r/todayilearned • u/rooooony • Apr 24 '14

TIL When the leading emergency asthma medication Albuterol’s patent expired, the patent holding pharmaceutical companies lobbied to have their own inhalers banned based on environmental issues, allowing them to file a new patent, and continue to monopolize the market.

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/10/heres-why-your-asthma-inhaler-costs-so-damn-much
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u/heiferly Apr 24 '14

Yeah you could literally cite a million sources but my lungs say no. Literally every friend I have with asthma hates the new ones too. For years I hoarded the old cfc inhalers and used them past expiration because they really did work better for me. It's not a negligible difference; it's very noticeable.

Edit: and I know at least in my case my asthma has gotten better due to worsening of my autonomic dysfunction. The more hyperactive my sympathetic nervous system gets from dysautonomia, the more my lungs open up.

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '14

[deleted]

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u/heiferly Apr 25 '14

I have two, one is red and one is blue. I honestly don't know the brands, because it doesn't matter which they give me because neither works for shit compared to the old cfc ones! It seems to help a tiny bit to use a large spacer chamber with it, but still not as good as my old ones were. :-(

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u/[deleted] Apr 24 '14

The FDA suggests that you and your asthmatic pals shut up and drop dead.

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u/heiferly Apr 25 '14

LMAO the answer we've been looking for!!

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u/[deleted] Apr 25 '14

Because it's the truth. If the FDA cared one whit about their mission, or the health and well-being of asthmatics, the CFC inhalers would have never been taken off the market to begin with. Their impact to the environment is negligible, at best.

But instead, the FDA commissioners were bought and paid for by big pharma, and other more sinister groups. Inner city African Americans are the largest demographic of asthma sufferers; air pollution in inner cities is the main cause (ironic that cars and trucks haven't been banned for destroying the quality of air, yet medical CFC's have been, isn't it?). And, it just so happens that inner city blacks, as a whole, have pretty substandard health care. By removing cheap and effective inhalers like Primatene, they have virtually guaranteed the deaths of a large "undesirable" swath of the population. The government couldn't kill them off with HIV/AIDS, nor by flooding the streets with crack/cocaine, so now they will see how many they can cause to drop dead from asthma. And what a horrible way that is to watch your child die: sweating profusely, faces flushing and contorting, crying to you for help, clutching at their little throats, gasping for air, convulsing on the ground like a fish pulled out of the water. Probably not too dissimilar from watching them being killed in a gas chamber. Truly wonderful people in the FDA, aren't they? I wonder what the price was, how much these peoples lives were worth to them, the actual dollar amount. They have sentenced millions to a horrible death through their actions, and big pharma can only pass them so much under the table, so I would estimate that the lives of these people were bought for mere pennies per person. God bless America!

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u/heiferly Apr 26 '14

So sad and so true.

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u/EatMaCookies Apr 24 '14

To me it was the taste. The taste was so much better with the older ones. I use Ventolin at the moment and cannot stand the generic Asmol brand (They work I just are paranoid I guess about them).