According to USA Today [*], the FDA [...] did nothing until an independent company did their own analysis and started ruffling feathers.
I suppose it can't be more than a
rhetorical question, but why should the
(ahem!) U.S. FDA be responsible for inspections at the sites where drugs are manufactured in
3rd-World countries?
The recalled products are part of a large class of drugs called angiotensin II receptor blockers, or ARBs, which work by blocking the effects of a hormone that narrows blood vessels. Many of these commonly prescribed drugs are not part of the recall. Consumers can check the FDA's website for a full list of recalled drugs [×].
At least superficially, this seems like an ‘
all-clear’ for users of another (potentially competing?) category of heart drugs that had
not been mentioned as being contaminated:
ARBs and another class of drugs called angiotensin converting-enzyme inhibitors, or ACE inhibitors, are often the first drugs doctors recommend to lower a patient's blood pressure.
However, nowhere in the article is there a reässuring claim that manufacturing
ACE-inhibitors is inherently less prone to contamination than manufacturing
ARBs. It might just be a matter of production scheduling that assigned
ARBs to a defective production line.
Patients usually stay on these drugs for long periods of time [....]
Alas, the particular drug assigned to any particular production line might not be a permanent assignment; it might not be anything like reconfiguring a line to manufacture the proverbial ploughshares after manufacturing swords. Maybe it's a lot more like changing a manufacturing line from manufacturing CDs for a word-processor to CDs for a spreadsheet product. The situation ought to be unnerving for patients with long-term prescriptions for any drugs whose
manufacturing has been
off-shored to
3rd-World countries.
-------
Note
*: Ken Alltucker: "Blood pressure drug recall: FDA investigates foreign plants that made drugs with cancer-causing impurities". "Published 3:05 p.m. ET Jan. 14, 2019 [;] Updated 8:56 a.m. ET Jan. 15, 2019". <
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/01/14/fda-zhejiang-huahai-hetero-labs-blood-pressure-drug-recall-cancer/2547858002/>.
Note ×: <
https://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm613916.htm>.