Anthony Harrelson - Pharmacy History: Drug Regulation

Many people are unaware that the stringent standards and protocol that drugs have to go through today were not always in place. As a matter of fact, in the past, most drugs were produced on such a small scale by manufacturers that placing a legislative system and regulatory control over their manufacturing would not only be difficult, but foolish as well. That means that at one point in time, drugs could claim things that they did not actually do, and suffer no repercussions, even if they were unsafe for human consumption. Even when regulatory laws did in fact exist, they were nearly never enforced, as there was hardly and procedure in place that would allow them to be. It wasn’t until there were a series of outbreaks of tetanus and contaminated smallpox and diphtheria vaccines, that regulation standards were increased. These standards were only increased then because of the many deaths that were being caused by unregulated and improperly administered biological drugs.

It was not until the Biologics Control Act of 1902, that every single drug distributed had to go through a process by the federal government to be approved before allowing it into the marketplace. This grant could only be obtained if the drug itself and the facility manufacturing it were up to code. This was promptly followed by the Pure Food and Drugs act, which would go on to forbid the distribution of improperly branded foods and drugs. A drug would be considered improperly branded if it had things like opium, cocaine, alcohol, or a number of other dangerous and addictive substances within it. Especially if the label did not indicate the percentage amount of each drug it possessed.

Unfortunately, many speedbumps were hit on the way to developing a good regulatory system for drugs. This is because the enforcement of these new laws was undermined by the Supreme Court because of the unclear specifications stated in the law regarding a drug’s ingredients and how they should be displayed.

Anthony Harrelson is the CEO of a company that is developing ways to combat the HIV virus, as well as Ebola.

Anthony Harrelson - Pharmacy History: Penicillin and Vaccines

As many are aware, one of the greatest advancements in modern medicine occurred when mankind discovered and developed penicillin. This wonder drug would lead man out of the medicinal Stone Age and heading towards a golden era of medical treatment. This is all thanks to Alexander Fleming, who discovered the antibacterial agents in penicillin. Though he discovered this property, its use by people on a mass scale took a lot longer to come around, as they needed to develop better methods of purification and production. Once this happened however, with the aid of American and British government, many pharmaceutical companies had penicillin readily available for anybody who needed it.

Another important stride in the fight against pathogens and disease came when we developed the vaccine. The earlies progress being made towards developing a vaccine came from academic and government funded grant programs and research that was directed mostly towards identifying what pathogens caused what contagious diseases. Eventually this led to a more thorough understanding of each individual disease, and helped to create the base concept for vaccinations, which just use a weakened form of a disease in order to adapt our bodies to combat it. In 1885, Pierre Pl Emile Roux and his companion Louis Pasteur would create the first rabies vaccine. A bit later many other vaccines would be developed in order to combat and prevent disease. This would cause a kind of chain reaction of vaccines to be developed, putting into check plagues like mumps, chickenpox, rubella, measles, and much more out of commission for good.

The reason that the development of vaccinations were so important for medicine is because they represented a way not just to combat and treat a disease, but to prevent it entirely. The idea that we could protect ourselves against a disease before ever even contracting it was a novel one at the time. Vaccines are now something that we take for granted, as it is standardized for us to be given shots that protect us from a wide variety of diseases that scarcely still even exist today. Vaccines are so powerful that they have even caused some diseases, such as smallpox, to become extinct entirely.

Anthony Harrelson is the CEO of White Oaks Industry Inc., a company developing ways to combat HIV and Ebola.