Letter: Big Pharma is all about profits, not health

Sunday's Daily Herald featured an article that says it all about the medical care problems we have in this country. The headline was, "Cancer patients confront chemo therapy drug shortages." The thing I read which really upset me was, "The root of the drug shortage, most experts agree, is related to low profit margins on generic drugs ..." This same problem led to unwillingness to provide low cost treatments for COVID-19.

I thought the medical community was about helping patients, but it seems Big Pharma has abandoned that principle in favor of big profits. So if it isn't a new chemo drug for which they can charge major dollars, Big Pharma just doesn't bother to make sufficient quantities of the older, more proven and less expensive alternatives. According to Dr. Yoram Unguru, pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospital at Sinai and core faculty at Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, "These drugs that are in short supply are not the blockbusters that pharmaceutical companies make big bucks from. They're older generic injectable drugs that companies don't get a huge profit on."

But they are needed, and shortages cause delays in getting treatment can have tragic consequences. I ask these drug manufacturers to have a heart and care more about helping sick people than about inflating your bottom line. I don't deny your right to have a profit, but does it really have to be so outrageously high?

Patricia Bertrand

Wood Dale