This is an omnibus Bill of a very special character which I believe generally can best be discussed on Committee Stage, treating the Schedule more or less seriatim as we would the sections of an ordinary Bill, but there are one or two matters on which I should like clarification.
Deputy Dr. Browne referred to the duty on medicinal tablets imposed in Order No. 78. He dwelt on one aspect of this problem relating to the difficulty of doctors prescribing particular drugs, particularly antibiotics of domestic manufacture, where their patients have come to depend on certain branded antibiotics supplied from abroad, and where the patients have come to assume that the names of well-known, internationally-known, drug manufacturers are sufficient guarantee of the standard of the drug. Their confidence is not so well established in the domestic drug where there is no system of testing its efficacy.
I am bound to say that, so far as I am aware, and I have taken occasion to inquire into this matter and with some care, that the antibiotic drugs and preparations of that character—and they are not all antibiotic— manufactured here are of a high quality. The Minister would do the manufacturer of these preparations here a service if some arrangement were made with the Bureau of Standards to test these drugs and give them their certificate. It is perfectly natural that people who have been, in the past, in the habit of taking drugs manufactured by the great nonprofit trusts like Burroughs Wellcome, and so forth, have grown to depend on these people to maintain the standard of preparations on which they put their name. If you are sick, it is the most natural thing in the world that you should attach immense importance to getting drugs the potency-of which you believe to be effectively guaranteed. The Minister would give a corresponding reassurance in respect of the domestic drug, if there were some State-sponsored system of sampling and certifying the domestic product.
I want to raise an entirely different point and one with which I do not expect members of this House who are themselves doctors to have much sympathy, but one which I think is of very considerable importance from the point of view of the ordinary citizen of the State. There are a number of relatively simple drugs, such as aspirin, veganin and other forms of salicylic acids, which people take for the common ills of mankind. Now, both men and women have recourse to these drugs with reasonable frequency. It is probably true that a considerable part of their value is psychological. You will find persons who believe that one brand of aspirin is a sovereign remedy for their constant affliction. You can demonstrate to those people indefinitely that there are four or five proprietary preparations and that the active principle of them all is identical. Nevertheless, one of those five products will cure the particular affliction from which the person is suffering and none of the other four will—and it is because that person believes that the one product will cure him.
People may say to me: "This is no matter of sufficient significance to sway the minds of this Legislature." That is where I do not agree. I attach much more importance to the natural apprehensions and sufferings of the ordinary citizen than I do to the exalted anxieties of the skilled physician who fears that if you get aureomycin to-day, it may not be as effective as acromycin to-morrow. Ninety-nine per cent. of us do not know the difference between them but more than 80 per cent. know the difference between Aspro, aspirin and various brands of aspirin and more than 70 per cent. of us are quite convinced that Bayer's Aspirin will cure our headache where Aspro will not, or vice versa.
If you put one particular brand of aspirin out of our reach, it may be that 50 per cent. of us will get along without it but there is a silent, suffering 50 per cent. who suffer because we have put the particular simple remedy on which they have depended out of their reach by making it either too expensive for them to buy or too expensive for the druggist to stock. A situation can easily arise in which the person suffering from some simple ill goes to the chemist and says: "I am prepared to pay 100 per cent. duty if I can get the tablets I want." The chemist says: "Maybe you would, but there are so few who are prepared to do it that we have given up keeping them."
If it were represented to me that there were some vital national interests at stake then I would be prepared to say: "We must start a careful campaign of education to prevent people from feeling this irrational confidence in one patent preparation in preference to another which is in fact identical in its constituents." But I do not believe that the employment given in making tablets is of the slightest significance. I am told you could get two machines, operated by two men, which would make in about a week all the tablets that the population in this country could consume in 12 months. There is no employment involved at all. Instead of bringing in the brand of tablets, you are bringing in the raw materials and feeding it into a tablet machine and one man can operate a tablet machine which will turn out countless millions of tablets.
It is like the modern method of manufacturing electric light bulbs. I am told two or three machines could produce in a few weeks all the electrict light bulbs used in Great Britain and if you have a sufficiently large market to justify the installation of such a machine there is no labour content in the production of electric bulbs at all. Similarly, on a very much smaller scale with our population, one or two machines can make all the tablets we need.
I suspect that this duty was imposed originally to protect antibiotics and analogous drugs and capsules. I think we have used a wholly inappropriate procedure to achieve a strictly limited end and that we are causing a lot of people unnecessary annoyance and suffering for the want of taking a little care. I put it to the Minister that the time is overdue when this Imposition of Duties (No. 78) (Medicinal Tablets) Order, 1959, should be reconsidered.
I apprehend that the vested interests concerned in this matter which are the physicians, the pharmaceutical chemists and the manufacturing chemists will not bring pressure to bear on the Minister in regard to the particular case I have made. The people for whom I am attempting to speak are not organised. They are not in a position to press their case on the Minister but I have every reason to believe that the case I am making is no less valid for that reason.
I urge the Minister to re-examine this Order and to see if some system could not be devised to achieve two ends—(1) an adequate system of testing the domestic product to create confidence in the mind of the sick public in the domestically-manufactured antibiotic drug and (2) the exclusion from the operation of this tariff all preparations such as aspirin, veganin and these complexes in that category mainly directed to the relief of what is popularly known as nervous pain.
