WhatWouldBantingAndBest(AndMacleodAndCollip)
DoVille
In addition to our economy, we here in Canada might want to consider utilizing Trumpian fear mongering as a lever to help us diversify all kinds of things.
Including our prescription drug supply.
Heckfire, we could start with insulin which, in case you missed it, we actually
discovered.Colleen Fuller, writing at for the CCPA explains why -
the following is her lede:Insulin was discovered by four Canadians, who famously sold the patent for $1 each to the University of Toronto—enabling the public manufacture of the new miracle drug for people with diabetes. That was in 1921, and for 65 years insulin was produced in Canada at a publicly owned laboratory—Connaught Laboratories—and distributed across the country at prices near the cost of production.
In 1972, the University of Toronto sold Connaught to the federal government. By the 1980s it had grown to become a major supplier of medicines and vaccines, and Canadians had one of the lowest overall drug bills among developed nations. That all changed when the Conservatives were elected in 1984.
In his first budget speech, Michael Wilson, the new finance minister, announced that “Crown Corporations with a commercial value but no ongoing public policy purpose will be sold.” That included Connaught, which was privatized a year later and bought by what is now Sanofi, based in Paris. Ten years later, Canada was no longer producing a single drop of insulin...
And why can't we just fall back on the three multinationals that have pretty much cornered the insulin market?
For all the usual reasons of purely profit-driven capriciousness.
Here's just one example from Ms. Fuller's piece:
...Canada, where about 640,000 people rely on insulin, is also vulnerable to corporate decision-making and the lack of a more interventionist national regulator. Between 1995 and 2006, Novo and Lilly withdrew over 30 different types of insulin from Canada, most of them from animal sources. In 2003, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health conducted two days of hearings on the issue after hundreds of people from across the country demanded the government intervene. Alarmed officials at Health Canada acknowledged that a subset of people with diabetes were unable to safely use any kind of human or analogue insulin and must have access to animal-sourced products. Some among these experience serious autoimmune reactions and their lives are at stake.
In the glare of ongoing publicity, the federal government arranged for an Indian manufacturer, Wockhardt, to supply Canada with animal insulin from its manufacturing facility in Wales. But in March the company announced it will no longer be providing insulin to Canadians who need it, leaving this vulnerable population at high risk...
So.
Let's start making our own insulin so that we can take care of our citizenry while raising our heads even higher when super-fine Trumpinistas like Mr. Howard Lutnick
call us socialists for doing so.
OK?
.
