- The price of the most metabolically active, preservative-free vitamin B12 injections from compounding pharmacies has increased by as much as 946% in ten years
- Los federales are the cause of this price increase
- Help save pharmacy compounding and natural medicine!
Green Medicine’s very first issue (March 2016) reported that your doctor can no longer be trusted (by los federales) with injectable vitamin B12 from a compounding pharmacy in his or her office, even though there’s never, ever been a death, overdose, or a serious adverse effect from vitamin B12 since it became available in the 1940s.
But that may not matter anymore, as los federales’ War on Pharmacy Compounding is forcing the price of the most effective, preservative-free injectable vitamin B12 from compounding pharmacies so high that it won’t be affordable for the age group who benefit from it the most—people over 65 years of age who are “just getting by” with their savings and so-called Social Security. (Very brief digression: is anyone actually “secure” with Social Security?)
Back to unaffordable vitamin B12 injections. In the mid-2000s, the retail price for a 30 cc vial of vitamin B12 from a compounding pharmacy (enough for 30 injections) was $30, $1 per injection. The price for 30 ccs went slowly up towards $50–$60 by 2010. But after the contaminated product disaster at the New England Compounding Center (which los federales could have prevented[i],[ii],[iii]), los federales used this episode—for which they were responsible—to stampede Congress into passing the so-called “Drug Quality and Security Act.”
Despite repeated warnings by members of Congress, los federales have misused this law to invoke so many “guidelines,” new rules, and very-expensive-to-comply-with regulations that the number and type of available products made by compounding pharmacies has significantly declined and the prices of those that remain has dramatically increased. In February 2016, the price for that same 30 cc vial of vitamin B12 was $154, and in March $284 ($9.46 per injection)—a 946% increase in little over a decade!
Please don’t let los federales win the War on Pharmacy Compounding! Your own health might depend on it! I hope you’re quite well now and stay that way, but should you and your physician decide that a natural substance previously available through compounding pharmacies would be good for maintaining your good health in the future, it may not be available.
Just one of many examples: injectable adenosine monophosphate (AMP), found in every human body, rapidly relieves the pain of shingles (herpes zoster),[iv] according to research published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association—but now it’s impossible to obtain! Los federales are and will continue to be responsible for all the previously treatable suffering from shingles, but of course shingles sufferers will be advised that pain relief is always available—some of it potentially addictive—from patent medicines!
Please don’t let los federales win the War on Pharmacy Compounding! Please go to www.anh-usa.org, click on “Save Compounding,” and participate in the Action Alerts. It’s really easy, and takes very little time! By working together—“clicking” together—we cannot only save pharmacy compounding and also your right to take care of your own health with natural medicine!
[i] As documented by Dr. Michael Carome, Deputy Director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, in “Deadly meningitis outbreak was completely avoidable,” http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/16/opinion/carome-meningitis/. Retrieved May 31, 2016.
[ii] http://www.tennessean.com/article/20121010/NEWS07/310100048/Meningitis-outbreak-FDA-had-chance-didn-t-stop-compounding-pharmacy-ex-lawyers-say/.
[iii] http://www.amednews.com/article/20130429/government/130429947/7/.
[iv] Sklar SH, et al. “Herpes zoster: the treatment and prevention of neuralgia with adenosine monophosphate.” JAMA 1985;253:1427-1430.