Pan Pharmaceuticles

[artme]

Remember Midford School Clothes? Same approach by a different Government organization. Find 'em guilty without a trial and bugger the consequenses.

[underfoot]

Remember Midford School Clothes?

umm,,,no...were they recalled for making schoolkids sick?

[artme]

Customs and Taxman , between them, drove him to the wall. Lots of chicanery on their part from what I remember.

[damian]

As has been said great to see a polite rational discussion. I agree with most of what's been said on all sides, but I would like to comment on this:

vaccines are bad, (m'kay),

While I happily acknowledge they have prevented a lot of disease there are also a lot of people who have been disabled and even killed by them. Vaccines are not all good. If you go looking you'll find a few parents with dead kids (yes in aus) who are not as impressed with vaccines as they might be. I am not suggesting they are universally evil nor that the ill effects are particularly common. I resent both the panic mongering of the hippie/conspiricy brigade and the attempts by others to sweep the ill effects under the carpet. I am in favour of informing people so they can make up their own minds.

At the risk of hijacking this thread I have recently been amused at the indignation of the press at the anti carbon tax rally the other day. How quickly they have forgotten the dredful slurrs leveled at Pauline Hanson a few years ago, and the smirks they wore throughout.

Regarding Pan, while it is amusing to speculate on conspiricy I rather suspect the alternative theory of government incompetence has more legs. They certainly stuffed up the process and anyone who has anything to do with the inner workings of the modern australian government wherever it seats itself will know what a complete shambles it has become, particularly in the last 15 years.

2c.

[rrobor]

Well well well now we come down to the nub. Vaccines lets look at them. I have uncle Alex Died as a child of ditptheria. I have cousin Eileen died at 6 of hooping caugh. My aunt, her mother
lost a child she was carryring and she developed a heart condition I suspest due to stress. May I use the words of Oliver Cromwell and say this. From the bowels of Christ, please I beseech you to consider what you do. You who have not lived through polio outbreaks and the like dont know the horrors they cause. Please Please Please dont let idiots sway you. There will always be a price to pay if you vaccinate, but that price is miniscule to what was in the past.
Cattle in UK had a ratio of 30% with active TB within 20 years that was down to below 1% as was the population, Please dont go backwards into the dark ages and the horrors that brings.

[Bushmiller]

Like I said in a previous post, there is a place for natural remedies and a place for modern engineered drugs. We shouldn't be particularly accepting of either, but in practice that is exactly what we are. We accept the physician's recommendation and he in turn has accepted the drug companies recommendation.

Equally we accept the naturopath's recommendations. Now with the internet, choice and investigation are more readily available (but still not infallible) and we should question the remedies offered to us. It keeps everybody honest. Well maybe.

Vaccinations, immunisation innoculations, whatever you wish to call it, is possibly one of the triumphs of modern medecine. I am trying to think of the terrible illnesses that have been all but eradicated by this technique, in the western world at least. I am sure I will miss many. Please feel free to add them:

Smallpox
TB
Rubella (German Measles)
Polio
Hooping cough
Diptheria

These have had a huge positive impact on health. However again greed takes over and in recent years there have been moves to vaccinate for the common cold and flue. Not really successful to my mind and the following year you have to have another one because the virus has mutated. Better to build up antibodies of your own. The body when it is in good nick does a pretty good job of fighting off disease. The exception to this I would make is where a person already has a reduced immune system and is consquently already at risk.

Do we really need a flue vaccine or do the drug companies really need a flue vaccine and are the good old government brainwashed into believing their people must have this?

I know this has moved off the Pan subject slightly, but it illustrates the effect of successful lobbying and as MS stated the covering of one's own a**e by officialdom.

Regards
Paul

[TP1]

Make no mistake folks, there was no conspiracy here. I have had experience with the TGA on behalf of clients as well as other government agencies. I have seen instances where over officious public servants have a complete disregard for the impact they have on commercial enterprise. Why don't we hear about it more often? Well, because that sort of thing is not newsworthy until people lose jobs on a big scale - like Pan Pharmaceuticals. No one otherwise gives a rats if a reasonable sized company loses big money because of the actions of over zealous government agencies. If I remember correctly, The TGA even made public statements about closing Pan down.

Artme's reference To Midfords ( clothing manufacturers) was spot on. In that case, an over zealous Customs department raided the company removing all their records and seizing all their stock. The company, which was later found to be law abiding, was put out of business.

There was a senate enquiry into the operations of the Customs Dept a couple of years ago which resulted in big changes to the way they operate. I know from first hand experience that the Federal Government ( both Liberal and Labor) has intervened more than once since the Pan case, to bring the TGA into line where they have overstepped the mark.

BTW, The Australian Taxation Office has also had its fair share of criticism in the past but it has actually been quite proactive in being more equitable in the way it does business ( may be not enough for some! )

[acmegridley]

70 million$ in compo. is not bad though is it by anyones measure

[Bushmiller]

70 million$ in compo. is not bad though is it by anyones measure

If that sum refers to the class action recently awarded, I guess it would depend on how many businesses share the award. I have no idea on that count. It is a bit like winning lotto. It becomes very important as to how many people share the prize. It would not surprise me to hear that many businesses went to wall as a result of the original recall.

They had no product for their shelves and the credibility of their business took a king hit.

If the same thing happened to the drug companies, would the doctors just pack up their bags and go home or would they call out their legal colleagues in droves and sue for all they were worth because their business had been effectively denigrated?

If the $70mil refered to Jim's payout (I think it was $50mil) I suppose it would have been alright if he got to take it with him! I know he was in the wintery years, but I doubt that level of stress would have contributed to his wellbeing.

Regards
Paul

[Bushmiller]

I have just done some research. The class action was apparantly for 170 people.

Regards
Paul

[ian]

As has been said great to see a polite rational discussion. I agree with most of what's been said on all sides, but I would like to comment on this:

vaccines are bad, (m'kay),

While I happily acknowledge they have prevented a lot of disease there are also a lot of people who have been disabled and even killed by them. Vaccines are not all good. If you go looking you'll find a few parents with dead kids (yes in aus) who are not as impressed with vaccines as they might be. I am not suggesting they are universally evil nor that the ill effects are particularly common. I resent both the panic mongering of the hippie/conspiricy brigade and the attempts by others to sweep the ill effects under the carpet. I am in favour of informing people so they can make up their own minds.

I remember the effect that polio, hooping cough, diptheria and rubelia (german measels) had on kids and parents in my street and parent's social network when I was a kid.
I well remember my mother's take on child mortality -- there's plenty more where that one came from. A little callus? maybe, but both my parents were born immediately after the 1919 flu epidemic, grew up during the depression and managed to survive the fatal illnesses that have been mostly elliminated since the 1950s by vacines and anti-biotics.

There's been a lot of informed discussion about this issue in the past few years, and like it or not, once vacination rates fall below about 90% for some diseases, everyone of us is at increased risk.
Whilst my neighbour and I might reach different conclusions on the efficacy of vacinating our kids against hooping cough, if I decide not to while they do, my failure to vacinate puts their child at increased risk. Is this a reasonable, responsible action?
While I'll agree with you that the death of a child is hugely tragic, to a large extent one death in 100,000 is the price that must be paid to protect the herd.

[mic-d]

There's been a lot of informed discussion about this issue in the past few years, and like it or not, once vacination rates fall below about 90% for some diseases, everyone of us is at increased risk.
Whilst my neighbour and I might reach different conclusions on the efficacy of vacinating our kids against hooping cough, if I decide not to while they do, my failure to vacinate puts their child at increased risk. Is this a reasonable, responsible action?
While I'll agree with you that the death of a child is hugely tragic, to a large extent one death in 100,000 is the price that must be paid to protect the herd.

I agree, 100%

[rrobor]

Bushmiller to my mind is incorrect as to flu, a simple lookup found this
Influenza causes 2500 deaths, 80,000 GP visits and 15,000 hospitalisations among these groups of high-risk people in Australia each year. The best protection from influenza is vaccination, so anyone who wishes to protect themselves should get the injection.
Now that does not take into account lost production when ill and the like. A simple jab at about $40 stops that by building up your immunity without the risks, I for one get the jab.

[Master Splinter]

As an aside on the flu jab - I heard an interview on ABC News Radio the other day, where they were talking about Priceline Pharmacies offering flu jabs for $30 - the AMA spokesman was dead against the idea, and came up with the notion that since a flu shot costs $10-15 to buy, it was simply a cash cow for Priceline.

He seemed to gloss over the fact that doctors would also be paying the same amount for the shot, but charging $60-odd to medicare for the 10 minute consultation; so it's a cash cow for who????

[damian]

2 things:

1. I never said you shouldn't vaccinate. I said I endorse informed decisions and that they are not 100% flawless. Further if you adhere to the logic that we should be prevented from doing anything which might result in anothers death we need to all hand in our drivers licences right now. We also need to start arresting anyone who goes out in public with a cough or cold, and while we're at it lets book the people who use the chemicals my partner is allergic to. She and I both were worried we were going to lose her on a trip to NZ last year. Ridiculous ? Where exactly do you draw the line ?

2. The big payout figures sound great but after the payment is made (assuming it is) the lawyers take a cut then it's taxed as income. My partner looked into sueing AXA some years back for reniging on her income protection insurance when she got ill. Turns out unless she got the best possible result she would have gone bankrupt and even in teh best case might have ended up clearing $30k.

TP1: Agree totally. Unfortunately I too have first hand experience of modern Australian government. Not merely sad, absolutely tragic..