US insulin price hikes prove fatal for diabetics
by Xavier Symons | 8 Sep 2018 | 1 comment
Price increases to insulin in the United States have sparked public outcry, with some reports suggesting that diabetics are now rationing their injections to save money.
NPR recently reported on the tragic case of a 26-year-old diabetic man in Minnesota who died in his apartment in June 2017 after apparently rationing his insulin injections. The man, Alec Smith, had recently aged out of his parents’ health insurance policy, and was ineligible for state health insurance subsidies for his medication. Smith was earning less than $3000 a month, and was unable to cover the $1300 monthly cost of his insulin supplies.
Smith’s mother Nicole Smith-Holt is now campaigning to have the cost of the drugs slashed.
“The price of insulin has gone up over 1,200 percent in 20 years,” Smith-Holt told the Star Tribune earlier this year. “It’s not affordable. You’re price-gouging people who need this one product to live, to survive”.
The American Diabetes Association estimates that diabetics spend about $16,000on health care annually, which is 2.3 times more than a person without diabetes would spend.
Victoria Gagliardo-Silver, a New York based writer and student, slammed Congress for inaction on the issue:
“It is absolutely shameful that in America, a developed country that is capable of spending over half of its federal spending budget on the military and only a measly six percent on health care allows people to die slow, painful, preventable deaths because medical care is too expensive”.
States have attempted to introduce legislation that requires drug companies to justify price increases for prescription medicine, but the changes have been met with fierce opposition.
Sunday, September 9, 2018
John Robertson was an American scholar in law and bioethics who died last year. He is best known for making a strong case for “procreative liberty”, whether procreation takes place naturally or with the help of technology. As a tribute to his influence, the current issue of the Journal of Law and the Biosciences contains several articles about this theory.
Robertson’s theme was that reproductive choices which do not harm the interests of others should not be subject to regulation or prohibition. In his best-known book, Children of Choice, published in 1996, he discussed abortion, IVF, surrogacy and pre-natal genetic modification. But time has moved on. The principle of effectively unconstrained “procreative liberty” is being used to justify other developments, some of which are discussed in the Journal, including unisex gestation.
What I found interesting was that Robertson, in a paper written not long before his death, agreed that a male pregnancy (after a womb transplant) could be ethically justified, but only if it were necessary for genetic reproduction. Even he wanted to draw a line somewhere.
However, the author of one of tribute essays questions this restriction. Enjoying the experience of gestation is reason enough, she says. (See below). I suppose that this raises the question of whether it is possible to draw any lines, anywhere, once we agree that reproductive rights should not be limited.
Robertson’s theme was that reproductive choices which do not harm the interests of others should not be subject to regulation or prohibition. In his best-known book, Children of Choice, published in 1996, he discussed abortion, IVF, surrogacy and pre-natal genetic modification. But time has moved on. The principle of effectively unconstrained “procreative liberty” is being used to justify other developments, some of which are discussed in the Journal, including unisex gestation.
What I found interesting was that Robertson, in a paper written not long before his death, agreed that a male pregnancy (after a womb transplant) could be ethically justified, but only if it were necessary for genetic reproduction. Even he wanted to draw a line somewhere.
However, the author of one of tribute essays questions this restriction. Enjoying the experience of gestation is reason enough, she says. (See below). I suppose that this raises the question of whether it is possible to draw any lines, anywhere, once we agree that reproductive rights should not be limited.
 Michael Cook Editor BioEdge |  |  |  |
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