Back to the Future

IT’S BEEN SAID that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. While innovation is usually linked with progress — and great innovations associated with transformational advancements — sometimes a link to the past is necessary to prevent regression. As dark allows us to understand light and famine gives us a new appreciation of feast, so does history offer the backdrop to value the innovative developments that current generations unintentionally take for granted.

Imagine a world without vaccines. As I write this, vaccine proponents are trying to minimize the damage from an uninformed comment made from an influential political platform. Misinformation, unfortunately, produces unintended consequences, and those on the front lines of the healthcare industry know all too well how difficult education regarding vaccine safety and efficacy has been since an anti-vaccine movement grew from myths, half-truths and false innuendos.We have covered this subject numerous times, as recently as our last publication in my letter to you. But at some level, repetition — staying the course — may be exactly what is needed to turn the tide of the anti-vaccine movement, and reach those who feel paralyzed by the uncertainty it has created.

Our feature, “A World Without Vaccines,” illustrates not “a world,” but “our world” just a century ago. It was a world that bore little resemblance to today. In the early 1900s, the infant mortality rate was a shocking 20 percent because common childhood killers such as measles, diphtheria, smallpox and paralytic polio went unchecked, leaving thousands of victims in braces, crutches, wheelchairs and iron lungs. Today, these devastating diseases have been contained because of the development and distribution of safe, effective and affordable vaccines. Yet, though vaccines have been called the most transformative public health achievement of our time, current U.S. measles outbreaks are at a 15-year high, and more than 18 million people worldwide continue to be infected by this highly contagious disease each year. Our catalog feature, Miracle Medicines, brings to light that although preventive vaccines are as common as household cleaning products, apathy and lack of education could potentially reverse years of disease reduction and eradication, thereby turning our backs to the future.

As we look forward in this innovation-themed issue to the future of molecular imaging, we also maintain an important perspective, understanding that these techniques that may hold clues to treatment or cures for currently intractable diseases are already decades old. Researchers have now combined what was once considered an enigmatic outpost of the nuclear age with new advances in gene therapy and personalized medicine. Long known for its advances in cardiology, molecular imaging now also has implications for such diseases as diabetes, tuberculosis and Alzheimer’s.

A fresh look at the link between diabetes, and heart disease and stroke, provides insight into the new anti-diabetic and cardiovascular drugs now available, highlighting the need to balance innovations in treatments with the lifestyle changes that prevent the onset of these deadly diseases.

We honor the past as we look to an exciting future where once-prominent diseases will continue to be minimized or even eradicated as history has shown can happen. As always, we hope you find this issue of BioSupply Trends Quarterly informational, educational and helpful to you in your practice.

Helping Healthcare Care,

Patrick M. Schmidt

Publisher