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How industry controls the medical field for profit – an example
For people wondering how the problems with mesh can continue to exist. I came across this article and thought that it kind of captured how the urge for profit ends up driving decisions in these large medical product corporations, rather than concern for public health. The welfare of the public is used to motivate researchers and doctors and other people in the field, then, after the market for a new product is established, the profit-maximizing takes over.
You can apply the same principles to hernia mesh makers and it’s easy to see why there is no change. The 15% of people with mesh implants that are harmed are still generating profit. There’s no way that they are going to promote suture-based repairs when each suture repair is one less mesh sale. Pure tissue repair is the competition.
It’s all about the money in the end. The executives that run the companies are cut from the same cloth. Change will have to cme from the surgeons who see the problems first-hand. The executives only see the balance sheet.
Excerpt –
“Pfizer has won plaudits for its vaccine delivery programme, but the US multinational faces growing scrutiny over the scale of its profits and the proportion of doses it has delivered to low-income countries.”
“The Channel 4 investigation reveals analysis by one biological engineering expert claiming the Pfizer vaccine costs just 76p to manufacture for each shot. It is reportedly being sold for £22 a dose to the UK government.
The estimated manufacturing costs do not include research, distribution and other costs, but Pfizer says its profit margin as a percentage before tax are in the “high-20s”. Pfizer expects to deliver 2.3bn vaccines this year with predicted revenues of $36bn (£26.3bn).”
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2 Replies
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Here’s another example, on a much larger scale, of how the medical industry is focused on market share and revenue, at the expense of the broader good of humanity.
For those who wonder why mesh is so popular, when cheaper, equally or more effective, procedures are available. The same types of executives are making the decisions. Everyone below, with a few exceptions, just does what they are told to do.
We should all hope that more people like this step up and persist in their efforts.
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The 15 percent harmed by mesh still generate profit… That is unlikely to change until a surgeon or mesh manufacturer has suffered the same though mesh and even then not much. There are of course some surgeons who have had hernia mesh repairs satisfactorily but there are also one or two, who though carry on inserting mesh, would not have it in their own bodies including one who had written on Quora I believe saying after seeing what mesh does to patients he is leaving his.
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