharma has been extremely vicious in the deployment of propaganda throughout
Asia to discourage generics and off-label, and has been assisted in this
endeavor by the French state.

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jjcc
The movie mentioned in the report triggered a lot of discussions online. One
question that troubled many Chinese was: Why Chinese need to smuggle cheap
drugs instead of producing their own equivalent. The difference is obviously
the IP cost of drugs owned by the big pharma because Chinese companies have
the capability to produce the drugs. Then why China can not violate those IPs
while India can? A popular explanation by some experts was: A US company had a
disastrous accident in the 80's caused thousands of Indians death and blind.
So US never put a pressure on India government to enforce the IP laws. But
China is different. There's no way to have a scalable drug production without
violate those drug IPs.

I don't know the explaination is accurate or not.

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throwaway423443
Bhopal incident. It's easily one of the worth industrial accidents in the
world, and the then PM whisked Union Carbide's head out of India, instead of
prosecuting his firm for the cleanup. That hasn't stopped the Americans from
lobbying though.

China routinely violates tech IPs by Americans' own reporting; I'm surprised
as to why they'd not do the same for drugs.

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jjcc
Here's very interesting difference of 2 cases about the statement "China
violated many US IPs":

1.US IPs are violated in China. 2.Chinese government deliberately let Chinese
companies violate US IPs.

They are not the same meaning. But media mislead Western audience to believe
the second version by some tricky narrative and hide partial truth. The real
situation is more complicated

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CamTin
Nothing happens in big business in China without a stamp of approval from
Beijing. The reverse is true in the US, where Washington politicians need
their report card signed by business interests, but it amounts to the same
thing: there is no meaningful reason to distinguish between business elites
and political elites in either system.

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remote_phone
Sadly, the Chinese government has less incentive to let the poor survive. It’s
a cold, heartless form of population control. There are government officials
who have come to the conclusion that delaying or not providing drugs for
things like cancer will eventually help keep the country stable financially.
In a country the size of China, they simply can’t afford to let everyone live
to 85.

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charlysl
Denying medical treatment was used as a form of torture in the Mao years:

 _Liu Shaoqi was a Chinese revolutionary, politician, and theorist. He was
Chairman of the NPC ... Originally groomed as Mao 's successor, Liu
antagonized him in the early 1960s before the .... He was denied medicine for
his diabetes, by then a long-term illness, and for pneumonia, which he
developed after his arrest._

~~~
helloindia
Its also used now. That's why many dissidents die from lack of medical care in
Prison. [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/world/asia/liu-xiaobo-
med...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/world/asia/liu-xiaobo-medical-care-
dissidents.html)

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averros
That's what you get if your governments give monopoly on making drugs to huge
corporations. Patens and enormously costly "approvals" (rather than strict
liability) are the root of the problem.

~~~
Scoundreller
I don't think we'd have 99% of these novel clinical compounds if it weren't
for patents.

As for approvals, I don't know why we have each country doing its own
approvals, instead of international groups that individuals can choose whether
they want to trust or not. Are Europeans sufficiently different than Chinese,
Indians, Australians, Canadians, Germans or Americans to warrant independent
safety approvals?

If they're using different metrics to process approvals, why? Shouldn't the
same inputs result in the same outputs?

~~~
refurb
Well, considering the US avoided the thalidomide tragedy because they decided
approval in Europe was t good enough, you’re unlikely to see a scenario where
it gets approved simply because someone else approved it.

~~~
baud147258
The thalidomide tragedy didn't happen in France too, because of a new law
adding stricter controls on drugs.

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SlowRobotAhead
>”You just hope the sellers have a conscience.”

Yeah, having dealt with Chinese vendors and mfgs for years that is a scary
scenario. The whole culture of trust / fairness / honesty is very different
from the west.

Dealt with our products being knocked off for years, wouldn’t want to buy
cancer meds ever!

~~~
stcredzero
_Yeah, having dealt with Chinese vendors and mfgs for years that is a scary
scenario._

I've met contractors who did extensive work for businessmen in the US, who
then turned around and told the contractor, "You want to be paid? Sue me!"

 _The whole culture of trust / fairness / honesty is very different from the
west._

Is it really that different? There are some people who are good and some
people who end up being opportunistic in evil ways. The more I learn about
differences across cultures, the more I conclude that the differences are
always ones of degree, and the differences are made more visible due to the
cultural contrasts. That said, is there more rule of law and enforcement
around IP issues in the west than in China? I suspect that's also true.

 _Dealt with our products being knocked off for years, wouldn’t want to buy
cancer meds ever!_

There are also people in the west who aren't above faking treatments for
cancer.

~~~
justicezyx
Being Chinese myself, I can say the moral standard of normal Chinese are more
bipolar than western world.

Some are incredibly kind and fair.

Some are incredibly immoral, who can be viewed as demon incarnations. See
example like this:
[https://www.zhihu.com/question/53610601](https://www.zhihu.com/question/53610601)
(manufacture human monster slave to use as worker as fake beggar)

~~~
stcredzero
_Some are incredibly kind and fair._

 _Some are incredibly immoral, who can be viewed as demon incarnations._

You can find comparable extremes in all places.

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justicezyx
Sure, as I mention, it's more.

The example I cite here is well-knwon, and yet it exists still today.

Can you imagine western countries allow this to happen regularly?

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stcredzero
As time goes on, people adjust to the rule of law and societal standards. What
happens in the west is that the "optics" are far better. Much of the
corruption remains, however. Unfortunately, I think that's baked into reality
and human nature.

~~~
justicezyx
No objections.

Just to point out the status-quo.

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syntaxing
Does anyone know which site they are talking about in the article ('Dances
with Cancer' and "I want miracles")?

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yadongwen
They are yuaigongwu and 51qiji. They have helped numerous patients in China.
To be fair, they are mostly patient forums helping each other and most of the
medicine for cancer can be purchased with discount in China. They are less
expensive than the US but still expensive which is why some poorer patients
are seeking alternatives/self made medicine.

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syntaxing
Thanks! Do you know who "Bean Spirit" is? I was going to guess 豆神 but not sure
since spirit can be a lot of words.

~~~
yadongwen
憨豆精神 if you know chinese.. He was legendary and inspired many ppl including
me. Sadly he passed away last year.

~~~
syntaxing
Thank you! Such a shame to hear. I will definitely browse the site to read
about his legacy.

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lenkite
This will be the normal state in India too if we buckle to US lobbying and
capitalist pressure. There is _extraordinary_ and continuous (every-day)
compulsion on Indian diplomats, trade officials and politicians to keep
expanding the scope of the Patents Act, reduce the scope of generics, and
decrease the 'innovation threshold' of what can be patented so as to allow
continuous ever-greening of drugs. I am not confident that the Indian
government can withstand this in the long term.

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gegtik
As opposed to the US,

~~~
chithanh
In the US, people need not resort to smuggling. Rather, they consume drugs
intended for non-human animals.

[https://mashable.com/2017/08/06/fish-antibiotics-america-
hea...](https://mashable.com/2017/08/06/fish-antibiotics-america-healthcare/)

