Did you know that China controls much of the world's drug supply?

In NBC News, Maggie Fox writes,

...“It’s a major national security risk for us in two ways," said Mike Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and an expert on biosecurity. "We are very concerned about the quality of these drugs.”

..."If we were ever in an international incident with China, they would literally have their hands around our necks in terms of critical drugs. They wouldn’t even have to fire a shot."

Gibson estimates in her book that 80 percent of the ingredients in U.S.-branded pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter drugs start out in either China or India.

“Food has been used as a weapon of war. Our medicines can be used like that, too,” she said.

China made a strategic decision to develop its pharmaceuticals industry and has succeeded, Gibson said, undercutting prices and grabbing market share from other countries.

“Penicillin is a good example,” she said. “We don’t make penicillin ingredients in this country anymore. That happened because Chinese companies came in and dumped it on the global market at a very low price. Now they are the largest producer of penicillin industrial ingredients in the whole world.”

The U.S. market is vulnerable to products that are contaminated but is even more vulnerable if some kind of accident, problem or disaster shuts down factories, Gibson said.

“Imagine if a major earthquake hit or civil war broke out in some of the major pharmaceutical-producing cities,” Gibson said.

“It would be disastrous. India still produces some of the drugs for us but most of the essential compounds for them come from China, so they would shut down too.”

Osterholm points to the damage done in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria last year. Medical supplier Baxter makes a large percentage of saline solution in Puerto Rico, and the 2017 hurricane shut down manufacturing for months, worsening an ongoing shortage of saline intravenous drip bags.

Hospitals scramble to cope with a shortage of saline just as flu season threatens to flood ERs.
“If we think the IV bag situation in Puerto Rico was serious, it pales in comparison with what could happen with any kind of hiccup with China,” he said.

Gibson agreed.

“I can think of nothing that would make us more vulnerable than shutting off all these drugs we depend on every day,” she said.

“Hospitals would become centers of chaos and death. We are not talking about expensive designer drugs. You couldn’t do surgery. You wouldn’t have anesthesia. You couldn’t provide dialysis."

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