Re: New York Times: Free Drug Samples? Bad Idea, Some Say

In article <f1avfi0107s@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Pete" <pete@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article <f1alkf01mam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Pete" <pete@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:


That's the whole point Jeff. If they find a cure, they will lose
their continuing profit which they get from all the maintenance type
drugs that people take long term. That is where they get most of
their money from. It is a basic concept of the dog eat dog
capitalistic world we live in.

Well then go ahead and cure a disease. Let me know how well it works
Cancers get cured, most infections (non-viral) get cured, etc. There
are many that get cured, even many cancers. Polio prevented and cured
before hand. Most of the rest are waiting on ways to redo the body
(for example rewire the brain and correct chemical imbalances for
schizophrenia) before cures can be effected. For some reason you are
holding the pharm companies solely responsible for the state of the
art in medicine and our knowledge of physiology, etc.

I didn't want to get into a discussion on this last part of my post,
and I just tossed it in as kind of an aside for some levity. But I
don't understand your logic on this, and doubt whether very many
people would agree with you. I see no incentive for big Pharma to
try to cure a disease and get a one time profit (so to speak) - it's
not logical, even though it is rather inhumane. Like I said, this
has been discussed at length in many ng's for years, as you are well
aware of.

Of course there is a reason to cure. It ain't one time. I get a
disorder of some sort. It is cured. But there are always more with
this disorder coming up behind me. You think the advent of penicillin
took away all cases of sore throat in kids?

Kurt...I figured someone would say something like that, and was going to
mention it, but figured most people would know that is not the "kind of cure
for a disease" that we are talking about here. A sore throat is usually a
simple disease process (unless there is a more serious underlying cause for
it) that may be cured, or cleared up by antibiotics, or just go away
naturally with salt water gargling, and letting the body's immune system do
it's job.

Actually you just made the main argument as to why your idea is
wrong. These are processes and you don't just wave a magic wand and fix
them once and for all. I used pcn specifically because it is a simple
process and low hanging fruit. The more complex you get, then the more
trouble it is to cure.
How would you cure diabetes short of a transplant, for instance.
Once the damage is done, it is done. You can't cure it with the current
state of the art. How do you suggest we make permanent changes to brain
chemistry to cure schizophrenia or depression? If lifestyle changes
don't cure hypertension, how else would you suggest the pharm companies
attack this problem.
Assuming you are right, which diseases do you think the pharm
companies can cure based on current state of the art but don't? Give me
an example of an illness where it is well enough understood that one
could design a one time treatment or medication regimen (like pencillin)
that would cure it.


Penicillin is probably the greatest single drug discovery to date, but that
is not what we are talking about here. I'll stand on what I said. The big
Pharma's do not want to find cures for the puzzling and difficult to solve
disease processes, when they can make way more money controlling symptoms by
long term maintenance use of their drugs. There is no doubt in my mind that
this is true, and I believe it is basic common sense and logic, and a simple
result of real world economics (unfortunate as it is).

I think that it is based more on misunderstanding of the state of
the art in medicine overall.
.

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