Mastertank1
2nd Level Yellow Feather
- Joined
- Jan 21, 2006
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Well,
The forms of malaria organism you cite used to be present in virtually every case. They would remain dormant for years, in fact for life, flaring up whenever the host system was weakened. They could be eradicated by a treatment consisting of three massive intravenous injections of quinine at one week intervals, but that method was never used in the USA. It was banned by the FDA. I know people who went to Canada to recieve that treatment.
I imagine the 14 day primaquine has roughly the same effect as the quinine injections. It seems to still be under patent, and therefore profitable. I have no data on the relative efficacy of the primaquine tablets vs the quinine injections.
My point in making that digression was not what the current version of synthetic quinine in use is called; they come up with a new and supposedly better one every time the old patent expires. The point was that in the USA, the main criterion in approving a drug is not how effective it is, nor how harmful it's side effects are, but how much profit can be made from selling it.
To some extent they do the same with pain killers.
Apparently Atabrine/Quinacrine tablets are no longer the treatment of choice in the USA, because the patents expired and generics took the profits out of them.Icycle said:
The forms of malaria organism you cite used to be present in virtually every case. They would remain dormant for years, in fact for life, flaring up whenever the host system was weakened. They could be eradicated by a treatment consisting of three massive intravenous injections of quinine at one week intervals, but that method was never used in the USA. It was banned by the FDA. I know people who went to Canada to recieve that treatment.
I imagine the 14 day primaquine has roughly the same effect as the quinine injections. It seems to still be under patent, and therefore profitable. I have no data on the relative efficacy of the primaquine tablets vs the quinine injections.
My point in making that digression was not what the current version of synthetic quinine in use is called; they come up with a new and supposedly better one every time the old patent expires. The point was that in the USA, the main criterion in approving a drug is not how effective it is, nor how harmful it's side effects are, but how much profit can be made from selling it.
To some extent they do the same with pain killers.
