Natural Cures They Don't Want You To Know About

Factual Questions
21

This is the sad truth: If profits can’t be made, a therapy candidate won’t be developed. In a fiercely competative market, pharmaceutical companies approach cures like any other business, which can seem fairly appalling when given a summary evaluation. I can’t justify the direct-to-consumer marketing, which I think is probably the ugliest aspect of the capitalistic nature of the industry, and should be banned; but with a lot of other decisions, I’ve come to trust the folks in the suits a bit more (which is not to say some of my idealism hasn’t been sacrificed in the process). Pharma isn’t running a charity, so there’s no reason to expect the sector to behave like one. You give to much away, you go under; it’s as simple as that. If all drug research were publically funded, the world would probably be a better place; but the reality is a considerable proportion of drug development costs are borne by for-profit, publically-traded interests that are beholden to shareholders for returns on investments. It’s fully in accordance with our capitalistic economy: Investment fuels development, which produces a product that generates revenue. If everything goes well, the patient gets a cure, and the investor gets capitol gains. Everybody wins, in theory. In practise, it’s imperfect.

As flawed as the regulated pharmaceutical industry is, the supplement industry is like the Wild West, complete with the flim-flammers and the snake-oilers. Supplement peddlers sidestep the costs of R&D and clinical trials; so, while cheap, their products have no validation. They may be efficacious, they may not. Since they’re not rigorously tested, there’s no way to know. Some can cite peer-reviewed articles supporting the hypothesis that some-or-other substance is good for what ails you, but it is exceedingly rare that such preliminary studies are even remotely adequate as reasonable proof of efficacy. Typically these studies are flawed in design, and even if well-designed and controlled, too small to be significant. I’m not aware of many popular supplements that have been subjected to properly designed and sufficiently large double-blinded, placebo-controlled trials. One that I can think of offhand, St. John’s Wort, turned out to be no better than placebo at curing major depressive disorder, and much better than placebo at giving people adverse dematological reactions. Add to that the fact that SJ’sW radically alters hepatic drug metabolism, and I’d say there’s there’s every reason not to take it, and no good reason to waste your money on it. Similar results were found for echinacea, in regards to demonstrable lack of efficacy, coupled with demonstrable increase in adverse effects (skin rashes, mostly) over control. Ginko is an antithrombotic; ephedra gives people heart attacks and strokes; so where to the supplement-pushers get off saying their products are safer and more effective than FDA-approved drugs? They have no real idea; chances are, they’re lying or bending the truth considerably. They simly can’t be trusted, even when they mean well.

It’s worth noting that even with a fairly robust regulatory system (some even argue its too restrictive), serious negative side-effects from fully FDA-approved drugs can show up years later. Clinical trials simply cannot cover all posible adversities, so even with the best science (which the standard trials we subject drugs to certainly are not), you can never know for absolute certain if a drug you take is safe. But at least the process of investigation makes you aware of the risks. The supplement marketers ask their consumers to simply believe what they say, and in the absence of rigorous scrutiny, it would appear that consumers are only too willing to oblige. So, if the science is out-of-site (because it doesn’t exist), the risks are out-of-mind? As far as I can tell, that’s an accurrate assessment of the sophistication of the average supplement consumer. It’s too bad people take such an irrational approach to healing: Scientists try to be up front about the risks of drugs, so the consumer is paranoid about them; meanwhile the snake-oilers claim “natural”=“safe”, so people seek to take comfort in this fallacy, rather than acknowledge it’s a complicated world.

22

Of course, the United States is only one country. Most other industrialized countries have some form of national health care. If there were cheap effective treatments for all these diseases except the evil US pharmaceutical industry won’t allow them to be tested, why doesn’t the British or German or French or Canadian or Japanese government fund the studies to prove these remedies to be safe and effective?

After all, since those governments have to pay for long term care of all citizens, any cheaper alternative treatment is in their direct interest. Since the taxpayers foot the bill for long-term care they don’t have the same incentive that a Pharmaceutical company would theoritically have to withhold unpatentable or extremely cheap treatments.

However, I’m not aware of any cheap and effective miracle cures in use in other countries that we can’t get here in the US. In fact, most new drugs and treatments are developed right here in the United States. How can that be?

We should also remember that there are many other organizations besides Pharmaceutical companies in the US. We have for-profit medical insurance here. Insurance companies certainly aren’t interested in paying for long-term care for patients who could be cured cheaply by public-domain treatments. And we also have many non-profit corporations involved in health care…the Red Cross, all kinds of non-profit organizations dedicated to fighting particular diseases, non-profit hospitals, non-profit medical organizations like the AMA, non-profit charities who provide subsidized health care (such as churches). Why can’t the non-profits use these unprofitable treatments? And why can’t insurance companies who have a direct financial interest in lowering health care costs–they make money when they don’t have to pay for expensive drugs–fund trials to prove that these miracle cures work?

Let’s stipulate that Pharmaceutical companies are run by amoral psychopaths who would gladly allow millions of people to die lingering agonizing deaths all in order to squeeze a few pennies from the sick and dying.

However, there are plenty of other organizations…some for profit, some not for profit, some governmental…that have the exact opposite incentives. In fact, they would gladly throw the widows and orphans who own biotech company stocks out in the streets to starve all in order to squeeze a few pennies out of not paying for expensive treatments. Why don’t they bypass the evil pharmaceutical industry? Answer that question, and you’ll answer the OP.

23

Ah, but the people (literally millions of them) with anxiety aren’t dying of it - they just feel like crap. Actually, anxiety is a perfect example of a disorder for this discussion. It’s very common, usually chronic, with symptoms that aren’t life-threatening and are easily treated (but not cured) with drugs. As far as I can see, pharmaceutical companies have zero interest and motivation for developing a cure for a conditon like this. It’s much more financially sound to develop drugs that will treat the symptoms with a lifetime of expensive medicines (often around $1.00/day, every day, possibly for the rest of the patient’s life). This has “cash cow” written all over it.

24

So why isn’t the (hypothetical) not for profit Americans United Against Anxiety Disorders doing some research?

What I was trying to get at, is that there are other organizations other than Pharmaceutical companies out there. They have no incentive to milk people for long term expensive treatments.

And Pharmaceutical companies also (horrors!) COMPETE against each other. So if Evil Pharmaceutical company A suppresses their drug that cures disease B because they have an expensive drug C that treats the symptoms, Evil Pharmaceutical company D has a way of grabbing some of that money by producing drug E that cures the disease completely. Even if they won’t make the same money Company A made with drug C, they still get more money than they used to.

You complain about Pharmaceutical companies only caring about profits. Fine. Pharmacuetical companies are only a small player in the total global health care industry. Why don’t the various national health care services in Europe come up with cheap and unprofitable cures? Is America the only country that can do science? Can’t Germany fund some research? Doesn’t the US government and countless US universities fund medical research? Isn’t that research not for profit?

Why am I repeating myself? I just said that even stipulating that big Pharma is evil, you STILL make no sense.

25

Doesn’t big Pharma play a large role in funding university research? Would it be completely naive to think that they don’t have any agenda in the kind of results they would like to see for their money?

I think we’re talking past each other here. There are cures for anxiety disorder out there - my beef was with a medical system that didn’t bother to inform me of them for 13 years, and was perfectly content to keep prescribing expensive and possibly harmful medication.

26

I don’t know too much about the economics of drugs, but I can assure you, the anxiety market is so big, that if a curative vs. palliative therapy for anxiety could feasibly and safely be developed, it would prove an irresistable target. There must be tens of millions of people suffering from anxiety disorders in the developed world alone; plus more are born every day. Since every drug has a relatively finite lifespan of significant profitability, the idea that drug companies need to keep us all sick but happy to make money doesn’t square with the numbers, nor with the amount of cash being dumped into advanced, super-high-risk curative treatments like gene and stem-cell based therapies. I’m highly confident if you convinced a bigwig at Pfizer or wherever that you have a drug that you only need to take once and it cures you of anxiety, they’d be all over it. Why? Because they could sell it for $1000 a pill (which would still be cheap compared to competator’s prices over a lifetime), sell it to those millions of people, and get such a massive cash infusion it could fund R&D for the next ten years to hopefully develop another blockbuster.

I guessing the reason there is no cure for anxiety is largely due to the fact that A) we don’t really know quite what causes it, and B) the brain is an incredibly complicated organ, and making permanent changes to it cannot be undertaken lightly, even if you know what needs to be changed. I highly doubt it’s a conspiracy (at least in this case), and suspect its simply an issue of knowledge and feasibility.

27

Is psychotherapy generally regarded as a “cure” for anxiety? Do people not experience remissions? Do they not need to seek expensive behavioral therapies from well-trained specialists for up to years at a time? Are all psychotherapists alike or equally efficacious?

Don’t get me wrong: I think psychotherapy is great. My mom is a therapist (and she can prescribe drugs too, under the auspicies of an attending p-doc), and she’s a huge fan of CBT for anxiety disorders. But, like drugs, it has limits. For some patients, drugs+therapy is the way to go. Some get along fine without drugs and just therapy. Some just want the drugs, maybe because their insurance doesn’t pay for the therapy, and so on. Most of the people she sees are through a city health clinic, meaning few of them can pay for therapy at all; in which case drugs are sometimes the less expensive solution, and hence the only viable one under the circumstances. Some folks thank the heaven above for Prozac, and some can’t stand it. I don’t think it’s possible to make blanket statements about the suitability of pharmaceuticals vs. therapies (though that doesn’t stop some experts), since it’s not a one-size-fits-all kind of problem they’re being applied to, and I don’t know how often folks make claims that any therapy currently available for anxiety disorders is truly curative.

28

So how does this support your assertion that the drug companies are at fault? They create a drug that they don’t want you to know about?

29

My assertion that there are cures for anxiety comes from people I know who consider themselves cured. The cure for anxiety is not simply a drug, but a combination of drugs, therapy, self-help, support groups, meditation, relaxation, and time and patience, in whatever combination works for the particular individual involved. I can’t see the drug companies stopping their research on the latest and greatest SSRI to start pushing meditation and self-help. And for some reason, the doctors that I have been involved with only prescribe drugs for anxiety - none have mentioned any other forms of treatment. This could be because CBT is relatively new, or it could be because doctors are comfortable with the old familiar route of prescribing Paxil for anxiety.

I can’t blame the drug companies for making drugs; it’s what they do. What I do have a problem with is the disconnect between what people with anxiety need and what they seem to be getting from the medical community overall. There is a lot of information out there that most people with anxiety just aren’t getting, and I’m not sure why. And this is just one disorder, one that I’m personally familiar with. I don’t know how many times this story is played out for other disorders.

30

It’s called “sugar”.

31

Think about this… Is their money into 1 time cure all drugs?? No there isn’t. Big drug company’s care about 1 thing, and that is how much money did we make this quarter. You mean to tell me the FDA doesn’t get pay offs for certain drugs to be approved… How about the drug Vioxx… It’s a NSAID pain killer that killer over 600,000 people and had to be pulled off the shelves. Oxycontin was a perfect drug. What I mean is that it was perfect for all the wrong reasons. Thats why it became main stream. The FDA “Experts” they proclaim to be didn’t see that one coming??? B.S They saw the money pouring in and that was enough for them. If they didn’t see that coming then they don’t know a damn thing and should practice something else. Look how our government handles our tax money… But yet we have a strong FDA though… It’s a no brainier. Like the fact that marijuana is not a controlled but yet Cocaine is a CII… So are they saying Cocaine is safer?? or less safer?? I never heard of any one person die, overdose, crash a car or kill someone behind the wheel, or robbing or even steeling for marijuana… You have to ask yourself this… WHY?? Also with opiate addiction why do they prescribe stuff like Methadone or Suboxone for when it’s 10 times harder to get off than Heroin… Yea we cured alot of old diseases like 100 years ago back when integrity was important. Compare the diseases we cured in the last decade vs the cures we made 100 years ago. Compare the time lines and gaps… You will see a rapid decline along with incline in dependence. I don’t know about this book of natural cure though I’ve heard about it and by how our country has been the last few decades with spending and lies over lies. I see it’s conceivable to be true over false all together. I know from past experiences with addiction that they don’t want you clean and thats a fact. The only way around this is by taking responsibility for yourself and your own actions. It’s very heart breaking to hear of kids overdosing themselves but to prevent it you don’t tie the doctors hands around his back with all this FDA and DEA red tape… Again when are people in America going to realize that they did it to themselves. The same way a person commits suicide. Knowledge is power. Teach kids to google drugs or even look up story’s about a particular drug they tend to take so then they know the risks and then they can deside, but don’t think our goverment is the answer to everything and they have to do something about it. You do something about it. Want a mericial? be the mericial.

32

Hell, there’s big money in cures for illnesses that don’t even work. The drug company that actually could find a cure for, say, AIDS would make a fortune-- How could they not?

33

Holy Merciful Batman!

Natural Zombie Walls O’Text They Don’t Want You To Know About!!

On a much more serious note, this thread is from 2004. Next time you’re checking through Google hits and get excited, check the date-stamp on the thread before you get all hysterical and forget where your enter key is. :wink:

Also, not to rain on your impassioned defense of (I think) decriminalizing mary-jane, along with the unfortunate lapses in medical breakthroughs in disease prevention and cures, but that wasn’t really the point of this particular thread.

Your points may be heard better (if you intend to stick around) if you post them under a new topic (except maybe not the pot bit - I think that might be against the rules) for people to find them.

Also - miracles… please.

34

List of countries by life expectancy - Wikipedia They are living longer than we are.

35

Sure,* perhaps* some drug companies would not want to develop a drug that would compete against their own product. But- every drug company does want to compete against *other drug companies products. *

My friend works for a start-up pharma. He laughs about the UL that “drug companies” don’t want to develop cheap cures. He sez his company would kill for a miracle cure, even if it never made them a nickel, even if they lost $ on it. The publicity would send their stock thru the roof, attract top men in the field, investors, etc. They would make billions… on a drug that they lost money on. He (and most of the top executives) own a huge amount of their stock, stock that is worth pennies now, he’d be filthy rich.

36

Is there a cure for zombies?

37

Antibiotics! <semi-obscure Niven reference>

38

That’s only on Mispeck Moor. (Didn’t look it up, so spelling may be off.)

39

Also in the EU, US beef when growth hormones have been used.

40

I wish I could remember which plant it was, but my mother once bought some of it for me. I didmissed the stuff and put it on some shelf. However, one day, out of curiosity, I looked it up on the internet, and discovered it had, in fact, significant effects even in its natural form (and also significant side-effects). So much so that German authorities had banned its sale pending more studies and a decision about whether to allow it again on prescription.

Just remember which plant it was : hypericum perforatum . I couldn’t read the whole article, but I noticed it mentioned a variety of medical uses, but a lack of clear understanding of the mechanisms.