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AN OFF-DUTY duo of brother-and-sister lifeguards have been commended after rescuing a man from almost certain drowning on their way home from work.
Bernard and Róisín Cahill, who work in Lahinch in Co Clare, were returning from their own lifeguard shift one evening recently when chance brought them to the nearby area of Spanish Point.
It was to be a particularly fortuitous detour for one man who had gotten himself into trouble in the water.
“I was driving home from work at 7pm, and usually I’d go from Lahinch to Ennis, but we were dropping a colleague home so we were out of the way and we ended up at Spanish Point,” Bernard told TheJournal.ie.
We stopped, and I was on the phone to my Mum, and we saw two people swimming into what we knew was a serious rip current. The lifeguards were finished for the day, otherwise they’d never have been let swim there.
I just said to Mum, we might have a rescue here.
When Bernard and Róisín reached the water they realised the male swimmer, who is over 50 and hails from Ennis but was unfamiliar with the rip current, “was in serious trouble”.
“The sea there looks like there’s nothing unusual going on, because the beach is flat. It’s a surf beach. You have to know the current’s there,” says Bernard.
While Bernard swam to the stricken bather (whose female partner had managed to struggle to safety), Róisín borrowed a local’s kayak in order to help.
“It was a two-person job really,” he says. “When we got to him he was in awful trouble, so we got him in the kayak and back to shore. But he knows how lucky he was.”
Bernard describes a strong rip current, a common hazard off Ireland’s west-coast beaches in particular, as like “being on a treadmill”. “If you’re used to it you swim across and use the incoming waves to get away from trouble. But this man didn’t know that. He was trying to fight it”.
The pair have now been commended by Clare County Council for their heroic action. But for Bernard, that isn’t the point.
“We’re not the story, the incident wasn’t a huge thing for us to do, we understand the risks and we know how to deal with them,” he says.
But you have to understand, that day alone there were 17 rescues on Co Clare beaches by lifeguards. People need to know the risks and to swim safely.
If 17 people died on our roads in a day people would certainly sit up and take notice. It would be huge news.
“The woman in this incident, she was in a swim club,” Bernard adds. “And she struggled to get back in. You have to understand the risks of the sea.”
Irish Water Safety has a full guide on how to spot rip currents, and how to escape them, here
We have known about this patent cliff for years, yet we have supported generic products who do not engage in R&D. The downside of that is that large Pharma companies are not investing in NPD because of falling revenues and we have no new drugs to take over. We have done nothing to encourage R&D and we are going to pay a heavy price unfortunately.
The pharma companies are not sleep walking into this and have been living with this kind of thing as part of their normal business risks for years.
The good ones will be bringing replacement product on stream and selling the patent rump to generic manufacturers as they free up capacity for new product.
It is a well trodden path
“with the country’s pharmaceutical industry currently generating 50 per cent of the total amount of the nation’s exports”
Merchandise exports, not total exports. Ireland is ahead of the curve internationally in switching to services exports (software, consultancy, financial services, etc) and they now constitute 50% of all exports, so pharma is – after some simple multiplication – about a quarter of total exports.
This is a relatively serious issue, not because it is unexpected or even because of the effect it will have on our export statistics, but because of the effect it will have on (a) corporate tax revenues, and (b) FDI decisions by pharma firms in relation to existing and new plants.
Don’t forget that there is also a generic pharmaceutical industry in Ireland that provide people with affordable medicines. Some of those people could not afford the medicines when it is not generic!
When I was in college I did my work placement with Eli Lilly and it was an amazing place to work. They really look after their staff; the (very subsidised) canteen was award winning and as good as any restaurant. They threw a big party for everyone’s kids at Christmas and gave them Easter eggs as well. They really do everything they can to provide a safe working environment; with schemes such as flexi time (where possible) and of course employees are well paid.
These are exactly the kind of employers we should be supporting/keeping in this country.
@Patrick The Cipramil/Lexapro, Losec/Nexium, Clarityn/NeoClarityn trick has been closed by European regulators.
Overall, this is not a huge issue as Pfizer bought Wyeth recently, as the latter have a better “pipeline” of new drugs coming to the market. Pfizer would have negotiated the price for Lipitor which allowed them to cover the costs of developing it. If they had spent the money on developing new products rather than on marketting, they might not be in the position they are now.
Anyway, can we see real figures of what is contributed to people and the economy, rather than the not very informative figures of what value was exported?
So do you not just alter the drug ingredients slightly, give it a new brand name, work the marketing magic and take out a patent on the new brand and you’re away again ?? Example is Cipramil which is now called Lexapro because the patent ran out. So the manufacturer used a different binding agent in the drug, put it in a new box and off they went again with a “new” product and a new patent. I’m sure there might be a few sweeteners offered to doctors as well to prescribe the new named drug ! So for these reasons I don’t see the expiration of some patents being much of an issue really. It’s cheap labour in Asia that’s more of a worry where major manufacturers move their entire operations over to India or somewhere at a fraction of the cost.
No this is now not allowed. It used to be but unless it’s a completely new formulation the FDA and EMEA will not grant licenses.
When we talk about Pharma exports being a quarter of our total exports…
…how much of that is real exporting and how much of that is part of the double Irish tax dodge?
More of a question than a comment but can patents not be extended?
A normal patent gives you 20 years. You can apply for an extra 5 years in special circumstances i.e. drug companies. Assume that all this has been well researched by whoever owns the rights to Lipitor
You can. The makers of Prozac extended their patent by inventing a new disorder based on PMS. They then made the pills pink, whacked the price up 300% and called it “serafem”. They also marketed it to dogs as “reconcile”.
Check out the documentary “Big Pharma, Big Bucks”, it explains it all :)
Here is another question, how much does the hse spend on these companies products each year?
a good few of the companies are/will merge with other larger companies so it is a concern that the patents are coming on stream but the industry is adaptable !
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