If anyone gets new information about the shortage of Merck labels on sinemet containers (I have never seen any evidence that world production declined, just that the labels changed), I would appreciate being notified by e-mail from this site, or I could give my address to a few. I will be away a lot, so I may not see what anyone posts here. The shortage in the USA was the shortest - announced on Dec. 24 when all are on holidays, then Merck told the FDA the shortage was over, the day after getting a call from CBS News.

But the shortage of Merck labels continues in some European countries, where Switzerland, for example, switched to Sandoz as supplier, and the Swiss PD advocacy org. finally removed the logos of the Pharma companies that graciously pay for the advocacy newsletter... no word at all from the Third World, except one man in Kenya who said sinemet had disappeared entirely, and he was buying from one of the hundreds of sinemet websites that popped up on the internet since Merck announced the shortage in 2009.

I never viewed this "shortage" and "generic or not generic" story as carrying much weight. Much more serious crimes and misdemeanors are approved in Pharma boardrooms on a regular basis, and this "production problem" was probably a result of entrenched incompetence and management negligence, more that a burning desire to see just how crooked a company can get - as they say "It's no fun just to win, you've got to win dirty". The purpose of challenging them was to see how the various systems would react, because they will use the same process in the future, as it works very well for them. AmgenGDNF, and Merck's Shortage .- handled in similar ways
That's why I tried to attract attention to the sinemet label disappearance. We got to see how Pharma handled it, how governments handled it, how the associations of neurologists and associations of pharmacists dealt with it, how Parkinson's Chat rooms dealt with it, and what was the place of the actual Parkinson's people or at least some consideration of their needs, when the second largest drug dealer in the world announces that they have closed down one production line two and a half years before opening a new one,for reasons that we are forbidden to know.
I intend at some point to write a brief summary of the patterns of reaction, maybe this summer if Merck runs out of countries to announce a shortage in; - what you can expect the reactions to be next time; so the next PWP to enter the Inferno will be better able to predict the charade that will be presented to them.
In any case, the Baby Boomers are on their way, millions of new PD cases around the world, so you will eventually see some radical changes, as the existing PD system is in no way ready for them; and because they are going to be in for a shock when they have a closer look at the wildly dysfunctional Parkinson's Empire that has grown up around their disease; they will reclaim ownership of the disease, and they will expect the vendor to have certain responsibilities toward the purchaser, such as, the vendor should actually deliver the drug that they got millions of people addicted to. They can have their billions - I don't care about the money. But there are some people out there - for example the PD org in the UK followed a few cases of PWP ending up in emergency wards after days of searching for sinemet - there are people out there who will not be willing to be treated this way, or to watch their loved ones being treated this way, by a contractor who is supposed to be helping them.