who here believes that pharmaceutical companies are actually here to help cure our illnesses?
Who here actually believes that this money that we all donate to all these "cancer research" foundations actually goes towards finding a cure?
And finally, for now, how many of you believe that the cure for cancer is right under our nose, and that actually, there is more than one known "cure" and "somebody" is funding a massive cover up of information, and cutting the funding to anyone who is trying to research these alternatives?
These are issues that I am being faced with more and more on a personal basis and I am interested in hearing what some of you might have to say about it.
The two posters above me handled this pretty well. As a medical student, I am nipping this thread in the bud before anyone spreads misinformation.
1. Pharmaceutical companies are here to cure illnesses. Why would they do otherwise? They are not the final point of care and if a drug does not perform to specifications it will not be approved by the FDA, it will not be prescribed by doctors if many patients have undesirable effects, and its long-term efficacy will show it to be ineffective.
Pharmaceutical companies are not trying to make you sick. I cannot emphasize this enough. Yes, some drugs have had serious complications after coming to market but that has more to do with the approval process than malfeasance on the part of the companies. The number of drugs that have had complications is dwarfed by the number of drugs that are regularly prescribed with little ill effects.
Speaking of approval, it costs more than a billion dollars to bring a new drug to market. The first step is to identify potential areas of weakness in the market that could turn a profit to support new research and development. Next, potential compounds are identified that have potential to act at the target site. Of these thousands of potential compounds, probably 1000 will head to
in vitro testing. Of those, about 200 will make it to animal studies. Through animal studies the efficacy profile and side effect profile will be initially established. Most new drug studies fail at this stage. In many cases, our animal models are not good enough to approximate the human conditions so it is difficult to create studies that have enough data for human testing. Only about 10 potential compounds will be approved for initial human studies. Phase I is a small human trial typically <10 healthy people used to establish safety. 0-5 compounds will make it through this phase. Yes, a company can get all the way to Phase I only to have all their potential drugs fail. Phase II is a larger study usually in individuals with the target disease that establishes dosing. Usually 0-1 drug(s) make it through this phase. Phase III is the large double-blind randomized study that establishes approval for the drug. It costs around 50-100 million dollars just to run a Phase III study. If the 1 drug makes it through Phase III, it still may not be approved for market. If it is approved, it will enter Phase IV which is the long-term phase evaluating for safety in the general population.
I haven't touched on how difficult it is to run drug studies or the legal expenses involved but I hope you can now see why new drugs can be expensive. It is a huge risk, literally billions of dollars that can easily be lost forever, and companies need the income to fund R&D for additional drugs. Also, drug formulations are major indications to use brand names over certain generics due to different dosing requirements. Less dosing (as in one per day instead of 2-3) is associated with increased patient compliance and better control of medical conditions.
2. There will not be a cure for cancer in our lifetimes.
Cancer by itself is not a diagnosis. Cancer is a broad term for a huge number of diseases caused by abnormal genetics and increased growth of cells. Different types of tissues develop different types of cancers and in many cases two people with the same type of cancer may have developed that cancer through completely different genetic mechanisms.
There is no cure for cancer lying under our noses and nobody is funding a massive cover up of information. There are cures for certain types of cancers such as chronic myelogenous leukemia with a 9:22 translocation. Gleevec blocks the specific abnormal protein caused by this mutation that causes uncontrolled cell growth. Gleevec is made and marketed by Novartis (a pharmaceutical company) so your assertion that these companies are not interested in cures is wrong.
Funding for different cancer foundations is devoted to researching those diseases. This is especially important for rare but deadly cancers such as pancreatic cancer where it is difficult to receive grant funding from the NIH.
It is my professional opinion that you should seek counseling if these issues are affecting you on a personal basis.