Pharmacies want to keep us sick 🙁 is there ANY truth to this?

[TuscanMum]

There’s a lady I know who posts lots of pharmaceutical conspiracies on a regular basis. Things like, they have a vested interest in keeping us sick so as we continue to need their drugs.

The sane part of me says this is rubbish, can’t be allowed, no way.

But a little part of me wonders.🙁

I have a vested interest in this as I’ve an autoimmune disease and keep trying different types of strong medication that haven’t yet worked but Rheumatologist says it’s not cureable and drugs are necessary.

Met a man, just today, who said his wife has lupus but refuses meds and just manages with diet.

I’d be interested to hear what others think or know about this?

If this family member is right, then the future really will see individually tailored treatment, based on a persons genetics

This has been known since around forever. The problem lies in the practicality- firstly it’s all but impossible to sequence an individuals genome- i’m out of touch but last time i checked they still hadn’t sequenced the human genome completely, and that was after years and years of multiple teams around the world working on it. Then to develop targeted treatment for that individual- you’d be long dead.

The main argument i have is big pharma is only a small part of drug r&d. A lot of it is done in academia, and there has to be a lot of information sharing along the way, or nothing gets done. It can take 20 years plus to get a drug into human trials. Peer reviewed journals, conferences etc. Plus to actually protect your research you need to publish it, to protect your intellectual rights should someone else come up with the same ideas.

If anyone watches greys anatomy- the current storyline where merediths aunt sweeps in and steals her idea shouldn’t/couldn’t happen. Meredith has her grant application and should have had her research notes dated and countersigned, so can absolutely prove it was her idea and therefore the rights belong to her. Even if the aunt does go on to develop it, she must credit meredith’s idea.

My partner works in the pharma industry and yes he would argue they don’t want to cure you, I mean that makes sense as then their business would dry up.

What does he do in the pharma industry?!! I somehow think it is nothing that would give him any real insight. Even if they found a cure for something, they would make billions and billions treating everyone who had it. Their business wouldn't dry up because there would always be other illnesses to treat and they would then have plenty of money to investigate potential cures and make more money. They only make a lot money from a new drug for a few years anyway (before the patent expires) so need to move on whether or not everyone had been cured.

That’s why they are after the active ingredient, so they can wrap it up in a pill and sell it.

To be fair, as patients we rather invite this ... generally who wouldn't rather pop a pill to make them well, if the alternative is healthy living and eating ???

Even if they found a cure for something, they would make billions and billions treating everyone who had it.

Only if those people could afford it ....

Only if those people could afford it ....

In the UK for example the NHS pays rather than individuals. The NHS would pay a lot for a drug if it is was a magic bullet for a disease that caused a lot of morbidity as these diseases currently cost the NHS a lot of money. NICE make the decision on whether a drug is worth the money based on the quality adjusted life years’ (QALYs) the drug gives and the NHS has to comply.

In the UK for example the NHS pays rather than individuals.

So ? The NHS has to get it's money from somewhere. And as we've seen, NICE is very hot on affordability and efficacy.

No - I worked as an R+D chemist for Big Pharma for 10 years. I now work in medicines licensing for a consultancy and provide services to Big Pharma. My Dad was a Pharmacist. I can hand on heart confirm that we did all in our power to find new treatments / diagnostics / therapies for the conditions we were researching. Hundreds of promising candidate drugs fell by the way-side as they were proven not to be effective enough or to have too many side effects. New candidates were proposed daily. We spent 10 years working on one promising candidate only to have it fail at the last hurdle having cost millions and millions.

The problem with " a cure for cancer" is do you mean lymphoma, breast tumor, colon cancer, prostate cancer, liver cancer, leukaemia, which leukaemia - there is more than 1, myeloma, etc.. Cancer is a catch all term that covers many types of cancer in many different organs. It is doubtful that there is a 1 size fits all solution so you need to research each type of cancer.

Things that were reasonably easy to cure have treatments (but as with antiobiotic resistant bacteria even those don't necessarily mean something is curable forever), things that are harder to treat or in smaller or more vulnerable patient populations take longer and cost more. Do you have any idea of the investment needed to run a Phase 3 clinical trial (required to get a drug license). It is millions and they are SLOW because often it is hard to recruit patients with exactly the disease you are looking to test on who are in the right age range, no other conditions, not taking other medicines etc.. However if we relax the regulation requirements to get more drugs to market faster we risk releasing incompletely tested medicines and compromising patient safety. It is a tightrope medicines agencies around the world walk.

I am proud of the work I have done and one of the diagnostics I worked on was used to do a heart scan on my mum when she had leukaemia, her oral thrush was treated with another medicine I have since managed the license for. Sadly there was no pill for her to take to get better immediately but I don't think that is the fault of any pharma company - she just had something incredibly complex to treat.

So ? The NHS has to get it's money from somewhere.

Yes, and it spend billions on drugs. If a drug cured an illness that currently costs a large part of that budget then it would be worth paying a lot.

And as we've seen, NICE is very hot on affordability and efficacy.

Not sure what you mean. NICE recommend a lot of very expensive drugs depending on how effective they are. Generally if a drug costs up to £20,000 £30,000 per QALY it will get recommended. Therefore if a drug cured something which added a lot of QALYs it would get recommended at a high price.

On a different tack, we all have to die from something ...

They may also be after the active ingredient sleep so they can standardise it and separate it out from other toxins contained in the plant. What would you rather do- take a tablet containing a known dose of digoxin (used for heart conditions), or risk it and eat a bunch of Fox gloves? Ditto atropine and deadly nightshade.

Any time anyone bangs on about the wonder of natural medicine, I think of this:

www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2014/569325/

Plants contain all sorts of toxic compounds. I personally would rather take medicine that has been purified, standardised and tested.

I'm a meds only if meds are needed kinda girl. I'd rather struggle on without it, than take pain killers. And avoid anti biotics unless I'm not shifting it on my own. Ive been to my GP three times in the last 5 years. So no there not keeping me sick,

My dad takes paracetamol daily for various aches and pains. If the doctors giving him a pill he's taking it. There's a market for people who need to take loads of pills, and these company's are happy to provide.

They may also be after the active ingredient sleep so they can standardise it and separate it out from other toxins contained in the plant.

There's quite a lot of research data that suggests that the natural balance of cannabinoids in cannabis (THC/CBD) actually work such that the CBD modifies the process by which THC is linked with psychosis ... in effect the whole-plant natural medicine (and GW Pharma have always maintained that Sativex is a whole-plant extract).

However, because there's been a push for the "high" (THC) in cannabis, then the street drug (that isn't laced with ketamine or ground glass) has been artificially bred to increase the THC and decrease the CBD ... leading to the increased possibility of psychosis.

That’s why they are after the active ingredient, so they can wrap it up in a pill and sell it.

To be fair, as patients we rather invite this ... generally who wouldn't rather pop a pill to make them well, if the alternative is healthy living and eating hmm ???

There's a case in the papers today of a mother campaigning for her child to be given a cannabis compound for seizures and complaining that doctors suggested a ketogenic diet but it would mean she had to cook everything from scratch and her son would not be able to eat out. I know a ketogenic diet is not easy but, to me, would seem preferable to giving a child an unapproved medication

I doubt that is the whole reason Ivor
The ketogenic is not something you undertake lightly
It can cause severe food aversion for one. If her child is already struggling to eat enough the KD can mean the difference between an orally fed child and a tube fed one.
I have worked with a lot of kids who have tried the KD and it hasn't worked for any of those with intractable seizures. Doesn't the child in this case have Dravet's?

I work for a CRO (not a pharma company, we run the trials and have no financial interest in the trial as we are paid regardless.) I’ve also worked for years on the science side of things.

The marketing side of pharma is certainly not free of blame - pricing structures, patent extension methods etc are all things that can be quite unethical. I suggest a read of Ben Goldacre’s ‘bad pharma’ as a well researched and from a scientist/medic point of view on this.

BUT.

The science side is pretty clean. Tens of thousands of dedicated lab scientists, medics and support staff run trials and develop drugs. An awful lot of my colleagues (and me) got into the industry and science generally after seeing family members suffer and wanting to help. There is no cure for cancer in a vault somewhere - cancer is an end process, not a single disease.
The trial process is so regulated - after many years of awful things like the nazi experiments, thalidomide etc. It’s now one of the most regulated environments on earth - as it should be.

The idea that they want to not cure you is bollocks - take the hepatitis C treatment regimen. It can affect a cure in a significant number of people and it costs about $100,000 a go.
Pharma can and will monetise anything - theres no conspiracy to keep ‘things they can’t make money off’ out of the public eye because believe me, pharma could monetise the air you breathe if it cured something.

In summary:
No there’s no conspiracy to keep you sick
No there’s no hidden cure for cancer
No big pharma is not evil
Yes big pharma needs close regulation and oversight of marketing and pricing etc.

Great post Anatidae. Just to add that big pharma also provide drugs for free to for use in trials run by the NHS, charities and universities.

Not sure what you’re trying to say in your post theuser. Reading up on sativex, this contains defined doses of THC and CBD, so these active ingredients have been extracted and titrated. I’m not sure what you mean by “whole plant extract”, this has been standardised and is a pharmaceutical product.

well... there's no one cancer, there are at least 100 different cancers, some curable others not at the moment

My partner works in the pharma industry and yes he would argue they don’t want to cure you, I mean that makes sense as then their business would dry up.

Bullshit.

No.

Yes, they get money to keep us sick, and make us sick, why is this a surprise? Better keep letting them though or else they'll add to the list of unemployed. Plus we need to reduce the population

Critical thinking should be mandatory at both GCSE and A Level. And there should be core credits at degree level for a critical thinking module.

You only need a small amount of critical thinking ability to realise this conspiracy theory (and all conspiracy theories) is bollocks, and yet so many on this thread didn't manage it.

Just a few minutes of thought - not even requiring research - and you can come up with:

1. The number of people that would have be involved in such a cover up would be huge. Most of them will have been affected by cancer, heart disease, and other common fatal illnesses. Someone would have blabbed. Actually, hundreds or thousands would have.

1. Pharmaceutical companies that come up with cures for previously chronic / fatal diseases make bucketloads of cash from them. The competition might want to suppress it, but it wouldn't happen.

1. The more cures and treatments that are invented, the longer people live and the more drugs they need over the course of their lifetime. Everybody has to die of something.

Just THINK.

I’m adding a quite a few names to the “Thick as fuck” column of my spreadsheet thanks to this thread.

Really wouldn’t surprise me.

In reality, pharma make drugs that work then sell drugs to combat the side effects of the first set of drugs.

Oh god I want to bang my head against a brick wall with the Big Pharma conspiracy theorists. I've lost count of the people that can't think critically and rationally and weigh up woo woo bunkum opposed to that terribly outdated thing called SCIENCE with all its boring peer reviewed evidence!

The nhs clearly doesn't want to keep me sick so it funds my 15k a year treatment so I can live as normal a life as is humanly possible. And no due to having autoimmune diseases and being fairly heavily immunosupressed, the anti inflammatory diets won't work.

In the case of autoimmune diseases there this spectrum, all the diseases can be mild, moderate or severe. So people with mild lupus may need minimal intervention but the rest won't.

I'm going to read the full thread now and no doubt be snarling at my iPad for a while.