Although we do need drugs, it is  in our interest to do away with smuggled ones

Last week, the Pharmacy and Poisons Board issued a public alert in newspapers against drugs believed to be circulating illegally after losing a court case seeking to block their sale.

The drugs from India were seized at the JKIA, and though the board said nothing about their use in the advertisement, I am told the active ingredient they contain is the same one used in male sexual performance- enhancing drugs.

Naturally, the board wanted the drugs torched.  But a judge ruled that they were fit for human consumption and had them released to the person accused of smuggling them. So the board is now targeting pharmacists, asking them not to stock the drugs.

Given that the board supplied batch numbers and the court ruling, we can deduce that: a) the drugs are circulating legally, and b) the main concern is that they were not registered.

Kenya has a severe drug shortage, especially in public hospitals.  Interestingly, at a time when there’s a cholera outbreak, people are busy smuggling erection-enhancing pills worth tens of millions of shillings and not antibiotics.

COSTLY DRUGS

In the past, the pharmacy board has claimed that up to 30 per cent of all drugs circulating locally are counterfeit. I believe that is not true; with that percentage of fake drugs, millions of lives would be at risk.

It is more likely that the percentage refers to drugs that have a problem with their papers, not their potency. If you smuggled genuine drugs from Tanzania and sold them in Kenya, they would be considered counterfeits and destroyed if seized.

There is something immoral about torching drugs at a time of shortages and disease outbreaks.

I now have a better understanding as to why anti-counterfeiting authorities and the pharmacy board torch drugs, even when we need them.

Medical research has retreated increasingly further from everyday experience. The amateurs who made staggering scientific advances in the 1800s are gone. New breakthroughs will require heavy lifting by teams of PhD holders backed by pools of money.

Drugs are expensive to make. Apart from the science involved, there’s also, rightly, the huge cost of performing clinical trials to demonstrate  the efficacy and safety of new drugs. We cannot afford to be lax when it comes to life. There are compounds in our tablets that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop before they are accepted. Then there is the risk of failure. The prices of the new drugs that get approved and marketed must underwrite the costs of the many, once-promising failures.

The production of new drugs has also been plummeting while the cost of new ones has risen  in recent years. It seems as though the stock of scientific knowledge on human diseases has grown while our ability to tackle disease is declining.

Medicine is getting more complex and more expensive the longer we engage in it.  Natural selection is tough to beat, and bacteria are resourceful enemies. The inescapable truth is that scientists have grabbed at all the low-hanging fruits.

A lot more money is required for research to defeat diseases that now plague us, such as   cancer, which are more complex. New cures will come from interesting new areas like genetics, and these cost a lot more to research and develop because science is still in the feeling out process in these fields.

The dilemma we find ourselves in is best observed when it comes to antibiotics. The era of infectious disease was supposed to be behind us, yet it is making a comeback. There is a huge risk of people dying of conquered diseases due to the declining effectiveness of antibiotics on the horizon because there is no money to develop new antibiotics. The money is in making vanity erection-enhancing pills.

The impact of the failure of antibiotics threatens all medicines. Chemotherapy sessions also require antibiotics to fight off infections. If a tiny infection is lethal, then the entire medical ecosystem collapses.

If making drugs is driven by profit, then we have to support the actions of the pharmacy board. The board cannot allow cheaper pills to “leak” as this will discourage pharmaceutical companies from importing drugs. Smugglers threaten the entire system. Kenya cannot pay the full costs of drug development and must, therefore, ruthlessly stamp out smuggling, or else we risk even the discounts we get on our current drugs.

MORALLY INDEFENSIBLE

A company with a truly revolutionary new drug would refuse to offer it to a country that does not tackle generics or have quotas on them. To ensure a dual-pricing model, one for the rich world and a subsidised one for the poor world, occasionally torching smuggled drugs is necessary. 

 It should be noted that India, where these smuggled drugs come from, has so far only created generic drugs and is yet to make genuine breakthroughs.  The breakthroughs occur in markets that are willing to pay top price because they can stump up the full costs of drug development.

The US’ high health care costs subsidise poor countries in Africa and Asia. This is threatened by generics.

It still seems wasteful, though, for local officials to torch batches of drugs that have been sneaked in through our porous borders because there is something wrong with their registration. In fact, it is morally indefensible when you have a shortage in the case of life-saving drugs.  The board should find a way of  including these drugs in the national drug supply, even if it means giving a cut to the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture them. 

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Why on earth are grannies having kids?

I RECENTLY READ a story about a woman in the United States giving birth in her sixties.  I am all for medical science helping women out, but is this pumping menopausal women with hormones so that they can give birth really necessary?

A woman at 60 giving birth isn’t a miracle; it is often the result of a lot of tinkering by genetic engineers and endless trips to the fertility clinic for oestrogen.

Apart from the risks of low birth  weight  and having stunted children, why would you want to have children in your 60s – or even 50s? Isn’t it an unnecessary risk to your body and your child?

 Older mothers rob their children of the chance of knowing them, and it is also likely that they will be unable to care for them. A child should at least have the right to have their parents’ guide them through their early years.

 I also think that men in their sixties have no business fathring children, but at least they can get younger women to be the mothers.

Grannies, once you go through menopause, accept that the child-bearing ship has sailed.

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There is no such thing as first humans

THE DISCOVERY a fortnight ago of stone tools in Turkana greatly improved the understanding of humans and their capabilities. For one, it improved our understanding of the limits of human tool-making and intelligence.

 For many years it was assumed that making tools was unique to the genus Homo, that modern humans were the first tool makers. However, these tools seem to indicate that creatures predating humans also had abilities we so lovingly assumed were unique to our family.

It also punctures the idea that there are clear limits on speciation. There were no “first” humans or  biological Adam and Eve. The idea that there was a modern human who knew how to use tools is a simplification.  

Every creature  must be of the same species as its parent. Evolution is a slow, gradual  process not perceptible to those undergoing it. .

 The reason we can divide different creatures into distinct species is that the various intermediaries connecting them are extinct. If the intermediaries were there,  they could breed with the creatures and see the progress of evolution.

The resulting feature of this discovery means that the apes (or men) that existed before the so-called modern humans also had intelligence we attribute to our ancestors. Intelligence is not the preserve of modern humans because the idea of modern human is arbitrary. Modern humans only begin existing when apes we do not consider modern die out. In between that period, the several related species of man had to live side by side.   

More investigation is also needed into the role the environment  plays in crafting animal intelligence. It was believed that our tool-making ability was a direct consequence of our environment changing from forest to savannah. We made tools “to help us better cope with our new environs”. It now seems like we began making tools before that  environmental change occurred.

 Kenyans should take a more interest in paleontology because East Africa is where the human story begins.