Everything gives you cancer ...

[FluffyMcDeath]

Fructose gives you cancer or at least pancreatic cancer cells think it's the best tonic there is. They love the stuff and it gives them a real boost.

Fluoride gives you bone cancer which is an acceptable tradeoff for cavities, I'm sure(except it can wreck your teeth!).

On the other hand, many popular and profitable medicines don't cause cancer and in fact don't do anything at all. Isn't "science based" medicine great. I'm not saying that science isn't the right approach, I'm just saying it's not right to pile so much profit driven snake oil on the top of that base.

 

[faethor]

Fructose gives you cancer or at least pancreatic cancer cells think it's the best tonic there is. They love the stuff and it gives them a real boost.

Fluoride gives you bone cancer which is an acceptable tradeoff for cavities, I'm sure(except it can wreck your teeth!).

On the other hand, many popular and profitable medicines don't cause cancer and in fact don't do anything at all. Isn't "science based" medicine great.

Well afterall it was science that identified fluorides and fructose's additional effects.

I'm not saying that science isn't the right approach, I'm just saying it's not right to pile so much profit driven snake oil on the top of that base.

Overt advertising is part of the capitalistic system. It helps ensure that doctors and patients are convinced that drug X is a better choice than drug y. It's not so much a problem in science as it is a problem in the marketplace.

And don't forget you that trust that placebos (aka homeopathy) is the answer. The market is the same. The companies advertise to people that the effects are good. Yet many of the same large drug manufactures now manufacture homeopathic remedies. Why? Even larger profits. Companies don't have to prove they work nor even make the compounds consistently. And they have their own problems -- Well known homeopath nearly dies LINK

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Fructose gives you cancer or at least pancreatic cancer cells think it's the best tonic there is. They love the stuff and it gives them a real boost.

Fluoride gives you bone cancer which is an acceptable tradeoff for cavities, I'm sure(except it can wreck your teeth!).

On the other hand, many popular and profitable medicines don't cause cancer and in fact don't do anything at all. Isn't "science based" medicine great.

Well afterall it was science that identified fluorides and fructose's additional effects.

I'm not saying that science isn't the right approach, I'm just saying it's not right to pile so much profit driven snake oil on the top of that base.

Overt advertising is part of the capitalistic system. [...]

And don't forget you that trust that placebos (aka homeopathy) is the answer. The market is the same.

Which is the point I think. It doesn't matter whether it's "science based" of "faith based". by the time the market gets through with it, the base is so well buried that there's not much difference between the two.

What we need is "scientific medicine" - science from bottom to top. To get that though we would have to remove the vast profits. Researchers would still happily research but wouldn't suffer the pressures to make things appear to work that just don't. It's hard to stay honest when you have a mortgage and a boss that is willing to use that against you.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Another example of "science based" for profit medicine (as opposed to scientific medicine).

It's the story of Pfizer and their new (2001) painkiller "Bextra". It was licensed for certain limited uses by the FDA but Pfizer deliberately expanded that scope marketing outside of the license.

As usual doctors were co-opted as sales people through "education" programs for medical professionals.

When federal prosecutors began looking into the fraud it became apparent that Pfizer was "too important" to prosecute. A successful prosecution would have made them ineligible to bill Medicaid and Medicare which would have cause their revenue to virtually disappear and likely cause collapse and because of patent rights, a lot of medications would disappear along with them.

So what happened in the end was Pfizer was allowed to set up a shell company that could get prosecuted instead (a ram for Issac - or a scapegoat). Eventually the whole debacle cost Pfizer 3 months profit.

While there was probably some interesting science at the base of this pyramid it was far overshadowed by money, power and politics. If all of the effort and resources squandered in this game had been used to fund science without egos and yachts on the line we would all have been much better off.

Story

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Companies don't have to prove they work nor even make the compounds consistently. And they have their own problems -- Well known homeopath nearly dies LINK

Vitamin D supplementation in the winter months is almost certainly a good idea and it's generally hard to overdoes on the stuff. Typical summer levels from sun exposure are many times the does you get from supplements. However, in the rush to capitalize on the vitamin D wave I have heard of more than one company that couldn't tell its milligrams from its micrograms. When you are off by three orders of magnitude you can get into a bit of trouble.

Constant policing of all the supplements and medicines is one of the things that is always claimed much too expensive and oppressive for governments to be involved in and something which, apparently, the industry is much better at policing on a voluntary basis. Hmm.

 

[faethor]

When federal prosecutors began looking into the fraud it became apparent that Pfizer was "too important" to prosecute

Very sad! There should never be a company too important to prosecute or too big to allow fail. The reason is fairly simple. If the country is by, for, and of the people then any entity which cannot be held responsible to the people is above the people. Definitely something the founding fathers were against.

Vitamin D supplementation in the winter months is almost certainly a good idea and it's generally hard to overdoes on the stuff. Typical summer levels from sun exposure are many times the does you get from supplements. However, in the rush to capitalize on the vitamin D wave I have heard of more than one company that couldn't tell its milligrams from its micrograms. When you are off by three orders of magnitude you can get into a bit of trouble.

The theory of Homeopathy is things can be treated better by smaller doses. Unforuntely in this case the guy wasn't smart enough to realize the large dose was the most active to the point of near death. Exactly the opposite of what he preached.

Constant policing of all the supplements and medicines is one of the things that is always claimed much too expensive and oppressive for governments to be involved in and something which, apparently, the industry is much better at policing on a voluntary basis. Hmm.

Ahh yes the excuse of unfettered capitalism. See if the company kills people then no one will buy their products. Therefore, no one needs to monitor anything.

 

[faethor]

Recently Consumer Reports comes out against a dozen uncontrolled and potentially dangerous substances.

Vitamin supplements are something healthy people do not need. They get their vitamins from food. Extra in a pill has been shown time and again to be at best wasting money and at worst hazardous.

 

[Glaucus]

Well the way I see it, most drugs don't work on 100% of the people. Some work on only a very small percentage. Does that make them completely useless? To those the drugs don't work on, yes. But for those it does work on, it could be the difference between life and death. Just because something works on 5% of the population doesn't mean it's snake oil. Science and medicine is iterative. The first AIDS/HIV drugs were of little help, had huge side effects and cost an arm and a leg. If Fluffy's belief that Big Pharma is out only to squeeze the last few pennies out of the sick and the dying were true then that's probably where AIDS drugs would have remained. Yet, in clear contrast to this, AIDS drugs have gotten to the point where AIDS is no longer a death sentence and the drugs are cheaper and have less side effects - with the added bonus that humankind has a much better understanding of how viruses work in general. And despite that AIDS cures and vaccines are still being researched and with some encouraging results recently.

So, yes I fully accept that ultimately we're all guinea pigs. But I also believe that it's worth it. Some will suffer and some will die, but in the long term many more will benefit.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

If Fluffy's belief that Big Pharma is out only to squeeze the last few pennies out of the sick and the dying were true [...]

Nah. The hospitals do that. Big Pharma makes the majority of its money by selling "cures" for minor or imagined ailments of the affluent (or well insured). Headaches, heartburn, baldness, wrinkles and whiskey dick. That's where the money is.

 

[Wayne]

"You need to drink 8 glasses of water per day"

"Studies indicate that too much water causes liver and kidney damage"

You can't win. I say eat, drink, and beat Mary. We all gotta go sometime.

Wayne

 

[Glaucus]

"You need to drink 8 glasses of water per day"

"Studies indicate that too much water causes liver and kidney damage"

You can't win. I say eat, drink, and beat Mary. We all gotta go sometime.

Pretty much. There certainly are healthy life styles and unhealthy life styles, but you can't go extreme in either direction. There's health nuts out there that take it too far and there's others who just pay no attention at all to their health. But overall, I find most people tend to take their health for granted until it's too late. In fact, just recently, a friend of ours (one of the guys we went camping with when I got my poison ivy a while back) died from a heart attack. He seemed healthy, although he was a heavy smoker. It's not known what caused a massive blockage in his heart that caused him to drop like a sack of potatoes (my theory is that since he was a long distance truck driver, and that he died just moments after arriving at his destination, a clot formed while he was sitting for hours at the wheel) and it's not even known if it could have been prevented in any way. He may have been just very unlucky or perhaps it was those cigarettes, who knows? The point is, we're all gonna die and sometimes it makes no difference what you do our how you live your life, it may be in your genes that you'll die young. Of course we don't have the technology yet to tell us how our bodies will age or what will kill us, so it's still best to try to live the healthiest life style you're comfortable with. And most importantly, take time to smell the roses.

 

[Glaucus]

If Fluffy's belief that Big Pharma is out only to squeeze the last few pennies out of the sick and the dying were true [...]

Nah. The hospitals do that. Big Pharma makes the majority of its money by selling "cures" for minor or imagined ailments of the affluent (or well insured). Headaches, heartburn, baldness, wrinkles and whiskey dick. That's where the money is.

And money well spent. It's all about quality of life. I admit, some people live unhealthy life styles that may require the use of these drugs, like those who eat crap food and then need Rolaids to keep their stomach acids down. But some people have serious problems with the chemistry in their stomach. And it's easy to make fun of things like Viagra (your reference to Whiskey Dick I presume), but it's a serious issue. It's a common side effect of diabetes and a good friend of mine has that issue. It's bad enough having to deal with diabetes, not getting laid on top of that is a curse on top of a curse.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

And money well spent.

Is it really? When most of the cures don't do anything or don't work any better than drugs whose patent has expired? Is it better to create a drug that gives people erections than to cure their blood sugar problems? Treating symptoms is more profitable than treating diseases. People who get malaria are poor so who cares if it kills millions? The idea that people competing for resources in the market place leads to an efficient distribution of resources only works when everyone has roughly the same amount of money and perfect information - two things which are not true.

As for advances in AIDs treatments, that's pretty much down to government spending - which is used to tempt some of the R&D power of the big corporations to pay some little attention to the issue.

Ultimately Pharma companies spend more money on marketing than they do on R&D because they are about making money, not medical advances. Executive compensation at these big companies runs from the tens to the hundreds of millions per year. The huge money and marketing power of these behemoths can actually displace cheaper and more effective treatments and medications and costing us all more for less effective (but patent) medicines.

 

[cecilia]

"You need to drink 8 glasses of water per day"

"Studies indicate that too much water causes liver and kidney damage"

You can't win. I say eat, drink, and beat Mary. We all gotta go sometime.

Wayne

"nothing in excess, everything in moderation"


and about 8 glasses of water sounds just fine. gallons and gallons is ridiculous and is dangerous

people need a little common sense about these things

 

[faethor]

And money well spent.

Is it really? When most of the cures don't do anything or don't work any better than drugs whose patent has expired?

There is rarely one drug that works the best for all people. Drugs have varying degrees of effectiveness and side effects. It may depend on the individual what drugs work better or worse for them.

Is it better to create a drug that gives people erections than to cure their blood sugar problems?

Here you've setup a false dichotomy. This isn't an either or proposition. There are different causes for each condition and different treatments for those conditions.

Treating symptoms is more profitable than treating diseases.

I agree. Though that doesn't mean it's the only way these companies operate. Measles has seen an increase in the US because of the anti-vac movement. They blame the companies for ripping off the public. The companies make not very much and sometimes lose money on vaccines. Yet in the last Measles outbreak the average medical treatment cost was $60K. In your scenario the companies should eliminate the vaccines, they'd make more money.

Though there's no denying politics and wealth play a role in medicial treatments. For example: In the USA we're soon to run out of snake and scorpion anti-toxins. The need for them is incredibly small, a couple a year, and the cost to manufacture is very high. Without them the life expectancy of the patient is severly diminished. It seems the anti-toxins are now kept at facilities that work with the poisionous beings. It is impossible to force them to give them up to save someone else's life. If they did that it may mean the end of their scientific experiments.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

For example: In the USA we're soon to run out of snake and scorpion anti-toxins. The need for them is incredibly small, a couple a year, and the cost to manufacture is very high.

Until 1999, Arizona's entire supply of Centruroides scorpion antivenom was made by Marilyn Bloom. That's not a company, that's a person: Marilyn Bloom of Arizona State University, now retired. The methods of production may not be very efficient, but the real bottom line IS the bottom line. To entice a company into making this stuff you have to pay considerably more than you would for an individual. Large companies chase the large profits. A small government lab could easily make all the antivenom needed for a very reasonable cost.

The price and complexity could be brought down further by finding ways of brewing functioning immune systems from stem cells to increase antibody concentrations and make purification easier - but the profit just isn't there despite the fact that any techniques developed to do this would likely have payoffs in other areas too. Only an organization without the need to produce quarterly results to maintain funding can take this sort of thing on - and that's government or charity - but charities tend to be even more inefficient than governments at raising funds.

 

[Glaucus]

Where are the cures promised by stem cells, gene therapy, and the human genome?

A very interesting article. To sum it up: The more medical discoveries we make, the more we discover how little we really understand the human body. The cures seem to be a lot further off then we may think and we are perhaps lucky to be able to only fight the symptoms in the few cases where we can. Perhaps genetic engineering will bear some fruit but that's definitely years away and has moral dilemmas.

 

[FluffyMcDeath]

Where are the cures promised by stem cells, gene therapy, and the human genome?

A very interesting article.

No surprises there for me. I've maintained subscriptions to several science magazines over the last three decades more or less continually and I lost hope of quick cures a long time ago.

First there are just not enough people working on the problems. We have billions of brain hours wasted per day on TV and jobs that don't produce anything. We have manpower squandered making plastic doodads which break in a day for McDonald's to put in their Happy Meals - we have nearly 7 billion people on the planet and almost none of them do anything in the field of science because the market decides it's better to turn oil into things we don't really want but briefly think we do.

Second, animal studies are notoriously hard to translate and people are (I don't blame them) pretty risk averse when it comes to being experimented on - which is why we need poor people and prisoners apparently.

Finding that transplanted cells succumb to the same disease that effected the original cells IS an advance though. It's just not the one people were hoping for.

However, above in the case of antivenom I was not talking about discovering something new but rather improving a process for making something already in hand. Monoclonal antibodies seem to be a natural fit for this and that has been used since the late 70s. Developing a line of cells can take a long time but once it's done, it's done. The costs are all in the first two decades from development through testing. After that production is reasonably cheap (though a drug company would have to price the product ludicrously high to amortize the research and, most importantly, pay the interest on the debt).

 

[cecilia]

it's only dumbass religious kooks and stupid politicians who think miracles happen.

anyone who understands science knows patience, persistence, hard work for years and years is how knowledge is found and solutions achieved. there are no shortcuts to these "miracles".

and if we had placed the money spent on stupid wars instead into science we would be farther ahead

 

[faethor]

it's only dumbass religious kooks and stupid politicians who think miracles happen.

anyone who understands science knows patience, persistence, hard work for years and years is how knowledge is found and solutions achieved. there are no shortcuts to these "miracles".

and if we had placed the money spent on stupid wars instead into science we would be farther ahead

Unfortunately it seems the religious kooks are winning. For example -- Simcoe County school district in Ontario, Canada built a new Wi-Fi network last year. This year parents want them to pull it out for fear of making their kids sick. -- What the heck?! As science and technology continue I project we'll have a greater % of the population that view it as magic. These people will continue to make decisions based on faith rather than understanding. As their actions grow the more impact they play on all of us. And certainly religousness, or more properly Christianity, played a significant role in the downfall of the Rome. That empire lasted a thousand years. Seeing many parallels in the US empire and Roman empire I'm not so sure we won't meet a similar fate.

As for wars and science. I see them as interrelated driving forces. For example, the atom bomb was driven by war and made by science. In turn this provided the peaceful use of energy generation. Even now we see lasers, masers, auto-pilots, and other technology driving war and war driving further research. Certainly there are morally more acceptable ways to drive technology. But, war and science aren't mutually exclusive either.