Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rossdavidh | Hacker News Reader

1) having audited lower-income countries' factories, for a tiny bit years ago, convinced me that this is true of just about any country at a lower level of economic development. Rigorous regulatory enforcement is expensive, and poor countries are poor.

2) it is not just a problem with generic drugs in India, it is a problem with anything that is painted (lead?), anything with plastics in it, etc. etc.

3) it is interesting that the one case where Bloomberg seems to be saying "this outsourcing our manufacturing to the Third World is a problem", is the case where the industry in question has a profit-related reason to want it to stop. In most industries, the U.S. companies want to manufacture there, so that is "free trade", and I think Bloomberg would be in favor and unlikely to run a story like this.

Regd #3 I suspect the reason Bloomberg is saying this for pharmaceuticals is because this is a regulated industry where the FDA actually inspects and certifies manufacturing operations abroad. Pharma is almost unique in this.

Similarly, when toys from China were found containing lead, there were many stories about the danger this posed, and Im sure Bloomberg was involved in that. The difference is that those factories don’t have a neutral agency inspecting them so you only find problems when they cause an issue and it is widely publicized.

I think broadly these are governed by GxP compliance?

poor countries are poor

India has nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers and a space programme.

So does China, so did the Soviet Union, but it doesn't really mean they're not “poor”.

Which is neither here nor there for a country with 1+ billion people.

You can have all that and still have 70%+ piss poor population...

Sorry if that sounded like I was saying "primitive". I was not meaning to. The relevant fact is that it takes a lot of money, proportional to the size of the country, to have good environmental, health, and safety regulations, and enforce them. A very large country such as India, which does have many technologically savvy people, can have nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers, and a space program for far less money than it takes to make all your manufacturing not cut corners in E,H,&S regulations.

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