The “lifetime” of someone afflicted with cancer is usually really, really short, you know…
To be fair, if you had a look at my bike bottles recently you might not be so skeptical. 
I think you have to start your response by saying that “cancer” is not really a single disease with a single cause, so there’s unlikely to be a single cure.
Next time you go camping, bring something to stuff in Ms. Know-It-All’s mouth so you can get some commonsense words in.
I tried that. She shot back with the “fact” that they don’t have cures for all cancers, of course, but they can cure some of them.
Usually we just cross our fingers and hope her delightful daughters and fun husband show up and she stays home. This weekend we weren’t so lucky. (we did have a great time roasting her once they left)
What chaps my ass about statements about The Evil Pharma Companies is that these corporations are made up of thousands of people. Upper Management and the Board may be evil money-grubbing bastards, but everyone else has their own reasons for working there. Believe it or not, a sizable portion are there because biotech firms offer a lovely combination of paycheck and altruism.
Now, if a team was investigating a new drug, and it showed great promise in curing cancer, even if The Evil Powers That Be squashed the research, what makes you think that at least one of the scientists wouldn’t run to the public and blab? The odds are actually very high that a high-ranking researcher would risk jail time for the fame and goodwill that comes from curing cancer. Spending years in jail is worth having one’s name remembered for centuries.
On top of that, scientific advancement doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Virtually every scientist who’s made a major breakthrough has been only slightly ahead of his competitors in the field. If there were a promising area of research that was being deliberatly ignored or suppressed by pharmaceutical corporations, the thousands and thousands of researchers around the world would likely notice that there’s no work being done in that particular area, and start asking why.
Plus, if Pharma Company A decides to suppress a cure to drive up their profits in maintenance medications, they’re going to be doing so at the expense of Pharma Company B, who’s trying to market their own medicines. If Pharma B is losing to Pharma A in the maintenance market, there’s no reason for them not to go ahead and start marketing the secret cure.
MN_Maenad, how naïve of you. Don’t you know that The Powers That Be (TPTB) at the Pharmas have all these altruistic researchers who won’t play ball Jimmy Hoffa-ed. The next time anyone sees them is on a milk carton. TPTB all have to pass through the Emperor Palpatine School of Management before getting their C-level suites.
ETA: You too, Miller? Stop trying to fight conspiracies with facts and logic, else I’ll call TPTB on you!
The drug companies would never be able to keep a cancer cure off the market. The tobacco companies wouldn’t let them.
I mean, seriously, doesn’t a conspiracy theory at least have to make sense? Pharmaceutical companies make money selling drugs to cure diseases. If they had a drug that cures a disease that’s common and deadly, why would they not sell it?
In her defense, there is a real concern for those of us who keep re-using water bottles without washing them properly. Some people (My, what a nice cieling in here…) have been known to keep refilling a water bottle for weeks or months without ever washing it out.
After my friend expressed such concern about my drinking from bike bottles, I tested my google fu. Low and behold, there seems to be some kind of, um, alarm, over leaching in No. 7 bottles. It seems that bisphenol A will be the death of me. Unless something else gets me first, that is.
Can anyone google up a cite for any pharmacuetical CEO’s who have died of cancer? Unless we’re presuming that they were phenomenally dedicated to their company’s profits, I think we can assume that if they had had access to any cancer cures they would have used them and their deaths were proof no such cures existed.
The money is in the treatment, not the cure.
Nope. You were misinformed. I was sitting right there watching the TV several years ago when Bruce McCulloch took full responsibility for cancer.
Bastard!
Where do people get this shit? I’m taking prescription LOVAZA™ (formerly named Omacor), patent number 5,502,077, which is nothing but purified fish oil.
As such a person (I refuse to keep buying water in bottles, and refill them with filtered water instead), what’s so risky about that? I suppose you might re-infect yourself in certain cases of illness, but that’s the only problem I can think of. Sure, I rinse the bottle each time, but I certainly don’t wash it.
Thank you! You may as well search for a “cure for poison”.
AIUI, there are concerns about the plastic being able to provide a place for microfauna to breed and multiply. I’m not saying I think it’s a high grade risk for people with uncompromised immune systems, just that it’s a non-zero risk. Additionally, many potable water treatment methods (ozone, or UV irradiation) have no persistent disinfectant capability. As long as one is putting the water into a relatively clean receptacle, and drinking it immediately upon dispensing, there’s not much risk for microfauna build up.
But if one thinks about how a bike bottle is used, that’s not what happens - the bottle is filled, then is allowed to sit for hours, often, in ambient temperature environments.
I bring filtered water from home to work. If I get lazy and leave a small amount of water in the closed container (over vacation, say), it will grow some fun little microorganisms I’d rather not drink. My nalgene bottles take a regular spin in the dishwasher now.
So that’s what they mean by a “Reduction In Force”.
Would you be willing to address my long-ish post on page 1 of this thread in the context of this statement?
I wonder how far Dopers would be willing to go to play with the minds of the sort of people who insist that there are viable cures out there that “The Companies” don’t want us to know about.
For years I’ve made the assertion that radiation exposure prevents Alzheimer’s Disease. And I can prove it, too: Give me a population of test subjects (And, well, no requirement to abide by any kind of ethics) and I could prove a dramatic reduction in the cases of Alzheimer’s in the exposed group, compared to the control group.
Spoilered for very morbid humor. The experiment protocol would be simple - take the test group, expose it to an LD50 acute radiation dose, (I’m thinking 400-500 REM.) and then track the two groups. I guarantee that fifty years from now the control group will have far more cases of Alzheimer’s than the test group.
So now, if one were so inclined, one could try telling these people that one has heard/read on the internet that there’s one method for reducing Alzheimer’s in the population that no one will test, because of pesky medical protocol rules. Just to see if these people are critical enough to even ask what the protocol preventing the test might be…