Why Would “big Pharma” Suppress Alternative Medicine If It Worked?

1. Theresa Says

   Looks like you need some lessons on business and accounting. Cost accounting necessitates including ALL costs to produce being included. The highest variable cost in many industries is labour. You have failed in incorporate that factor into your calculations.
   Economies of scale are mostly attributable to fixed costs,and there is a limit to those. Large corporations, such as large pharmaceutical corporations, have almost always gone past the point of optimising economies of scale and headed back towards large increases in overheads due to their size and administrative burdens.
   Some homeopathic remedies are indeed mass produced and sold over the counter. If, to be effective, a remedy requires patient input prior to preparation, then large pharmaceutical companies cannot enter this market.
   So, your argument for the profit margin on homeopathy is ill-considered and baseless. If you want to discuss profit margins again, it would save you embarassment if you at least found out what to include in the equation.

2. Z Says

   When alternative medicine works, it stops being alternative medicine and becomes medicine.
   Ever popped an aspirin? That was sourced from willow bark.
   Hey, ever seen a stroke patient take coumadin? Coumarin is from plants, and that’s how we found out about coumadin and medications like it.
   And, the latest example of alternative medicine becoming medicine is lovaza. Lovaza is prescription guaranteed-quality fish oil. Nothing else, just fish oil. It’s prescribed for people with high cholesterol.
   When doctors and pharmaceutical companies SEE therapeutic effects in substances not yet believed to have medical applications, you can bet they jump right on them and turn them into a profitable pill.
   If there were any therapeutic benefits to homeopathic remedies, they wouldn’t be alternative medicine, and would become mainstream medicine being sold behind a pharmacy counter, made from regulated ingredients.
   I wish people who were anti-”pharma” could realize that pharmaceutical companies aren’t going to make a buck if you die from untreated illness by them selling you homeopathic ‘remedies’, so that’s why they sell treatments that they know work: because doctors will keep prescribing and patients will keep buying because people actually get well when they take those real medications.

3. Lightnin Says

   It doesn’t suppress it.
   it tries to discredit it.
   It tries to stop people who could be using their products from using alternative medicine.
   Although big Pharma also manufacture a lot of the supplements people take too practitioners like me don’t prescribe them. Pharma makes little or nothing out of me so its not in their interests for me to be in practice.
   Thats business.
   I have enough patients who don’t listen to them, so i don’t care.

4. shortstu Says

   Most folks do not do their homework where this is concerned. You cannot put a patent on anything that is found in nature and is in original form. ( Think regualr corn seed vs. Monsanto genetically modified seeds) It needs to be changed in order to get it patented. It is all aboout the money…. always has been, always will be. Today’s doctors are trained under the shadow of the big corporations… big pharma and big insurance. Real healing is secondary to sustained healing. Sustained healing is to string along a person with drugs, rather than look for what is wrong and fix it. There are many alternative therapies that work well, but people take drugs with side affects instead. To understand, one must do their own research. As you stated, there are many Alternative therapies out there that are out for profit as well. Sifting through all the hype to find the truth is tiring, but worth it when you find what r-e-a-l-l-y works.

5. JLI Says

   History is full of examples of “absurd ideas” becoming mainstream after provision of data demonstrating them to be factual. But there will still be some alternative ideas that fail under test conditions. Big Pharma has really nothing to do with the research on those ideas, as it will not result in profit. Research is carried out by people who want to know if the alternative ideas really have any merits at all – despite their biological implausibility. And it is often (mostly?) funded by the public. There is a lot of “non-Big Pharma” research on homeopathy etc. showing conclusively that it performs no better than placebo.
   Edit:
   Rhianna is right, and Nosey herself gave another example of a patented homeopathic remedy the other day: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;…

6. thenosek Says

   Because they can’t patent natural substances.
   They don’t spend billions on research. Watch CBC Marketplace’s exposure of drug company false claims. They spend more on marketing and advertising. The research money comes from you and me in the form of donations. The drug companies have a nice racket going.
   A vial of Homeopathic Arnica, enough to treat a whole city, costs five to ten dollars. Where do you get your “facts”?
   For the last 3 years in Cuba they’ve been able to use Homeopathic prevention for an annual Leptospirosis epidemic at one tenth of the cost of conventional vaccines. It’s the same lab that produced both products. The vaccine cost almost $2 million. The Homeopathic prophylaxis cost $200,000.
   Big Pharma is fighting it’s competition. What’s so hard to understand about that?

7. Rhianna does Medicine Year 1 Says

   Exactly,
   And Nosey is just wrong.
   You can patent natural products- even homeopathy…if it worked. We went through this with you very recently.
   “For the last 3 years in Cuba they’ve been able to use Homeopathic prevention for an annual Leptospirosis epidemic at one tenth of the cost of conventional vaccines. It’s the same lab that produced both products. The vaccine cost almost $2 million. The Homeopathic prophylaxis cost $200,000.”
   Er…no. Orac covered this recently: http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2010/1…
   Fail.

8. Nate Says

   The idea that big pharma isn’t into “natural” products because they can’t patent them, is ridiculous. Drug patents only last a few years. Do companies who put out generic drugs say “I don’t know why we’re putting out a drug without patent protection. We won’t make any money without a patent. People might even think we’re selling a natural product(gross).” Of course they don’t.

9. Anonymous Says

   Hulda Clark’s zapper is not friggin all natural and yet big pharma have never tried to turn a profit off of that piece of junk either.

10. angrydoc Says

    Yup! If it worked you can be sure as heck that big pharma will get their greedy hands on it. It’s that simple really.

11. Mr E Says

    not only do they want to make hundreds of billions, apparently they want people to get worse, which is one effect drugs have on their health.

12. wmayers9 Says

    If it works, then it is not alternative. As far as research goes, you don’t know what you’re talking about.

13. pete Says

    It is all to do with the Holy Dollar.

14. The Skybird Says

    Money is at the root of it. Always and forever. A sad business indeed.

15. lo_mcg Says

    Silly old thenoseknowsnothing! ‘They can’t patent natural substances’ indeed!
    In fact it’s common for synthetic derivatives to be made that are an improvement on the original, and it’s also common to get patents on the methods of isolating or administering the substance.
    So even if a ‘Big Pharma’ couldn’t make money directly from a natural substance, if that natural substance were shown to be effective they could make plenty of money and get plenty kudos from developing a safer, more effective derivative. The chemotherapy drug Taxol is derived from yew, for example.
    If any homeopathic or other ‘alternative’ remedy had proved effective, pharmaceutical companies would be all over it like a rash; they’re after profits, after all.
    Yes, nosey – I’m sure a vial of homeopathic whatever costs next to nothing; but that’s not the cost passed on to the consumer, now is it? Take a look at the prices on the homeopathic website Rhianna linked you to the other day – no cities being treated for a mere $5 -10 there, I think you’ll agree. The OP’s estimate of homeopathic profit margins looks like something of an underestimate now that you’ve given us that information…
    EDIT: Sally, the way you go bleating to Rhianna and the other medical professionals on here whenever you actually need medical advice, and then insult them when you don’t, is nothing short of nauseating.
    When the chips are down, you run to conventional medicine ‘Rhianna, Dr Frank, help me!’. And to their eternal credit, they always do. Your faith in alternatives evaporates when you need help, and returns when you don’t. As I said, nauseating.
    And Rhianna has been not been away from YA for any length of time recently, so she’s not ‘back’. Perhaps she missed your most recent appeal for help to her and Frank (yesterday I believe) and that’s whats bugging you

16. The Drunken Fool Says

    To quote a famous musician/comedian
    Alternative medicine is medicine that is not proven to work, or proven not to work, Do you know what they call Alternative medicine that works?…….Medicine.
    Also, they suppress it so they can sell more of the drug that they have licenced.
    Besides, Can you have less than one molecule of Arnica? doesn’t that make it something else?
    I always thought that Homeopathy was the study of hiphop artists!

17. Anonymous Says

    You can’t patent nature. Pharma are just looking after their interests and discrediting alternative medicine.
    Edit: Oh Rhianna is back. Whats the bet her “alter ego” with a beak will reappear to?
    I saw Charley at this lunar eclipse watching thing last night Rhianna. He still hasn’t worked out who I am. Shall I put him out of his misery?
    ETA
    Its obvious rhianna and weise ente are the same person.

18. ƦєdAиgєℓ Says

    It’s called moola, money, profit, the green stuff, $$$$ Top 10 drug companies account for more than 50% of the fortune 500 profits and they want to stay that way.

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