America’s Dangerous Dependence on China Must Change [Opinion]

Adriana Cohen wrote on Fox News recently about how the coronavirus is highlighting a dangerous dependence that American citizens have on China’s prescriprion medication market.

Cohen believes that if the military is having difficulty acquiring on personal protection equipment, hospitals are unable to find equipment or the prescription drug industry lacks an ingredient vital in the production of a vaccine, America is at risk of crashing the economy.

She wrote that the coronavirus crisis should “serve as a wake-up call that the U.S. government must stop being reliant on China” and being reliant has put “our nation’s security at risk from foreign adversaries who could exploit the situation”.

Chen cited Rosemary Gibson, who co- authored “China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine,”, for cautioning that countries in a conflict will withhold medication, supplies or deliver ineffective solutions disguised as remedies while a country is showing vulnerability.

There have been concerns for fraudulent medications during this virus on the black market because not only are some people becoming ill, a large number of people have died consuming what they believe is medication or a vaccine.

Fox News included more of Cohen’s report.

It’s no secret that the United States is dangerously dependent on China for a bevy of medicines Americans rely on such as antibiotics, ibuprofen, penicillin and acetaminophen.

“Eighty percent of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients are produced abroad, the majority in China and India; however, the FDA only inspected one in five registered human drug manufacturing facilities abroad last year,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and the FDA last year.

Grassley also warned about the risks that come with foreign manufacturing of pharmaceuticals: “I strongly encourage the administration’s demonstration projects to include unannounced inspections in foreign manufacturing facilities to determine whether they meet the required Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients and drug quality and safety standards to include sufficient record-keeping, testing and protections against counterfeiting.”

Given we know that China is responsible for the start of COVID-19, and its subsequent mishandling and cover-up, causing irreparable harm to the United States, Europe and the globe, is this who we want controlling our critical medical supply chain?

Absolutely not.

Nor do we want to be reliant on any other foreign nation for potentially life-saving drugs or medical equipment such as masks, gloves, ventilators or other critical products. This includes India, whose government has just announced it is banning exports of a malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, that we’re told may be helpful in treating patients with coronavirus.

President Trump has noted that part of his strategy to prevent some of the issues we are facing in the future is to encourage drug companies to open factories in America.

Sen. Rubio stated on Fox News that “about 80% of the ingredients used to make prescription drugs by American manufacturers is made abroad”. They also reported that he claimed that a majority of those ingredients are made China in factories that are mostly closed.

Fox News also reported on an article being circulated by China’s State media pushing a narrative that China may change exportation regulations that could prevent the U.S. from climbing out of the coronavirus crisis.

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Carver Malone Analyzing America https://www.analyzingamerica.org/