THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT: Our profit is more important than your death

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Our profit is more important than your death

This might well be the motto of much of corporate America who constantly maintain the idea that our only value is to their bottom line. If the increase to that bottom line is greater from our death than from our life, so be it. You might think that one industry that would buck the trend would be the medical device industry. You would be wrong, possibly dead wrong.

Experts and standards groups have advocated since 1996 that tubes for different functions be made incompatible — just as different nozzles at gas stations prevent drivers from using the wrong fuel.

But action has been delayed by resistance from the medical-device industry and an approval process at the Food and Drug Administration that can discourage safety-related changes.

Advocates in California got legislation passed in 2008 that would have mandated that feeding tubes no longer be compatible with tubes that go into the skin or veins by 2011. But in 2009, AdvaMed, the manufacturers’ trade association, successfully pushed legislation to delay the bill’s effects until 2013 and 2014 or until the international standards group reaches a decision.

This la-de-da attitude has been assisted by an underfunded FDA that through the Bush years never saw a problem until the bodies started piling up. Some are now making the push for these simple devices to reach a level of standardization common to most other industries.

// posted by montag @ 12:09 PM