Big Pharma's holding cure?

[thejack]

The Nature of the Pharmaceutical Industry

One of Ralph Nader's goals when he ran for president, was to stop corporate welfare. He figured if Congress was so thoughtful to cut welfare to mothers and children (less than 3% of the federal budget), then perhaps it was time to eliminate corporate welfare (greater than 17% of the federal budget).

Nader was quick to focus in on corporate welfare to the pharmaceutical industry, because the American people pay for drugs twice: first in funding the research to prove a drug is safe and effective, and then again when their doctor prescribes the drug, you pay at the pharmacy.

Now there is a lot of talk about conspiracy theories and doctors suppressing therapies and the FDA suppressing therapies, but whether or not there is a conspiracy is a moot point. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy. We have capitalism, a system in which every person has the right to grow up and make money. Every major corporation has the right to make as much money as possible, and for some reason, major corporations get more welfare than little corporations. Thus it must be assumed that large corporations are much more important than small corporations.

The pharmaceutical industry is an example of the worst parts of capitalism, capitalism at its least respectable low and capitalism at its most ludicrous high.

The following article is reprinted with permission from Dr Matthias Rath's book, Why Animals Don't Get Heart Attacks . . . But People Do!

The purpose and driving force of the pharmaceutical industry is to increase sales of pharmaceutical drugs for ongoing diseases and to find new diseases to market existing drugs.

By this very nature, the pharmaceutical industry has no interest in curing diseases. The eradication of any disease inevitably destroys a multi-billion dollar market of prescription drugs. Therefore, pharmaceutical drugs are primarily developed to relieve symptoms, but not to cure.

If eradication therapies for diseases are discovered and developed, the industry has a basic interest to suppress, discredit and obstruct these medical breakthroughs in order to make sure that diseases continue as the very basis for a lucrative prescription drug market.

The economic interest of the pharmaceutical industry is the main reason why no medical breakthrough has been made for the control of the most common diseases such as cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, heart failure, diabetes, cancer, and osteoporosis, and why these diseases continue like epidemics on a worldwide scale.

For the same economic reasons, the pharmaceutical industry has now formed an international cartel by the code name "Codex Alimentarius" with the aim to outlaw any health information in connection with vitamins and to limit free access to natural therapies on a worldwide scale.

At the same time, the pharmaceutical companies withhold public information about the effects and risks of prescription drugs and life-threatening side effects are omitted or openly denied.

In order to assure the status quo of this deceptive scheme, a legion of pharmaceutical lobbyists is employed to influence legislation, control regulatory agencies (e.g., FDA), and manipulate medical research and education. Expensive advertising campaigns and PR agencies are used to deceive the public.

Millions of people and patients around the world are defrauded twice: A major portion of their income is used to finance the exploding profits of the pharmaceutical industry. In return, they are offered a medicine that does not even cure.

Keep in mind that the above was written by a medical doctor. Before there were pharmaceutical companies, medicines were made by scientists and doctors to cure illness. Take Dr Paul Erlich, the father chemotherapy. Today we think of chemotherapy being used for cancer, however, chemotherapy is simply medicine from chemicals. Chemotherapy treats disease with drugs. Dr Erlich wasn't a medical doctor as we define the term today; he was a research scientist who also treated patients. He is the discoverer of the "magic bullet" also known as 606 (because there were 605 failures before it) that cured syphilis. Dr Erlich set out to cure a disease. He did not set out to treat symptoms. He was awarded the Nobel prize for Medicine because of his work with the immune system.

Today doctors practice medicine and scientists, when they independently come up with a cure or a therapy that seems to work, get harassed. Take Dr Lawrence Burton who demonstrated to scientists and science writers his amazing therapy that wiped out tumors in rats in two hours. He was forced to leave the United States and set up a clinic in the Bahamas. Or take the inventor of 714X, Gaston Naessens was asked to leave France because he was practicing medicine without a license (and curing cancer without a license). He lives in Canada today and still gets harassed by the authorities for helping to cure cancer.

[River]

What crap you have written!
The pharmacuetical industry is staffed by highly idealistic people who have dedicated their lives to creating positive healthcare solutions. There are far more profitable professions out there for those who are just out to make a buck. They could have become lawyers, plastic surgeons, or property tycoons. But instead they decided to get into the health care field.

If you seriously believe that there is an industry wide consipracy out there designed to prevent cures from being discovered, you are insane.

[thejack]

As much as I would like to believe that highly idealistic people who have dedicated their lives to creating positive healthcare solutions control the pharmaceutical sector, unfortunately it is plagued with capitalism.

I didn't write the article above, but I thought it relevant as I, along with others are waiting on a superior treatment or cure while Propecia wains in effectiveness. I was optimistic that something which was not just a preventative (like current FDA approved medications), was going to be available sooner rather than later. But the more you look into the nature of the pharmaceutical industry it appears it's going to be later rather than sooner.

[gmonasco]

By this very nature, the pharmaceutical industry has no interest in curing diseases.

By its very nature, (in most cases) the pharmaceutical industry can't cure diseases; it can only help alleviate and treat the symptoms.

For the same economic reasons, the pharmaceutical industry has now formed an international cartel by the code name "Codex Alimentarius" with the aim to outlaw any health information in connection with vitamins and to limit free access to natural therapies on a worldwide scale.

When you see claims like that, you know the writer has entered tinfoil hat territory:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/vitamins.asp

[Fixed by 35]

The conspiracy makes no sense. You would not only need thousands of people committed to confidentiality without receiving much benefit in return, with not a single leak, but you would also depend on all your employees, from the board to the lab technicians, being immoral. Also, you'd not expect those who worked for pharmaceutical companies to be bald or unhealthy. Many are!

Also, baldness is a genetic defect. Unless they're keeping under wraps the ability to destroy or rewrite crap genes then I very much doubt they have a cure. The amounts the company could make from such technology makes keeping it under wraps absurd.

A pharmaceutical company may make more from treatments than cures, although that in itself is a dubious claim, but if they could find cures they could then focus their resources on more advanced treatments.

[thejack]

There is alot of information on this making me wonder why people would bother fabricating stories for no benefit..

It makes complete sense to me that they would hold off more advanced treatments and saturate the market with less advanced ones to raise the value of the former. Like big traders importing huge blood diamonds then locking them away.

Maybe I enjoy conspiracies too much!!!

[Fixed by 35]

Sorry, no, this theory makes no sense at all. There isn't a soul in the world who likes being bald and yet in Europe studies suggest those seeking any sort of treatment at all is less than 10% (statistics suggest 25% seek treatment at some time, but most quickly discontinue). From this 10%, many avoid Propecia and Avodart because of side effects.

The reason for few seeking treatment is probably due to the cost vs benefit analysis. Most hair loss treatments are scams and don't work at all; those which do can be of limited benefit. Many have side effects or at least are a pain to remember or apply. I would suggest that if a cost effective cure or effective treatment was available, almost everyone would use it.

So, let's consider the economics. Is it in the interests of the board of Merck to withhold a cure on hair loss?

Well, first consider the fact that the board of Merck will receive more in performance related bonuses than they do in salaries so they want the performance of the company to be phenomenal NOW. Most of them are in their 50s, which also means they want the company to be phenomenal NOW. They have no interest in holding a cure in secret until they retire, because they want the results now that will deliver them big performance related bonuses. Boards, given the freedom, always act in the short rather than long term because it is in the interests of directors to do so. Sure, the shareholders could try and force them to keep the product secret, but their powers are limited and the directors would try to thwart them.

The reality is that a director who is only at the company for 5-10 years will get much bigger performance bonuses if the company sells an amazing hair loss product that everyone uses during their tenure than if it sells a mediocre one forever. They also have the power to capture the market with something that works.

The reality is that big pharmaceutical companies just don't see focusing on hair loss treatments as sensible if they want to remain financially viable. Propecia sales have remained disappointing and Avodart just never went anywhere. There's far more money in selling cancer and HIV drugs to Governments than there is in selling hair pills to vain individuals. Check out a comparison of sales for Viagra (Cialis) vs leading cancer drugs on a pharmaceutical company's income statement and you'll see what I mean.

There is a pot of gold for the company that cures or effectively treats baldness, however finding it will be expensive, competitive and could well lead to several dead ends that even big pharmaceutical companies cannot afford. Shareholders are also unlikely to be willing to support such endeavours because, as I have said, it is so risky.

Another point conspiracy theorists need to take on board is that companies are not single organisms. There are people, moral people too, and conflict abounds. No big company could cover up a cure for hair loss. The board would at the very least have a massive falling out over when to release it if someone tried to block it! Also, it's very hard for companies to do bad things. Don't get me wrong, they do, but they tend to need complicity from Governments and evil directors need the ability to go undetected by the rest of the board. They seldom get away with it.

[DepressedByHairLoss]

TheJack, the more I think about it, the more I'm in agreement with you. These pharmaceutical companies do make so much more money in 'treating' diseases rather than 'curing' them. I would've thought that this was crazy too until I started losing my hair and researching the subject. There so many potential cures that I've read about for male pattern baldness (Noggin, bone marrow stem cells, TB-4, manipulation of the beta catenin pathway, hedgehog agonists, N-WASP, BMP inhibitors, Laminin-511), yet none of these get tested on humans. All they do is test them on mice and sell their articles to scientific publications so that they can get money to fund their labs and themselves. If scientists, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies were really interested in curing the disease of alopecia, then they would fund human trials of these potential cures instead of having scientists test them on mice until the cows come home. If they were really interested in developing a cure for hair loss, then they would test more of these chemicals on humans. I mean, look at it. There is a mountain-load of research which states various ways that hair loss can be cured, yet all we have for treatments right now are two ineffective drugs (Rogaine and Propecia) that weren't even developed to treat hair loss in the first place. If there was a cure for hair loss, then these drugs would become obsolete and the pharmaceutical industry would lose millions of dollars. Not to mention, hair transplants would also become obsolete, causing doctors to lose millions of dollars.
A lot of these pharmaceutical companies are in competition with one another to develop drugs and treatments yet the minute some one outside of industry develops some kind of novel stem cell treatment, then they all gang up on them and claim that this type of treatment is unsafe, unregulated, and no one should attempt it. I read articles all the time where people go to foreign countries for novel stem cell treatments for some debilitating diseases such as paralysis for treatments that aren't offered in the U.S. Then all of these researchers and lobbyists for these pharmaceuticals companies bash this treatment saying how it is unsafe and proven. Yet patients experience benefits from these stem cell treatments all the time, and of course these researchers for these pharmaceutical companies who bash these stem cell treatments can offer no better alternative. All they'll do is test of mice for the rest of their lives, claiming to gain 'insight', 'clues', and 'alternate interpretations' which 'may', 'could', or 'might' help cure diseases 'someday'. It really makes me sick that we all have this disease which we have no control over and we're forced to rely on these huge pharmaceutical companies to develop cures, when all they're really out to do is make tons of money and not cure a damn thing.

[Follicle Death Row]

Propecia was a commercial failure as far as I know. If they could cure hair loss or come up with a better treatment they'd make a shit load of money. Demand would be high and they could dictate price. Genes will get passed on and more baldies to be will spend the equivalent of a car on said cure. Genes get passed on. Cycle repeats. Why can they monetise such a cure? Well because it's not a sickness or ailment.

Hell look at ophthalmology. If you're argument is right then they'd rather not have introduced LASIK and just get us to shell out on glasses, contacts and checkups etc. It's just not the case.

There's a potential nobel prize in this for someone if they can crack it so they will eventually, rest assured. As for when, well no one knows. Sure there is some bullshit in every industry but no need to don the tinfoil hat. People always go on about how modern medicine has done nothing but it's just there has been a paradigm shift from coming up with cures for germinative illness (TB was the last big one to be cured with antibiotics I think) to disease which is infinitely harder in many cases. After disease I suppose they can try and tackle genetic traits which is baldness. Harder again.

They will do it eventually. It's just not the cakewalk some of you guys seem to think it is. Even if they didn't eradicate it they could always treat it with hair cloning and make the big money that way like you suggest.

[Follicle Death Row]

Anyways, the Chinese will probably offer you a good stem cell treatment in 10years if the US won't/can't.

[DepressedByHairLoss]

I disagree. Although Propecia doesn't do a damn thing and is largely ineffective, it's not a commercial failure at all. Merck makes millions of dollars selling Propecia to balding men who really have no other hope but to take it since there is nothing else out there, despite the fact that Propecia isn't effective at all. And if companies could make a shitload of money developing a baldness cure, then why aren't more companies/people trying? I mean, with the millions that are supposedly to be made, only Follica, Aderans, and Trichoscience (3 companies!) are even trying to come up with some sort of treatment. I disagree that baldness is not an ailment or an illness. It totally is because it ****s up many people's lives, including mine and many of the people on here. If it didn't cause such distress for so many people, then there wouldn't be forums like this one where people can vent about how hair loss has messed up their lives. And there are so many treatments out there for things that aren't even considered illnesses by any means. A woman can get breast implants won't receive nearly as big a scar as they do with a hair transplant. People can get facelifts and that's not in response to any sort of disease. Hell, people can even change genders! I think that's a hell of a lot more complex (turning a man into a woman) than regrowing hair!!
There are just too many contradictions out there for me to believe that potential cures for baldness aren't being withheld or tamped down. You can read about so many chemicals that have the potential to regrow hair yet none of them are being tested in humans. I read about all of these so-called hair loss discoveries yet the only drugs we have to treat hair loss and two ineffective drugs that weren't even developed to treat hair loss in the first place. Autologous stem cell treatments are not even illegal in the U.S. but no one is even trying them in order to regrow hair. And if there is so much money to be made with regards to a cure for baldness, then why are so few people even trying to come up with a cure? A lot of this stuff makes no sense.
And the FDA always claims to rigorously test new procedures for safety, yet they are so full of shit even when it comes to that. I have read from countless people on here how botched hair transplants have scarred and disfigured their heads, and therefore messed up their lives. Why doesn't the FDA or the government do anything to regulate this? Because it's a huge, huge moneymaker for the medical industry.
And you talk about how people would shell out more money for a hair loss cure than they would for a new car. That's a total understatement for me. I would shell out much much more than that (I would find some way to afford it) to regain the hair that I once had. Having a full head of hair is just so so important to so many people including myself, and part of the problem is that we have people out there like Larry David who just completely marginalize the condition like it's some sort of joke, when it causes such many people such emotional and mental distress and pain.

[Follicle Death Row]

It will come. I don't think we'll make it to 2020 without a cure (well I hope). It's a big step from demonstrating something in mice to humans. If everything goes smoothly it usually takes 10 years. I will say this, we know vastly more now about hairloss than we did 10 or 15 years ago.

They're hardly saturating the market here with treatments; minoxidil and finasteride, that's it. Many are afraid to take propecia and most don't stick to rogaine. There's a huge market there if someone comes up with something.
The thing about with holding a treatment is you risk someone bringing out one first and capitalising on it. It doesn't have to go through the FDA. It could come out in Asia and then everyone would be crying out for this in the Western world.

I hardly think they're pulling an Apple and leaving out some of the good shit only to include it in the next version to milk us. Then again who knows.

If you're really desperate to get something better than is on the market you might want to go after corteoxeolone 17 alpha propionate as a topical. Not sure how you'd make an appropriate vehicle with alcohol but if you have a home chemistry set you could. It's supposedly twice as effective as finasteride so at least it could take care of the androgen side of the equation.

The only real problem I currently see with Big Pharma is in how the trials are funded and run. In fact the FDA are not strict enough. The FDA are just overlooking the trials that companies are running and drugs are getting cleared that perhaps are not as safe as the statistics would have you believe.

[Follicle Death Row]

By the way, I'm pretty sure they could cause robust follicular neogenesis tomorrow if they wanted but damn they could cause cancer. We understand the Wnt pathway but trying to safely alter it is proving extremely difficult.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wnt_signaling_pathway

It has actually been postulated that those that heal quickly and well from cuts or other injuries are more likely to develop aggressive cancer as cell proliferation can rage out of control. It's an interesting concept for the medical field to explore.

[DepressedByHairLoss]

They've been exploring the WNT pathway since the early 90's yet as usual, scientists have tested on only mice and not humans. I understand the risks of cancer, yet scientists have found through plenty of studies that if the WNT is only transiently activated (and not activated for a long period of time), then cancer is not a risk. It has been discovered that stimulation of certain pathways like WNT, beta catenin, and hedgehog is a great way to stimulate hair growth, yet as usual, testing has been only relegated to mice and not humans. And as usual, some of these scientists win award after award for spending years and years just testing on mice and not giving a rats ass about human application.
I really wish that more options would be given around the world to stimulate hair growth. If there was treatment that would transiently stimulate the WNT pathway for stimulate robust hair growth, I would jump on a plane and pay whatever it costs to have it done. But no, instead we have widespread hair transplants which leave permanent scars all over your head and don't lead to any new hair growth at all. Why the **** would I want to do something like that?

[Follicle Death Row]

Absolutely agree with you on the hair transplants. Sure some of them look goog but I really don't want the scar and I actually want my hair back or more hair not simply relocating hair surgically.

It takes serious investment to get these things over the ground. It will happen but we might just be unlucky in that the technology is not another 10 years on. Got to keep the faith.

For sure there are some scientists that simply want the prestige of the award and don't care about human applications. They're not all like that thankfully.