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Monday, November 11, 2013

PATRIOTISM & CAPITALISM



You all saw my posts invoking the patriotism to move forward with the re-purposing of the Enbrel medication for something different than what was approved by the FDA for (rheumatic pain, AS), but a friend of mine told me by email that here in the USA capitalism is certainly a much stronger feeling than patriotism. My mistake is that I was born in Italy that’s been a country under the political control of the countries it borders with for several centuries (France, Spain and Germany); it wasn’t until the 18th century that with Garibaldi and G. Mazzini Italy became an independent State (Republic) with its own political system, a parliament and its own President.
I guess that given that this independence took place not too long ago, every Italian has a strong patriotic drive to take care of the Italian borders, arts history and language.
While here in the USA we celebrate the Independence Day on July 4th to remember what was done on that same day in 1776 our American history is very different from the Italian one, meaning that here in N. America we were never invaded physically in any territories, we had to break the dominating relationship away from the very distant UK monarchy (kings or Queens). Even today in Italy the Italian language is very influenced by the official language of the previous country that dominated the area, so in the South of Italy the “dialect” is very influenced by Spanish, given that the Bourbons of Spain ruled the South of Italy for very many years, while in Tuscany it was France that used to treat that region of Italy as an extension of its territories, so there even today the local slang (dialect) is still very influenced by the French language.
Every part of Italy used to be under the political and cultural influence dominion of the country geographically closest to it and I can add i.e. that Sicily used to be very influenced by Greece, there still exist there several Greek temples and other types of monuments, similar to those in the Athens’s Parthenon and Verona and its slang are influenced by the German language and culture, given its proximity to both Austria and Germany.
So the patriotic feeling is very ingrained in the attitude of every true Italian and this is very different from the patriotism of any American, even if the independence wars took place at about the same time. What’s even stronger in any real American of the USA is truly the “capitalism” or an economic system based on private ownership of property and business, with the goal of making the greatest possible profits for the owners.
So this same friend told me that for the already wealthy and profitable Amgen to ask to the FDA to approve the use of the Enbrel – a very strong TNF-alpha reducer that also reduces the immunological system of the person who receives it - it’s close to impossible to use several hundreds of millions of $$$ that a repurposing by FDA costs, to have Enbrel approved for neurological recovery needed after a TBI or to treat the Alzheimer.
This actually explains the reason why I’ve been emailing our current President Obama, the governor of the California State and even the few other companies in this business of the TNF-alpha, (i.e. Remicade, Humira, Cimzia, and Simponi) to go after the approval for TBI recovery, that’s still wide open and that can surely generate huge profits given the vastness of what I call the epidemic of this new millennium.
I’m however in great hopes that the Obama sponsored BRAIN project will realize that such anti-inflammatory agent is of strong help for TBI recovery.
I can only say:”let’s wait and see”.

How much longer am I going to have to wait to receive the Enbrel treatment given that it’s pretty obvious that it’s a treatment that can generate very much money to all who can provide it?