AIBU to think it isn't a big conspiracy

[fifi669]

I'm seeing endless updates on fb and random articles on the net about pharmaceutical companies and other powers that be withholding cures for things such as cancer for money.

The idea they're plugging is that they make money through drugs to relieve symptoms so don't want to release a cure as it'd be less profitable. Another one says they withhold vaccines as healthy people won't need their drugs so don't make them available.

AIBU to think this is all tosh? I've included a pic of the sort of thing I'm talking about.

[whitepuddingsupper]

YANBU, I saw something recently about how "they" don't want you to know how well natural remedies (honey and tea tree oil iirc) work in comparison to the drugs. I love Dara O'Briains rant about all the bullshit .

[fifi669]

I don't understand how they think the employees or CEOs of these companies can stand by and watch friends/family suffer to line their own pockets!

There seems to be a lot of random conspiracy theories around at the moment!

[fifi669]

Just watched that clip, he's hilarious!

[Fairy1303]

It's just ridiculous isn't it!! YANBU!!

[gordyslovesheep]

YANBU ...but people will be along soon with links to various hoodoo websites and lots of pseudo facts to tell you otherwise

[17leftfeet]

Didn't you know that the royal family hold the cure for cancer, hence why none of them ever get it

nothing at all to do with the lack of family history, plus the fact they are the most pampered family and not exposed to a number of causal links, or the fact that they will have regular health screening so things can be picked up very early and unless they told us we wouldn't know

[gordyslovesheep]

and the 'fact' that they are lizard people

[JazzAnnNonMouse]

Cynical me says though that these things do happen.
Eg it was discovered that there was a fault in a ford car that would kill someone if it went wrong, they calculated that it would cost them more to recall all the cars and fix it than it would to pay the compensation to those that died my dh had to do an essay on ethical engineering and this came up.

I wouldn't be surprised if something like that happens in the pharmaceutical industry.

[NurseyWursey]

To be honest it wouldn't surprise me. Pharm companies make MILLIONS from cancer drugs. So it'd make sense for them to hide it.

If they did create a drug that would cure cancer they would charge a fortune. Mosts trusts wouldn't be able to afford them - imagine the uproar from the public if a trust couldn't afford a cancer cure?!

[pyjamaramadrama]

Hmm I'm a bit of a conspiracy theorist, I do think that certain treatments and cures might be withheld not for money but for socio/economic reasons.

[hunreeeal]

YANBU.

Should pharmacists research and create new medicines for free? Would that attract the best scientists into this line of work? Should drug companies cease to exist so there's no-one to call "conspiracy" at any more?

Don't think that would be a great idea...

[hunreeeal]

So does anyone actually know a pharmacist who's a millionaire then? They're doing a far more useful job than some people do for a lot more pay IMO.

[HyvaPaiva]

17leftfeet The Queen's father died of cancer.

[alsmutko]

Oh god save us. So if big pharma finds a 'cure' for cancer (like it's the one disease with just the one cure), then that's it is it, job done? No more diseases to cure? No work left to do?
Thought not.

[alsmutko]

Also, I work for a campaigning organisation, well several actually (so little money in peacemaking I have three part-time jobs). Would I be sorry if World Peace was declared and I lost my livelihood?
Nope.

[Optimist1]

Less sensational and extreme than these claims, but still unsettling account of pharmaceutical companies' behaviour in Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre.

[bakingaddict]

I think a lot of people don't realise that pharma companies spend millions and billions on research and a lot of those drugs don't make it through the final stages. The ones that do and become the Viagra or other money spinning drug of a generation enable the funding of this early stage innovation.

At the end of the day pharma is a business with shareholders to answer too, who are in turn just normal people at the end of the day. Why would they hold out of the holy grail of modern medicine? The mechanisms of cancer are complex and multi-factorial, I dont think we will see a catch all cure for many decades yet

[Slippydippysoap]

Steve Jobs died of cancer. I cannot believe if there was a cure to be had then one if the richest and most powerful men in history couldn't have got access to it.

[BlameItOnTheBogey]

When my dad was really ill in the last stages of terminal brain cancer, I was standing waiting for a train and talking to my best friend who is a GP. I was telling her what the doctors had said (she did a lot during that period to really help me understand the full implications). Some woman on the platform waited until I had hung up and then cornered me and told me that it was all a medical conspiracy and that he would do better to come off all treatment and dance naked under the cherry blossom tree*. I did my level best not to tell her to fuck off but I really wasn't in a place to deal with such flaky thinking. People like this are nuts and would be harmless if desperate people weren't inclined to believe them.

• it wasn't really dancing naked under a tree but it was something equally preposterous.

[MrsToddsShortcut]

It seems very unlikely to me, and I love a good conspiracy theory. It gets written about as though there is this one, 'Top Secret' drug that's been developed that can annihilate cancer.

There are literally hundreds of different types of cancer that affect the body in different ways.

You would realistically be talking about vast numbers of new drugs, to cover all the variants within all the different tumour sites; not just the 'one size fits all' mythical 'Cure for Cancer' that seems to get bandied around by the conspirators.

[RalphRecklessCardew]

Oh ffs. YANBU. Pharmaceutical companies aren't perfect, but can you imagine the practical difficulties in hiding the cure for cancer? You'd have to persuade the scientists who discovered it to forego their Nobel prizes, acclaim, place in history, knighthoods, etc... You'd have to muzzle all the dozens of technicians, PhD students, cleaners who were in the lab AND make sure that none of their friends ever blabbed. And if you were caught (which you would be) you'd be in jail. Where you'd be murdered.

[alsmutko]

Well said Ralph.
This is precisely my difficulty with the 9/11 theories.

[JohnnyBarthes]

It's all to do with having an acidic body (or is it alkaline?) and clogging your pores with anti-perspirant according to one FB expert

[exexpat]

If it was all a big conspiracy to cover up the one cure for all cancers how come leading, Nobel-prize-winning cancer researchers still allow themselves to die of cancer?

The people who promote this kind of nonsense conspiracy theory then usually say the answer is massive vitamin C doses/mistletoe extracts/some weird and unproven therapy offered by some wonderful 'doctor' somewhere, who strangely seems to get much richer than the average pharmaceutical researcher, eg the multimillionaire Stanislaw Burzynski.

[ICanSeeTheSun]

I don't think there will be a cure for cancer in my lifetime.

I rather support charities like McMillan which actual help people.