Credit: Busà Photography / Moment RF / Getty
In August, the US Food and Drug Administration greenlit a new maker of an old drug used for the most severe cases of lead poisoning, ending a shortage and stopping the need for importation of the medicine from France.
The only problem: The new version costs almost 10 times as much as the imported version, about $32,000 per course of treatment.
“What we run up against with this pricing is that the hospitals are just not able to stock this drug,” said Dr. Diane Calello, executive and medical director of the New Jersey Poison Control Center.
And though it’s rare these days for a child in the US to have blood lead levels that are high enough to require this medicine, called calcium disodium edetate or EDTA, it does happen, she said; at that stage, they could have seizures, coma […]
This is a deeply troubling story indeed. EDTA is available as a detox supplement through almost any vitamin store. It is widely used in the food industry to preserve flavors in foods and beverages. It is cheap enough to be an ingredient in 99 cent bottles of pop but not cheaply available to save a life. Sad.