Wyeth Greed Has Struck A Nerve

I guess I'm not alone in noticing the incredible price increase of the drug Premarin. It has been duly noted by a major Canadian television station and the medical reporter Avis Favro on her blog at MedNews Express.

Premarin, has become the third most prescribed drug in the world (just behind Tylenol), bringing its single maker over one billion dollars per year. There is no generic so Wyeth has a monopoly.

A price increase of around ONE THOUSAND PERCENT seems a bit greedy don't you think? I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so but I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg. As most prescriptions are for around 90 days there are still a lot of women who haven't a clue yet. Or maybe those with drug plans won't even notice the price increase. I notice these things since I'm not lucky enough to have a drug plan so when the pharmacist asked for 123 bucks for what I normally paid under thirty for I was freaked out. Watch out when all those bitchy menopausal, hormone deprived women who won't be able to afford this drug any more start protesting. Could be fun....

Now I know there has been controversy around the production of the drug because it uses the urine of pregnant mares. I have done some reading on the subject, the good, the bad and the ugly but I choose (hopefully) to believe the good. Yes, the mares are kept on special farms and yes they are kept pregnant for the benefit of our drugs but is it better or worse than force feeding geese for their livers for fois gras? I think not...

Will we win this battle...probably not. The drug company might cave in and reduce their price somewhat and we will all go away happy and they will still make a shit load of money. If this was a drug to treat men's prostate instead of women I suspect there would be more outrage...

I better go knit a little to calm down...

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals - Price Gouging?

I have been taking Premarin for twenty odd years now for symptoms of menopause. It's a drug that has been in and out of favour at various times during it's long history. I have carefully with my physicians help assessed the risks and benefits. This drug has been around for fifty plus years, it's not new and not a lot of research money needs to be spent.

I refilled my prescription yesterday and was absolutely shocked at my bill. Instead of the 28 bucks I was expecting to pay for 90 pills, my bill was !24.00. Taking away the pharmacy fee this pill has increased in price from 0.14 cents per tablet to a whopping $1.24 a pill.

I called the company this morning and when I asked to speak to someone regarding drug pricing I was asked if it was about Premarin. Seems they have received so many calls they have set up a special line. Did they really think no one would notice or no one would call?

The very nice lady I spoke with gave me the following prepared statement which I'm sure she has memorized by now. There has been an "increase in cost in making the product" and "they had to increase the price in order to keep it on the market since there is now a higher demand".

I'm not surprised that there is a higher demand since there are a lot of women hitting menopause and since the drug is now back on the okay list. I guess Wyeth is taking this opportunity to make a lot of money.

Since I'm not satisfied with the answer I will continue digging, more to come...

Cast Not The First Stone...

On April 8 of this year, this small, pretty eight year old girl was abducted in small town Ontario on her way home from school. It was 3:30 in the afternoon and by six her mother reported her missing. Her 11 year old brother who normally walked her home from school as the story goes, was taking another disabled child home and when he got back to the school he couldn't find Tori. He assumed that she'd gone home by herself since it was only a couple of blocks away. Remember the time line here, from 3:30 to 6 Pm, that's two and a half hours. Had an Amber Alert been issued would the outcome have been different? The small town police force labeled it a missing person case and did not issue an Amber Alert. Today they are looking for her body after arresting two persons for her abduction and murder. From all appearances the woman led the child away to her boyfriend who then allegedly murdered her. The woman charged is now helping police to locate the body of this child. Shades of the infamous Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka kidnapping and murder team?

For nine days the small town police force kept calling it a missing persons case. Their justification for this was a video surveillance tape of the young girl "going willingly" with a woman. They concentrated on the mother, her boyfriend and her brother as the possible culprits. There was talk of drug debts and drug addiction. Ah yes, drugs... let's destroy the mother first. She did later admit to having an Oxycontin addiction that was being treated. The media and Facebook idiots had a field day.

Would it have been different if she hadn't been a single mother with a boyfriend, if she'd been a prominent member of the community instead? Yes, mother's murder their children, we have all seen the crying, sobbing, begging mother's on tv asking for their children to be returned only to later be charged in their murders. But, and this is what bugs me...maybe the police have tunnel vision and don't look outside the box anymore.

Finally a larger police force was called in and it was finally labeled what it was, an abduction.
The mother became the prime suspect and all the media jumped on the bandwagon. She held daily news conferences and was always calm never breaking down in tears. The media and most residents of the small town crucified her. She just didn't fit their mold of how a grieving mother should act. She was once asked why there were no tears and her reply was that she did that in private where she could be comforted by people who cared about her. She always looked perfectly made up with not a hair out of place. It was suggested that she looked like the woman on the video even though it was so grainy you couldn't see any features. There is something about small town gossip isn't there? I actually thought she was pretty brave facing the cameras day in day out and it did keep the focus on her missing child. That alone helped some of the small town residents look at someone else as the possible culprits. And that is in the end what lead to the arrests of the suspects. If it had been up to the police alone I'm not sure that would have happened after all, their focus was strictly on the mom as the suspect. That alone is very scary.

When my offspring was a young child I always worried about him. I was a working single mom and he was a latchkey kid. If he wasn't home on the minute I'd worry badly. Luckily we got through the childhood thing just fine but what if... would my life have withstood the scrutiny of the police and media? Probably not, none of us are perfect we all have some imperfections that the media can use to destroy us. In the case of Tara McDonald it's her addiction to prescription medicine. That didn't make her a bad mother and it didn't make her a murderess. Just about every local paper is apologizing to her in their editorials today.

Judge not lest ye be judged...

A Tale Of Two Protests

Again for the second time this week, city of Toronto police have shut down the downtown core of the city. People trying to get home from work to start a long weekend are stuck in road closures and major traffic headaches. People wanting to get downtown to the bus station to maybe head out of town to visit family and friends, are unable to do so. Thousands of Tamil protesters are on the move and the police appear powerless to stop them. So this week alone we have had the city core shut down Sunday, Wednesday and again today.

In the small town of Fort Erie, Ontario there was a protest against a hospital closure of the emergency room. Police arrived and the protest turned ugly. A prominent 64 year old doctor got upset and kicked the police car. He was grabbed from behind, his head thrown onto the police vehicle breaking his glasses, handcuffed and arrested.

Last Sunday evening, as the Tamil protesters ran up an entrance ramp to the Gardener expressway they encountered three policemen on bicycles. Some of them pushed the policemen off the bicycle and proceeded to throw the bikes off the expressway. No one was arrested or charged. I supported their cause at one time but since I saw them using children and women as shields against the police, my sympathy as evaporated.

Never Ending Tamil Protest Fatigue

Since early January Toronto's Tamil community have been protesting the "genocide" in their homeland and demanding the Canadian government get involved. They demand that members of the government meet with them but thus far that hasn't happened. The reason from what I can glean is that at every demonstration, and they have been numerous, the Tamil Tiger flag is being prominently displayed. The Tamil Tigers are deemed to be a terrorist organization by our government. They are back at it today, the never ending Tamil protest and the city is held hostage again.

On Sunday they succeeded in closing one of Toronto's major expressways by simply rushing onto it and refusing to leave. The police were powerless, these people were using children in strollers as their shields. Children, can you believe it? They put their children in mortal danger by running onto a major highway into traffic. The Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka use child soldiers and are the "inventors" of suicide bombers. The occupation of the highway lasted hours and traffic in and around the city was a nightmare. I think they finally gave up around midnight when it got too cold for them up there on that elevated platform or maybe they took pity on their tired and hungry children. I kept wondering to myself as I saw them walk down, where was the Children's Aid Society and why weren't they waiting to interview these irresponsible parents.

These protests are becoming a daily thing here in Toronto and with each passing day as major roads are closed in the downtown core most people are loosing any sympathy they once had for the Tamil cause. Last week the main road leading to four major hospitals was closed for three days. These people refused to leave and the police were powerless. How can you tear gas a crowd when there are children?

What makes this so galling is that at the same time this was going on a group of people who are against the city taking one lane out of a major artery and turning it into green space where handing out information sheets to cars stopped at red lights. They weren't lying down in the street, they didn't have bullhorns, they weren't chanting, they were simply handing out information flyers. Within an hour the police arrived and asked them to move or else they would be arrested for causing a disturbance!!!

The Tamil protesters face no such threat, their right to protest seems sacred somehow.

Mother's Day

Two years ago the day before Mother's Day, my Mom died. Mother's Day that year fell on May 13th. I think the date doesn't matter to me, the day will never be the same for me even though I am a mother. She is not only missed by me but also by her "favourite" only son-in-law Steve, grandson Teddy, great grandsons Justin, Bradyn and Cassidy. And then there is Elliotte, who will sadly never know her.

We didn't always get along and there were many times in my youth that I simply didn't understand her or she me. I gave her a fair bit of grief in my time which I now regret. But we were very close, some would say unnaturally close and I miss her terribly still.

In her later years after my Dad died and she came to live with us she was the easiest person to have around. She was almost always smiling and happy and the only fights we ever had was over her health and her reluctance to take prescribed medicine for a heart problem. I tried to make it up to her for being such a bratty kid. We took trips together and she absolutely loved being at the cottage with Steve and me. She absolutely loved the Rocky Mountains in Alberta and made a couple of trips to Calgary and Banff. She found joy in the smallest things. The only thing we never did get to do together was to go back to her birthplace in the former East Germany. I made that trip alone last year and walked in her path.

I put together some of my favourite photos into a video clip. It is my first attempt at this so forgive me if it's a bit rough.

Hertha Lucie Helene Gross
January 14, 1923 - May 12, 2007

I Hate This Tree - Sometimes

This from a person who really does love trees. At our cabin up north we are surrounded by trees and rarely cut one down. Of course they are what I consider to be real trees, sugar maples and birches. The tree on our front lawn, less than twenty feet from the foundation of our house is a different matter. This is a Norway Maple, which is really a weed tree. I have been told by more experienced people that they should never be planted within a hundred feet of a house. The problem with Norway Maples are their very invasive root system and when you combine that with an old house and clay pipes you inevitably run into trouble.

Thanks to our tree we have had two sewer backups in our basement and the cost of replacing all the pipes from clay to plastic was not a cheap thing to undertake trust me,never mind the cost of replacing carpeting and damaged furnishings. Now if the tree had belonged on the city side of the line some of the cost would have been shared. We lost that battle once and won it once. The tree is either ours or theirs and the difference is in inches. Last year when I wanted the tree pruned of dead wood, it was ours. We hired someone to come and do it for us since the city wouldn't, it was conveniently ours again.

Imagine my shock this morning when this big beast rumbled up the street, stopped in front of my house and three young men jumped out and perused my/their tree.

It's really a big tree.

Seems this year it's their again and they were coming to trim. I wonder if the fact that last week we had hurricane strength winds and a couple of big trees on the street came down had anything to do with it? Either way, I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, go for it boys said I, it's saving me about six hundred bucks. I did ask if they wouldn't consider cutting it down altogether but was politely rebuffed. Too bad, it really is a weed, a sixty year old weed. They did a great job with the cleanup though. The weed looks regal again.

So now were at two for all with the city. Next time they will tell me it's mine again. This year I don't mind paying my property taxes quite so much.