Biological medicines in the age of biotech: public policy issues

Some of the major public anxieties in public health matters in recent years, as well as some of the greatest medical achievements, have concerned the class of medicines known as ‘biologicals’. Take, for example, blood and blood products. They are an essential and life-saving component of everyday medical practice. But the AIDS epidemic provided painful evidence of how disease could be transmitted by donated blood or products made from it, such as clotting factors for the treatment of haemophilia (Berridge, 1996, p. 134). Subsequently there have been public scandals or public inquiries in several countries about the safety of blood and blood products and the effectiveness of controls (Baiter, 1999; Health Canada, 1997).