The Epipen Saga Sans Matt Damon

Here is an all too-typical story in American business. It is also one that has implications for this Trump-Clinton charade called an open, free election.

Read it and connect the dots, not those plot dots the Fed struggles with, the political connection ones and their Siamese twin, hypocrisy.  Hypocrisy is like everything else: it's only evil when it's yours not mine. Hillary recently excoriated a medical device firm, but remained circuit jammed on this affair.

While Mylan Pharmaceuticals is cashing in on the EpiPen price hikes, the inventor of the life-saving device, who made it for the public, died in obscurity.

Sheldon Kaplan, who was an engineer for NASA before inventing the EpiPen, lived a humble, middle-class lifestyle. His surviving family members say he was never paid royalties for the device he invented, and never became famous for designing a product now used by millions.

“He was not famous; he was not wealthy,” Kaplan’s 42-year-old son Michael told the Tampa Bay Times. “And I don’t think he would’ve liked to be. I don’t think he expected that.”

After working at NASA, Kaplan started working for Survival Technology, Incorporated in Bethesda, Maryland. Kaplan sought to create a device intended to quickly inject a user suffering from anaphylaxis — a potentially fatal allergic reaction — with an emergency dose of epinephrine. EpiPens are a lifesaver for anyone allergic to common foods, like peanuts, shellfish, and eggs. Before the EpiPen was invented, anaphylactic shock had to be treated by drawing epinephrine from a bottle with a syringe, which was too time-consuming.

In 1973, when Kaplan was finalizing the design concept for the EpiPen, he was approached by the U.S. Department of Defense, which was looking for a device that could quickly inject an easily deliverable antidote for nerve gas. Kaplan’s design was for a device that a person could easily stick into one’s thigh, prompting a spring-loaded mechanism to push a needle containing life-saving medicine into the user’s bloodstream.

Kaplan’s invention became known as the ComboPen, and was initially used by the Pentagon before becoming available for use by the general public several years later as the EpiPen. However, Kaplan left Survival Technology, Incorporated shortly after creating the EpiPen to become a biochemical engineer, and didn’t follow the success of his invention. He lived out his life in a typical suburban home with two modest cars in the garage.

“My husband was always looking for a new challenge, and he tended not to look backward,” Kaplan’s 71-year-old wife, Sheila, told the Times.

“[Kaplan] felt he had a legacy, that he made a difference,” Michael Kaplan said. “My dad was an extremely talented engineer, an analytical guy who delighted in solving technical issues.”

However, for Mylan Pharmaceuticals, which cornered the patent on the EpiPen in 2007, the life-saving device has made billions for the company. According to Bloomberg, a package of two EpiPens costs $415 in the US after insurance discounts. Comparatively, in France, two EpiPens cost just $85 USD. Mylan CEO Heather Bresch’s salary increased by 671 percent after hiking the price of the EpiPen by 461 percent over the past nine years.

Before her hire as CEO, Bresch — daughter of U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va) — was Mylan’s chief lobbyist. In November of 2013, a bill requiring all public schools to carry EpiPens for students with food allergies was signed into law by President Barack Obama. Over the following three years, as schools nationwide bought EpiPens by the truckload, Mylan implemented double-digit price hikes for the EpiPen every other quarter.

blacklistednews.com/Big_Pharma_dirty_secret A_EpiPen_was_developed with taxpayer money.


Here is a quote by the CEO she recently gave to MSM regarding the high increase in the price of her product.

Already, Ms. Bresch, 47, has moved more quickly than they did to quell public furor over prices. On Thursday, she announced that the company was increasing financial assistance to patients to reduce their out-of-pocket costs. But the company did not say it would lower the list price — which has risen to about $600 for a pack of two EpiPens, from about $100 when Mylan acquired the product in 2007.

In an interview, Ms. Bresch said the price increases on EpiPen weren’t even in the “same hemisphere” as what Mr. Shkreli did when he raised the price of Daraprim by 50 times overnight.

By her reason a 500% increase in the price has to be in the same "hemisphere" of others who have jacked up prices astronomically for their products. This is another example of just how insensitive the elite are.

Morphine Syrette

A standard part of a medic's equipment, the morphine Syrette consisted of a small tube of morphine with an attached hypodermic needle. The morphine was administered by piercing the patient's skin with the needle (after a seal was broken with a small needle) and then squeezing the tube. The Syrette itself was developed and trademarked by Squibb (currently the Bristol-Myers Squibb Company).
Although the injection of morphine straight into the bloodstream is more addicting than any other means (such as smoking or ingesting opium, from which morphine is derived), morphine has been widely used since the American Civil War as a quick means to ease the pain of injured soldiers in the field.

In an effort to prevent overdosing and possible addiction, World War II medics were instructed to attach the used Syrette to the patient's collar in order to prevent additional morphine being administered during later stages of treatment.

The method of injecting the morphine shown in the film is incorrect. Instead of the quick stabbing motion seen, the Syrette should have been inserted into the skin at a shallow angle. Considering that medics carried a limited supply of morphine, it is questionable that a commanding officer would have allowed more than one shot of morphine to be given to a dying man.

The injection above was administered to the soldier's outer thigh. So except for the regulated dose now used in the EpiPen and a matter of convenience and availability not a lot has changed.

You'll find insensitive bullies everywhere.