The intent of this article is not to offend, but merely to examine a controversial and painful subject. The language of this article may appear to be amoral, but it is only a tool of analysis.

Now to the subject . . .

If you operate a business, one primary concern should be to maintain business and to grow it. That’s basic to having a successful business.

But what if you are in the business of providing drugs to treat illnesses? One way to get business is to create a great drug that treats a common illness. But how do you maintain business? From strictly a business standpoint, you would hope that your drugs would only treat the illnesses and not cure them. If there is a cure, you are out of money. Like the treatment for polio. Now that it has been cured, that particular cash cow has dried up.

But what about chicken pox? In children it is a mild and annoying disease that leaves the child with a lifetime immunity to it. According to one doctor, the ongoing periodic exposure adults have to it when children get ill keeps the immunity recharged and strong. If it flares up in adults, it is typically in the form of shingles, with about 10%-20% of adults contracting shingles at some time in their life.

Now we have a vaccine for what by all accounts is a mild childhood disease with a very low mortality rate. It is far more serious for adults who have never had it and pregnant women (who would also presumably be adults) because it can harm the developing baby. The vaccine primarily provides an economic benefit so that parents are not missing work to take care of their sick kids. Without the repeated exposure to the illness in the adult population, there is a potential for more people to have shingles as adults. How much work time would an adult lose to shingles when the symptoms and lingering affects can last for several years? Never fear!! Merck has been developing and testing a vaccine for shingles too. So we are possibly looking at a drug company creating a cure for a problem that they created when nature pretty much already had the cure, e.g. natural immunity.

That is a sound business model. 1- Create a cure for a problem that is in all but .01% of cases an inconvenience. 2- The cure causes a potential problem for millions of adults now that the periodic illness exposure has been eradicated. 3- Create a new cure for the new market created by the other cure. 4- Profit!!! (In case you were wondering, Merck makes the chickenpox vaccine too.)

Fen-Phen was a huge drug. There was sufficient evidence that the manufacturer of Pondimin and Redux was aware of the complications from the drug that they litigated the cases that were not part of the class action settlement to the bitter end before settling. If it was more of a matter of just deciding to settle the case instead of paying attorneys, the drug company would not have paid so much in attorney’s fees to defend the cases. There must have been sufficient merit to the accusations to justify the cost of the legal defense. From this site:

While any Mass Tort action is difficult to fend off, the facts of the Wyeth case are particularly troublesome to the company because of its exposure to large punitive damage awards. Documents produced in discovery showed that the company had been slow to update warnings about a risk that clearly was known – that the diet drugs in rare instances could cause primary pulmonary hypertension. The company had waited two years before putting new warnings about that danger on its drug labels.

Primary Pulmonary Hypertension has a mortality rate of approximately 65%-70% in five years. There is no cure, just treatment until it kills you. Maybe Merck can fix a problem caused by a different drug. It appears that Wyeth decided to sell as many drugs as possible before they couldn’t hide it any more.

Ford has been guilty of that type of action too with the Ford Pinto and the Ford Exploder, choosing to take the profits now and pay for the problems caused by the product later.

It is fair to at least discuss whether pharmaceutical companies and medicine in general is truly interested in increasing the health of the general population. There is no doubt that individual doctors want to help their patients. There are lots of good people in that profession and they do a lot of good for people. Modern medicine is absolutely amazing in what it can do to aid the healing process for people. But the reliance on chemical cures versus natural cures is a problem.

In engineering, there was an ethical debate dating back to the 1950’s about “planned obsolescence”. This is purposely designing an inferior product so that it wears out more often, needs additional maintenance, etc. . . This same kind of reasoning seems to be present in pharmaceuticals as well. If they are willing to actively hurt people with products to make a buck, they are probably just as willing to prolong someone’s suffering by only treating instead of curing illness.

Do you ever notice that for illness prevention, such as cancer or heart disease, we have all sorts of recommendations for our diet? We are told to eat healthy fats, lean proteins, foods rich in anti-oxidants, drink red wine, green tea, and other herbal remedies. These types of things are supposed to be good for prevention of illness. Why is it that mainstream medicine is finding these things only good for prevention but not for curing illness? The answer is that pharmaceutical companies can’t patent natural remedies that already work, and can’t make large piles of money from it. Oh, and your insurance company probably wouldn’t pay for any alternative treatments either.

If you take the Scriptures seriously, it is clear that plants, roots, and herbs are good for curing illness. Please follow the link for references.

The medical industry has so much power to dictate our treatment options that 12-year old Parker Jensen was taken from his home and was almost forced to receive chemotherapy and radiation treatment for Ewing’s Sarcoma. He was later released from state custody and received “alternative treatment”. The mortality rate of this disease is high even with conventional treatment. It appears that Parker Jensen is doing fine, 3+ years later although he has a lawsuit going forward in Federal Court. Conventional wisdom would indicate that without conventional treatment he should be dead. Hmmmm.

Parker Jensen is a rare case, but not exclusive. Katie Wernecke was not so lucky. She was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease and given chemotherapy. Her parents resisted allowing her to be treated with radiation. She was 13 when that happened. Her mom was eventually arrested, Katie was taken into custody and her three brothers were put into fos
ter care. She was eventually allowed to consult with a doctor in Kansas for alternative care, but only after she had five days of additional chemotherapy.

There is something very wrong when a 13 year old girl (in foster care) can have an abortion against the state’s will, but cannot refuse medical treatment when she believes there are other viable alternatives. Something is clearly wrong with this picture.

Remember that huge “act of congress” last year? The one about the “prescription drug benefit” for seniors that was touted as taking care of our senior citizens? Yeah, that one. It had a “no haggling” clause in the bill. The Federal Government (for this drug benefit program) is not allowed to use its’ massive purchasing power to negotiate a lower cost for the drugs the taxpayers are now buying. The Medicare actuary who was doing the cost estimates discovered that the cost would be significantly higher and was told to not tell Congress or he would be fired. The actuary’s boss was in negotiations to work for a law firm lobbying for drug companies. Nope, no corruption here, move along now.

Hopefully you don’t expect that it will be fixed either:

In January, one of the first things the new Democratic House of Representatives did was to make it mandatory for Medicare to negotiate lower prices with the drug companies.

A similar measure faces stiff opposition in the Senate, where the drug lobby is spending millions of dollars to defeat it. The president has already announced that if the bill passes, he will veto it.

That way, you won’t be disappointed.

If you are interested in alternative treatments, here are a few links:

http://www.natural-treatment.info/ (dementia)

http://www.cancertutor.com/index.html (natural cancer treatments)

http://www.cancertutor.com/Cancer/DMSO.html (Chemotherapy magic bullet)

http://www.cancertutor.com/WarBetween/War_Pauling.html (example of scientific chicanery)

http://www.cancertutor.com/WarBetween.html (war between natural and medical cures)

http://www.cancertutor.com/Pregnant.html (warnings for pregnant women, foods to avoid)

http://www.dr-schnitzer.de/introe1.html (a German Doctor’s website)

http://herballegacy.com/ (Dr. Christopher’s Website)

http://mercola.com/ (Dr. Mercola)

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