Re: QUACKS don't do research..or they LIE about it.. like the drug companies

From: GMCarter (fiar_at_verizon.net)
Date: 10/20/04 

Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 10:45:17 GMT

On Wed, 20 Oct 2004 01:07:04 -0700, "Robert" <RobertJ@hotmail.com>
wrote:

snip
>I really think that most of the objection is because of the cost of
>medication and not really if they work or not.

Ah, the cost is part of the engine that drives the distortions in
clinical science. The big money corrupts top executives and they will
lie through their teeth to make more money, regardless of the
consequences to health.

That infuriates me because it takes the lives people lay on the line
to participate in human studies and perverts it. It infuriates me
because it destroys the real beauty of good science and the importance
of it.

The effect has also been to focus on high-profit diseases at the
expense of a great number of infections that might be addressed by a
short course of treatment that is not profitable. Or diseases that
affect the poor in the developing world. Again, science is sacrificed
at the altar of greed and lives are damaged and destroyed.

No, it doesn't always happen and many new drugs have been discovered
that do have a good risk/benefit/cost profile. But these are fewer and
fewer.

Indigenous and traditional forms of medicine in many nations around
the world DO have empirical evidence to support their use and
efficacy. And there is an increasing interest in conducting rigorous
clinical trials to test those empirical observations. To simply play
this idiotic polemic to justify bigotries and blindness on either side
is of little utility to people living with diseases and disorders.

We need to take science back and find a way to heal the sickness that
has so corrupted the pharmaceutical industry. And equally, we need to
address the hype and distortion often presented by the "supplements"
industry so people, whether patients or physicians, can make better
and more reliable treatment choices.

                George M. Carter

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