Joe Biden’s presidency has been marred by an incessant and ominous succession of failures, ranging from the border crisis and the pandemic to inflation and the debacle in Afghanistan. Even the mere act of climbing the stairs to Air Force One has been fraught with difficulty. The most concerning issue, however, is the unrelenting supply crisis, which has contributed to record inflation and made it difficult for Americans to obtain various necessities like groceries, baby formula, microchips, and cold medicine for children.
The supply chain crisis may not make headlines these days, but according to new reports, it’s about to get a lot worse. The disruption is creating a shortage of drugs used in cancer treatments, and this has medical experts concerned that the reduced availability of these drugs will have dire consequences.
Axios reports that the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists has indicated that shortages of crucial drugs are currently at their most severe in a decade. This has been attributed to a combination of quality control issues, the closure of specific manufacturing plants, and other manufacturing difficulties. The oncology drug sector has been particularly affected in recent months.
“This is a terrible crisis. We should be doing everything we can to give every single one of these patients the best chance of survival,” Laura Bray, a board member of the End Drug Shortages Alliance, told CNN.
Several medications, including methotrexate, cisplatin, and fluorouracil, which are crucial to cancer treatment, are facing severe shortages and are being rationed. Axios reported that the situation has become so dire that Pluvicto, a life-prolonging drug used to treat metastatic prostate cancer, has already run out, and it will take several months before it is replenished. Furthermore, BCG, a drug employed in bladder cancer treatment, is either being rationed or is entirely unavailable for use.
“People will die from this shortage, for sure,” Jonathan McConathy, director of the division of molecular imaging and therapeutics at the University of Alabama, told the Wall Street Journal.
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So far, the Biden administration has failed to resolve the supply chain crisis, and if you think that the prospect of life-saving drugs not being available will finally get them to do something, I wouldn’t count on it.
According to Hilary Marston, the Chief Medical Officer of the FDA, the agency works in conjunction with manufacturers to the best of its ability by expediting the approval of acceptable workarounds whenever possible. But Marston also tried to absolve the administration of any responsibility in this crisis by blaming the pharmaceutical industry, claiming “the underlying reality of this market remains what it is.”
Earlier this month, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre even laughed off the looming medication shortages.
Karine Jean-Pierre chuckles at the large number of medication shortages there have been on Biden’s watch. pic.twitter.com/TQTomzqqCd
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 8, 2023
So, yeah, help probably isn’t on the way, and who knows how many people will find themselves without life-saving drugs because of the incompetence of the Biden administration? They didn’t anticipate the impending shortage and they failed to intervene in a timely manner to ensure an adequate supply of drugs for treatment. Who knows how many Americans will pay the ultimate price for that incompetence?
