The global supply shortage arose as Merck changed the supply source of an active ingredient used in SINEMET, a process that requires qualification of the new active ingredient to meet Merck standards and regulatory approvals of the source change.

Am i reading too much into that or do they differ in meaning with one meaning the source and the second sounding like the actual ingredient has changed. Has anyone noticed that? there has been so much written i don't recall.

thanks

Did not notice that.
New active ingredient in Tide gets shirts whiter than white; new active ingredient in sinemet would be patented and make a fortune. But I don't think they would dare, because it would be too straightforward for them. As they say, it's not enough to win; it's better to win dirty.
Close down production for a couple of years for the new active ingredient and stonewall,
Pharma is going to destroy itself. They have lost touch with their consumers. They have lost touch with common decency. T

Paula,
Had noticed that, difficult to know exactly what the context is of the 'new active ingredient'. Tried to clarify that in the Q & A's but it did not appear.As they are not answering in anything other than an obscure way, and have not changed any information since november it is hard to do anything other than guess.............. of course we are all free to speculate as much as we wish, so who goes first?

Lindy

Remembering the Amgen GDNF Parkinson's volunteers

I put
my fingers
against
the glass

and I bowed
my head

and cried.

(The New Prophet Jeremiah said that)

Article by Jim Edwards in Bnet, being reasonable (he recently took some heavy incoming artillery from a major Pharma that succeeded in getting one of his articles pulled of the internet for a few hours, and it came back with revisions; Jim tells it like it is the best he sees it.)
http://www.bnet.com/blog/drug-busine...awer-container

In the last two paragraphs, he shows again why lots of people dread his columns, because he shines a bright light in dark corners. He ends with this:

Jim Edwards said, on Bnet (CBS interactive):

It’s good that Merck is finally opening up about this issue and moving to repair some of the damage to its reputation that it created with its own patients since the shortage began.
Nonetheless, it’s surprising that the mainstream press has mostly failed to cover this issue. Clearly, there’s more here than meets the eye. Merck has not revealed the name of the supplier who made the “decision” that triggered the switch. It’s astonishing that healthcare providers, doctors and regulatory authorities have shown such little curiosity as to how this happened.

Stalevo - a bad combination?
It's way overpriced and increases serious adverse cardiovascular events all in one. ... a bit much.

Merck won.

PWP lost. Again.

Merck demonstrated to all of Pharma that there is zero risk in stonewalling the medical hostages who have no other choice for treatment of a fatal illness.

The decision to pull the plug, as with Amgen, can be made in the complete absence of the only consumers of the drug, and in complete disregard of their health and their hearts.

Way to go, big men. You won again. Grave strategic errors.

If God finds his way back to heaven, and decides to make it all right in the world,
the people who mistreat the suffering
will get what they deserve.

Big Pharma does not believe there are consequences.
There are.
They have summoned up a mighty storm..

It may take years.
But nothing survives that is cruel to fellow mankind.
It may take years, it may take decades, but there is no getting away, there is no exemption from the consequences of riding roughshod over the defenceless, no matter how well your stocks do in Q3.

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO MERCK.
Merck calls it a “global shortage”. Here is the list of countries sent by Merck to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, Merck’s “global village”:
Country / SINEMET CR / SINEMET IR
Belgium Available* Available*
Canada Available* Available*
Israel Available* Not marketed
Luxembourg Available* Available*
Poland Available* Not marketed
Portugal Available* Available
Spain Available* Available*
France Available* 2nd half 2010 Available*
Germany Available* 2nd half 2010 Available*
Italy Available* 2nd half 2010 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
UK Available* 2nd half 2010 Available*
U.S. Available* Available*
Austria Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Bulgaria Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Czech Republic Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Not marketed
Estonia Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Faeroe Islands Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Finland Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Hungary Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Not marketed
Iceland Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Lithuania Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Norway Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Sweden Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Switzerland Early to mid 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Cyprus Mid to late 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Denmark Mid to late 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Ireland Mid to late 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Netherlands Mid to late 2011 contingent on regulatory approval Available*
Croatia Not marketed Not marketed
Georgia Not marketed Available*
Greece Not marketed Available*
Romania Not marketed Available*
Russia Not marketed Available*
Slovenia Not marketed Available*
Turkey Not marketed Available*
Ukraine Not marketed Available*
Malta Not marketed Not marketed
Serbia Not marketed Not marketed
* Periodic interruptions in supply may occur until such time that product is re-supplied to full stock levels.
Information current as of August 16, 2010.

THIS IS A TEST IN GEOGRAPHY.
WHAT DO YOU NOTICE ABOUT THE LOCATION OF THE GLOBAL SHORTAGE.

OOOh, OOOh, teacher, teacher, ask me, ask me!
Yes, Johnny?
The Commie bastahds don’t get none. Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Romania, Slovenia, Upper Slobovia, HurtsmykneesSegovia, Croatia -- all Commies. So they don’t get none and serves them right, what with the Berlin Wall and all that cold war stuff. And now the tennis stars.
Wrong answer, Johnny. Martha, can you tell us what the Mercantile projection of the planet shows us.
Yes teacher. Merck’s “global shortage” is entirely in Europe, the U.S.A. and Canada. It’s a map of the Caucasian population in Imperial times.

BUT, the first wave of letters sent by Merck were sent to every doctor, neuro, and pharmacist in AUSTRALIA. The letter (reprinted earlier in this thread) says that Aussie doctors will have to get from 50 to 80% of their patients off this drug, because Merck would only supply 20 to 50% of the drugs.

The Merck sent a second wave of letters in AUSTRALIA, this time saying that Merck had changed their minds, and the Aussies would be cut off from the drug entirely. Serve them right, for killing all those bunny rabbits.

But Australia is not on the list provided to the Parkinsons Disease Foundation by Merck.
Because Australia - note this carefully because there will be a test – AUSTRALIA IS NOT IN EUROPE. And Merck is incorporated differently in different countries, so the Europe Merck cannot possibly tell us what Aussie Merck is doing. To each, his own and separate Global Shortage from your own local Merck.

In North America, we’ve got Canada on the list as getting all the pills required to keep them from swinging their chain saws wildly at the polar bears, even though Apotex, Canada’s only producer, shut down all production of sinemet AFTER Merck declared a global shortage. (They may have restarted production – who knows?) And Canada is on Merck’s list, even though Merck does not sell the drug in Canada at all. Bristol-Meyers-Squib does.

And the U.S.ofA. is fully supplied, because the U.S. of A. does not “do” shortages.
So North America….. =Wait, wait que passa? Mexico is in North America. Mexico is NOT on the list.

A man in Kenya e-mailed me through a Parkinson’s Young Onset forum, saying that all supplies of sinemet had been cut off in Kenya, and his “chemist” as the rest of the world calls pharmacists, told him that the supplies were all gone in all of East Africa. I do not have the resources to find out; Merck has the resources but considers all information to be “proprietary”. I’m gonna try that one on the cops next time. Where were you on the night of the 17th? That’s proprietary information.

So, Merck, is there a global shortage or not? Google: buy sinemet and see where the supplies have gone. But how big is the world? Will a boat fall off the edge of the world if it leaves the Caucasian countries? Are there in fact other “markets” in the world that the cartgraphers are hiding from us, or that they put on the maps of the world but they do not exist? Is the global shortage just in the Caucasian countries? Who sells these drugs in Africa, Asia, Middle East, Central and South America, South Pacific, etc..

Sinemet is listed by the World Health Organisation as an “essential drug” and every member nation is supposed to keep a sufficient supply of all essential drugs on hand.

So Merck sells in 85 countries but sells sinemet only to Caucasian countries?

Or is this world map as out-of-date as Pharma’s attitude towards sick people?

How about Algeria? Early on, I Googled: sinemet penurie and got a Parkie advocacy mixed with mail-order hustling, and it had a complaint about the shortage of sinemet. But does Merck do Algeria or did they sell the rights to some other group?

And am I the one who should contact country after country to find out if they are part of Merck’s 16th Century map, which only has a vague outline of the “unknowne lande wherein monsters be”. I have no resources to investigate, and anyway, if the health departments and prosecuting attorneys and governments and Parkinson’s orgs., both in Merck’s map of ethnic Caucasians and in the unknowne landes such as Brazil, Japan, Nigeria, Indonesia - people of a more tanned persuasion – if none of them see any problem with what was DONE TO Parkies by this latest hijink…. Well to hell with it. If everybody is satisfied with this, then it’s all okay with me.
Except of course, I don’t want them anywhere near the health of my family. And I would be petrified to enter one of their clinical trials. And I wouldn’t want to own shares in them. And the less I hear about them, the better. Just turn and walk away. You all can believe what you want; I am not here looking for approval or support.

(And Merck is nowhere near the main offender. Look at the bad week Pfizer had in June. Merck is the Holy of Holies compared to Pfizer testing drugs on African school children and then forging the documents and stonewalling in court for ten years)

I’m just saying that the War Against Parkinson’s works better on stage or on video as a comedy rather than as a tragedy, because the ineptness of Pharma and their Three Stooges public relations agents, and the swarms of full-time “corporate bio-ethicists” declaring that it’s all ethical and above board - it’s all one amusing sitcom; just too bad it is being done in real life to real people.

bob,

it sounds like an impossible trail but i don't have to point out to you what just a few people can do. woudn't blame hou if you just shrugged and gave up it's too huge..................you can't possibly....oh just forget it..but can you just investigate kenya a little?

to have none would mean my death. how can they be cut off completely?

Merck does not need to tell us anything: their customers are government health departments, and doctors. That's who they lobby, bribe, advertise to, etc. PWP, the only consumers of this drug, are not in the picture at all. The business model never works when the customers have no choice. When the needs of the customers are not even taken into account when decisions are made. The drug trade is not free market, but not government controlled either. It's the worst of all business models.
Honda breaks down; massive recall, President apologizes; spends hundreds of millions to fix the cars.
Drugs we are addicted to and need to function are diverted to the black market on the internet; at the same time as at least two production lines are shut down (Merck and Apotex), and Big Pharma and Big Government won't listen to us or talk to us, but they are sure talking to each other:

Merck Spent Just Under $3 Million — On US Lobbying — In Q2 2010 Alone
The old saw has it that “If you want to make an omelet, you’ll have to break a few eggs“. In Merck’s case, it is just a few shy of 3 million of them ($2.96 million, to be exact), in just the second four months of 2010.

That’s how much Merck (according to recently-filed governmental reports) spent in the second quarter of 2010 — lobbying on pharmaceutical issues. Issues like federal law (FDA) premption — like extending patent life — and like limiting inflow of Canadian drugs (at lower average prices). Issues like those.

Added to the $3.2 million Merck spent in Q1 2010, that’s about $6.1 million for a half year (about equal to all of the 2009 yearly spend — in just six months). And that’s LOT of eggs — one very BIG omelet.

From: A New Merck Reviewed (blog)
http://anewmerckreviewed.wordpress.com