Strung by Big Pharma, long live USA

Strung by Big Pharma, long live USA
A lot of people are going to be feeling or looking very happy over the next few weeks because of a bizarre, rather unprecedented, event, in the US last weekend. In a heist worthy of Hollywood attention (surely!) a gang of thieves slipped into the warehouse of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly in Connecticut on a quiet Sunday morning, disabled the alarm systems, and made away with drugs worth $75 million. It was the biggest pharmaceutical heist in history, comparable with great robberies involving diamonds, gold, and other valuables. The stash was so large that thieves commandeered a tractor-trailer to haul it away.

So why would that make a lot of people happy? Well, it turns out that much of the stash consisted of Prozac and Cymbalta, two of Eli Lilly's best selling drugs used for treating depression. Millions of Americans take anti-depressants, enough to merit a book and a movie titled Prozac Nation that came out almost a decade ago. The problem has gotten worse since; there were nearly 200 million prescriptions in 2007. Although Prozac, which came to the market in 1988, has since been challenged by other anti-depressants such as Pfizer's Zoloft (now the biggest selling), Lexapro, Wellbutrin, Paxil, and Eli Lilly's own Cymbalta, it is the mother of all uppers.

The expectation now is the loot will now be sold and resold on largely unregulated internet pharmacies at cut rate prices. Hence, many happy customers becoming "happier". Just to give you a sense of the lolly involved - a 20mg capsule of Prozac can cost $3 without prescription. Taken twice a day, it can add up to $180 a month. Online, you can get it for less than a buck a day; and now, with the goods from the heist expected to flood the market, perhaps even cheaper.

Much of the American media reported the story of the heist as a crime caper, even as a battle raged on the streets and in the political arena over a proposed healthcare bill that is roiling the country. But the two are related. The criminals hit upon the idea of looting a pharma company because medicines are now as lucrative as many valuables. America is hooked on to pharmaceutical drugs, particularly anti-depressants , and they know it.

According to one account, there were at least 31 pharmaceutical thefts in which more than $500,000 worth of drugs was stolen in the US in 2008 and 2009. It's all a question of supply and demand - and cost. Many Americans cannot afford expensive medication in these dire times.

There are two ways of looking at this issue. One is that America is an over-medicated society. Americans spend more on health care than any other country. In 2007, the total US spending for health care was almost $2 trillion, accounting for 16% of the country's gross domestic product, almost double the rich world's average. On a per capita basis, the US spent $7,290 annually on just health care, some seven times an Indian average overall income. A number of drugs that would have been considered recreational a generation ago are prescriptive now - such as the ones for depression and erectile dysfunction. It is generally acknowledged that such US spending unsustainable and this is why the crisis and debate on health care is overshadowing everything - including war - right now.

The other way to look at it is Americans hate to suffer, much less die, and will go to any extent to be "happy" and prolong life in contrast to attitudes in India and many other developing countries. This was brought home rather starkly when a family elder in India, who was only 66, recently died of an illness which could have been better treated and given him a few more years, while cheerfully declaiming that since average Indian male life expectancy was 64, he was ahead of the game and had no issues meeting his maker.

You'll rarely hear such fatalism in the west. Americans will pretty much spend their last dime to squeeze the last breath out of life before departing - kicking and screaming. They do not go gentle into the night, as the poet Dylan Thomas wrote; they'll rage, rage against the dying of the light.