Have you heard about that bird flu? The threatened pandemic, should it occur, will kill in a worst-case scenario 150 million people, including 7 million Americans. The resulting mountain of skulls would dwarf those piled up in all the wars of the 20th Century. Yes, it’s scary stuff. People who research the virus say the question is when, not if, the… return to article
-
subscribe to print magazine
-
email this article to a friend
-
Reader Comments (42)Page 1 of 1 pagesI completely agree. Life-saving drugs necessary to treat epidemics should not be withheld by stingy patents. Let them keep their patents for designer drugs that people don’t need to live, but holy crap!?! it’s always profit over human life! Maybe we need a global insurance company to fund epidemic vaccines?
Posted by pick of the litter on Dec 2, 2005 at 4:48 PM Why should anyone care about property rights when people are dying? We should just take what we want, and let the big companies be damned - we don’t need them anyway. After all, what have they ever done for us, um, well, besides discovering new drugs to cure sickness?
And while we are at it, why not steal new plasma tv’s? Hell, they are insured anyway. Why worry about technicalities of the law, after all, it is just there to protect the fat cats. . .
We are entitled to whatever we want and can take. Isn’t this the modern paradigm?
Posted by wolf on Dec 2, 2005 at 5:47 PM Wolf makes a good point. When we encourage the ‘taking what we please’ mentality, we continually set precedents for lower and lower standards of what is acceptable in terms of upholding the law. It’s a domino effect of desensitization. Look at television; we continually rewrite what is and isn’t acceptable to engage in on the idiot box based on what simply creates a sensational reaction. But, at the same time, this is government obstinance for the sake of following rules that need to be changed and need to have certain statutes built into them, as well as compromises so everyone stands to gain. When demand comes calling, Roche needs to bend and begin licensing. People’s lives can’t be spent just because Roche needs to be given the proper due.
Taking all humanity out of the quandary for a second, and looking at it through Adam Smith’s eyes, we see nothing but advantage for Roche. If Roche was thinking logically, and fiscally, they’d see the goldmine opportunity in the current climate. If they don’t begin to license two things will occur: 1. they won’t make enough profits because people WILL break patent and reproduce it at alarming rates, thereby slashing potential future profits exponentially due to a flooded market. 2., they will also let millions of potential customers die. Ain’t none of them gonna be buyin any Tamiflu, nor their surviving relatives who will scorn Roche for its lack of action. Roche only stands to lose profit if they don’t get their act together now and see past the dream of effectively selling millions of doses of Tamilfu to the potential 150 million who’ll get Avian flu.
You would think that alone would trigger some movement. Then again, Swiss banks let millions of people die once before while engaging in shady practices, say, 60 years ago. Okay okay, that is a lame shot, but history does repeat itself.
Roche, get the picture, smarten up.
Posted by Peterah001 on Dec 2, 2005 at 7:41 PM What Bleifuss says is true. It is wholly immoral that anyone hold back a cure for money, for ANY ailment, just as it is immoral that the only Americans who get good healthcare is its well-employed. If drug companies, and health care, were “un-privatized,” we could look at ourselves in the mirror without shame.
Mitch
Posted by Mitcherino on Dec 2, 2005 at 9:17 PM And about upholding the law? Good laws are created to provide for the common good. And the first right, the right to life must come before the right to intellectual property. Why not use the right of Eminent Domain to solve this problem?
Don’t you remember the game we played in high school…imagine you are starving to death, as is your baby. Is it right or wrong for you to steal a loaf of bread?
Posted by Mitcherino on Dec 2, 2005 at 9:25 PM Mitch, you are morally right in the way you’re thinking, but you’re missing one important thing. Privatization provides the necessary culture of competition. We’re simple, somewhat greedy animals and we often don’t do what is morally right when we should or given the opportunity. Idealogically speaking, Communism should work, but it tends not to. State funded healthcare simply doesn’t promote advances in healthcare fast enough or efficiently enough. Many UK doctors lament the fact that the money and impetus aren’t there in the NHS to promote advances. Privatization isn’t perfect either, but I don’t think there really is a perfect system.
Posted by Peterah001 on Dec 2, 2005 at 9:27 PM The best medical care I ever used was in Germany: Government sponsored.
The CEO of Merck is not in the lab coming up with medicines. His $70,000 per year scientists are. Dump the CEO, keep the scientists, pay them $100,000 with bonuses if they come up with new drugs, stay out of their way, and I’ll bet you’ll have some cures for things you didn’t think could be cured.
Posted by Mitcherino on Dec 2, 2005 at 9:34 PM I like you Mitch, you play with me and you play fair.
Some of the best medical attention I ever received was in the UK. I had a nasty case of something I picked up from a toilet seat (not even doing anything fun no less) and I was taken care of immediately and felt light years better with next to no wait and hassle. But that still doesn’t account for the fact that you can’t run a business without business men. It’s a sad fact of our present world, but it just won’t happen. Especially when mass producing things like pharmaceuticals. I work in the industry, scarily huge.
Even non-profits have to have businessmen. I wish we could tell people to do jobs like CEO for much less money and also then tell them to stay the heck away from the science, but you can’t. They won’t have the incentive. Yes, ethics and morals should BE the incentive, but that’s just not realistic. So, what models CAN we use?
Posted by Peterah001 on Dec 2, 2005 at 9:49 PM Could you share your source for this statement:
“Healthy young people, those with the strongest immune systems, are most at risk.”How can this be?
Thanks,
R
Posted by montana on Dec 2, 2005 at 10:51 PM There are some basic flaws in this article. The first is that it is by no means agreed that Tamiflu will be effective in the treatment of any future mutation of avian flu into a human pandemic
http://theedge.bostonherald.com/healthNews/view.bg?articleid=113010
Secondly Roche does not hold the sole rights to distribution of Tamiflu, it is leased from Gilead, which recently won the right to share in distribution.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Business&article=UPI-1-200511 116-07130100-bc-us-tamiflu.xml
Thirdly and far more troubling is the financial connection between senior members of the current American administration and Gilead, in particular Donald Rumsfeld.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/fortune_rumsfeld/
http://www.newstarget.com/015254.html
Finally, the lack of concern with conditions that promote avian flu, the supposed source of a mutation into a human form of the disease and the expansion of the US chicken agribusiness into the Asian, particularly Chinese, markets.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ENG20051127& &articleId=1333
Although the discussion of this article is focussed on the limits to rights of ownership versus rights of humanity in connection with the spread of avian flu and the use of the drug Tamiflu . Perhaps the concern needs to be more narrowly focussed on just whose nest is feathered by the current scaremongering and promotion of Tamiflu as the solution.
Posted by Athens on Dec 3, 2005 at 3:47 PM Excellent points Athens.
Seems like scaremongering to me too. Bird flu is nothing new. It has been around for many years. Some years worse than others. For birds at least.
.. the supposed source of a mutation into a human form of the disease .. is an important issue and a concern of mine too.
My scam detector has been going off on a regular basis when I hear all of this propaganda to run out and get a flu shot and be worried about the new flu coming to a town near you. Smacks of fear and consume advertising, news, entertainment or what ever they are calling it these days.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 3, 2005 at 10:02 PM “Perhaps the concern needs to be more narrowly focussed on just whose nest is feathered by the current scaremongering and promotion of Tamiflu as the solution.”
Posted by AthensYes, good post.
I don’t think David from Canada is the only one who’s “scam detector” is going off, judging by the public’s non-reaction to the bird flu scare.
Posted by pick of the litter on Dec 5, 2005 at 4:02 PM
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 5, 2005 at 11:30 PM The flu can be a deadly serious disease, as it was in 1918-19. At that time it killed 10’s of millions, mostly young and heathy adults. This was (presumably) since they were out and about, and hence exposed to the flu .
I imagine that if no steps are taken to prevent such a pandemic, many here will hold the administration responsible if/when it hits. While i would prefer a administration that leads, i would also prefer an informed populace that understood this important issue. In that event, the rulers of the land would do the “popular” - and right - thing to avert a pandemic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Flu
Oh never mind, This whole scenario is as unlikely as crazy people hijacking planes to kill people with. . . :)
Posted by wolf on Dec 6, 2005 at 4:19 PM Oh never mind, This whole scenario is as unlikely as crazy people hijacking planes to kill people with. .
Wolfie .. Don’t forget the people who feathered their nests with millions of dollars of profits with insider trading and put options on airline stocks in the days preceding 9/11.
Amazing but true.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 6, 2005 at 7:51 PM It’s not clear whether Tamiflu is effective against the current strain of the avian flu. In addition, flu viruses are constantly changing so that if there is ever an outbreak of bird flu in the US, Tamiflu may not be effective against that strain.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 6, 2005 at 7:58 PM The more researchers and pharmaceutical companies are dispossessed of their incentive to produce new medicines, the less new research will be done and therefore the fewer new medicines we’ll be able to count on. Ignoring or circumventing patents will offer a short-term solution in that pirated drugs of those formulae can be produced without paying for them, but that dampens the efforts to create the new drugs that will certainly be necessary when bird flu (or some other virus) mutates again and as super-bacteria that resist current antibiotics continue to evolve. Same goes for anti-HIV or anti-malarial drugs. They didn’t just squirt up on the lawn like a toadstool, they had to be developed through years of devoted effort. We’re sure to need new and better ones in the future.
Like it or not, people work because they have incentives to do so. It’s not immoral. Incentives energize people and clarify why they are working in a chosen field in the first place. My belief is, people in the drug industry do wish to improve human life, but expect to make a living by their efforts. Is that mean-hearted?
If governments want to ensure that medicines are available to use in response to a bio-crisis, they need to do two things.
First, they need to negotiate agreements in advance with drug companies that allow rapid, reduced-price mass purchases in the case of epidemic or pandemic events. After all, even pandemics don’t sweep the globe or the country in a matter of mere days, and really, if a deadly virus could jump from person to person that quick, there’s little we could do anyway. For drugs that can be effectively stored, maybe some kind of storage in population centers and stock rotation to prevent expiry would be feasible (I don’t know all those details, but they could be found out with little trouble).
The second thing is to make a point of working with more than one provider whenever possible, and publically. This would deter the problems of monopoly economics, where supply and price have no pressure from competitors. If the one single effective treatment for a given pathogen is owned by one single company who won’t play ball, vocal government courtship of competitors to develop alternative medicines would energize new research. If this sort of action was a well-known pattern, drug companies would be far more likely to negotiate price and supply because it would be in their financial as well as their moral interest. These needn’t be antithetical.
Might as well use the mechanisms of incentive and competition to stimulate the production of new drugs, rather than scuttle the creative energy of researchers and the livelihoods of drug retailers by way of government piracy or seizure of property. We’re sure to need those new drugs in the future. Handing out a slew of seized or pirated AZT or Tamiflu to millions might meet an immediate need (maybe), but it will make the next challenge harder to meet.
Peterah001’s point about Roche above is well-taken. Roche is being short-sighted by restricting licensure; at the least, they should be open to some form of negotiation like I describe. But if they don’t, they’ll be punished in the marketplace and, more to the point, will be known as one of those stereotypical corporations who doggedly refused to adapt to a crying need multiplied by millions, which will further hurt them as a business.
The other obvious problem is cronyism linking government officials with the very companies that must be negotiated with. If this doesn’t constitute conflict of interest, I don’t know what does. If government’s duties include protection of the citizenry, and I as an official profit from the withheld (therefore pricier) goods that would have supported that protection, should I not be prosecuted somehow?
Posted by Kuya on Dec 7, 2005 at 10:08 AM I recently watched a piece on the Origin of AIDs from Oral Polio Vaccine and would think that rapid and widespread production of drugs might not be in our long term interests. The kind of side effects we might see are drug resistant strains or product tampering and probably more unforseen problems. It looks like some serious scare mongering, yellow level, to justify some irrational hasty government decisions. Lets take the next step and start testing Haliburton vacines in our new colony Iraq, they are blowing themselves up anyway.
The notion that we would no longer be able to stave of new infections without copyright protections also seems far fetched. Sure some competition and drive would be removed but there would still be public institutions doing research. How much of a damper would it put and what response would we see?
Honestly, monopolies in health and drugs sounds like some sci-fi flick, where evil heads hold the world ransom for drugs. While it seems the nation is heading there, we just aren’t that desensitized yet.
Posted by VikiBabu on Dec 9, 2005 at 12:02 AM Forget Tamiflu, distribute Kimchi and Sauerkraut.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/health/2002608490_flucure07.html
Posted by VikiBabu on Dec 9, 2005 at 12:06 AM Vickbabu, great posts. I agree forget Tamiflu. It is interesting how when I watch the news (CNN) and they are hyping the avain/bird flu they are always flashing pictures of scary chickens and a package of Tamiflu.
Great article about the Kimchi and Sauerkraut. The very long URL you posted got broken, extra c and a space. I have provided the hyperlink below for convenience.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 9, 2005 at 1:51 AM WELL- WORN SCRIPT
Historical context is certainly relevant: avian flu is right on schedule, with the winding down of the post 9/11 smallpox vaccine and SARS vaccine programs. [6] In these two instances, appropriate hysteria was whipped up, billions were spent, and magically – poof! – both threats disappeared.
Nature abhors a vacuum – new funding requires new threats – ergo, we need avian flu to take up the slack. As for marketing, it’s already in place. Why change a successful sales strategy? In the fall of 2005, the identical techniques by which SARS and smallpox vaccine terrorized the American psyche were trotted out again, this time to sell avian flu:
create hysteria by incessant media ops, painting a picture of Armageddon; short on science, long on unsupported overstatement and stock phrases that are repeated and repeated.
a constant stream of predictions from “scientific” sources who have done no new actual studies, but instead re-interpret old material
offer a solution, an expensive solution involving unproven old medicines and untested new ones
spend the moneynever mention the threat again
Tried and true, works every time, a slam dunk. And best of all, people don’t even see it as a pattern. Because in today’s world, nobody reads any more.
Excerpted from here. Click here for more good information and even better commentary about Tamiflu and Avian/Bird Flu.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 9, 2005 at 4:27 AM Vickbabu and others,
Really long URLs can get broken sometimes.
http://tinyurl.com/ is helpful. Really long URLs can get broken sometimes.
Here on In These Times if the URL is longer than the line length in the comment entry box it gets broken . Spaces and extra letters added.
TinyURL is easy to use, copy and paste, bingo bango.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 9, 2005 at 4:40 AM Wolf
The drug companies invented nothing!
They stole anything that works off native cultures and invariably patented it, or its synthetic copy. They are patenting the very DNA of our makeup and all manner of naturally occurring God Given things.
Rabbit has one thing to say about your idea of private ownership such as the Big Drug companies claim with their massive and cavalier approach to patenting and to using their drugs, harmful or not on people, and that is FUCK THEM.
By the way Tamiflu is derived naturally from the Asian Star fruit I think. There are other treatments no doubt and those in the know, alternative Health people, are not only likely to be able to cope fine, some of us knew about this thing a couple of years ago and have been altering our diets somewhat and showing vigilance in certain areas of vitamins etc. There are many ancient and effective methods of dealing with these supposedly new diseases. Since much of it is man made, due to intentional and inadvertant alterations of existing organisms, it is even possible if one is vigilant to forsee with some warning what to expect.
One hint, is LOTS of Carrots, every day, carrots.
Of course the Drug Companies want us to believe they have the only cure. The fact is that Tamiflu has killed people, it doesn’t work on all strains and we don’t know yet how the eventual strain will be, it may help, it may not. RIPOFF.
AND anyway, what is this that the US Junta is concerned about Roche. Rummy is the man.
NEW YORK (Fortune) - The prospect of a bird flu outbreak may be panicking people around the globe, but it’s proving to be very good news for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other politically connected investors in Gilead Sciences, the California biotech company that owns the rights to Tamiflu, the influenza remedy that’s now the most-sought after drug in the world.
Rumsfeld served as Gilead (Research)‘s chairman from 1997 until he joined the Bush administration in 2001, and he still holds a Gilead stake valued at between $5 million and $25 million, according to federal financial disclosures filed by Rumsfeld.
The forms don’t reveal the exact number of shares Rumsfeld owns, but in the past six months fears of a pandemic and the ensuing scramble for Tamiflu have sent Gilead’s stock from $35 to $47. That’s made the Pentagon chief, already one of the wealthiest members of the Bush cabinet, at least $1 million richer.
Rumsfeld isn’t the only political heavyweight benefiting from demand for Tamiflu, which is manufactured and marketed by Swiss pharma giant Roche. (Gilead receives a royalty from Roche equaling about 10% of sales.) Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is on Gilead’s board, has sold more than $7 million worth of Gilead since the beginning of 2005.
Another board member is the wife of former California Gov. Pete Wilson.
“I don’t know of any biotech company that’s so politically well-connected,” says analyst Andrew McDonald of Think Equity Partners in San Francisco.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 9, 2005 at 8:27 AM Rumsfeld’s Pandemic Connection
Last week, the two companies involved in the production of Tamiflu—touted as the globe’s savior should there be an avian flu pandemic—negotiated a new financial arrangement. Roche will now pay Gilead 14-22% of Tamiflu revenue, up from last year’s 10%. The drug was a “lackluster” seller before pandemic fears, which reached new heights earlier this month when President Bush outlined a $7.1 billion pandemic response plan.American mainstream media continue to ignore the White House connection (some call it crony capitalism) to its flu plan ($1 billion is specifically earmarked for Tamiflu). Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld owns Gilead stock valued at $5-25 million. US Liberals Deborah White reported this connection on 1 November. And yet. A Google news search of “Rumsfeld and Tamiflu” yields only 84 stories; a large percentage of these are foreign press. Not surprisingly, Google’s BlogSearch has 627 hits; Technorati, 507 in the last five days.
When Rumsfeld left the board of Gilead, shares were trading at about $7. Since last year, the stock has increased more than 57% (the Pentagon bought $58 million worth for soldiers this summer). In November, the share price has jumped about 20%. Last year, sales of Tamiflu were about $258 million, according to Roche, which manufactures the drug under a royalty agreement with Gilead. Roche estimates 2005 sales at $1 billion.
Small bickies next to Halliburton, but still not bad pocket money for holding the world to ransom and defrauding native populations as well as locking up resources.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 9, 2005 at 8:31 AM TAMIFLU GILEAD CHAIR WAS ... RUMMY
Friday, October 21, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.com
[url=“http://tinyurl.com/899k3”]by staff reports
NEWS AND ANALYSIS[/url]Readers can be helpful, and one just wrote in to inform us of a link that we had never imagined - Donald Rumsfeld, until he resigned and joined the Bush Administration, was the chairman of something called Gilead which just happened to make something called Tamiflu.
Now anyone who hasn’t been on Mars for the last month or two, knows that there were only two things that were going to stop the human version of bird flu. One was a bird flu vaccine (which probably would work better if you were a bird) and the other was something called Tamiflu. Yes, that Tamiflu. In such short supply that the hundreds of millions of orders that have been pouring into Gilead probably won’t be filled for another 12 months or so. But everyone has got to have it because somehow or other it became established that Tamiflu really worked.
This was the party line, anyway, for about a week, until word began trickling back in that maybe Tamiflu didn’t work. In fact, the word on Tamiflu has always been positive at first and then eventually negative. It’s a kind of pattern. We even find corroboration of it here on the Democrats.com, in what appears to be either a chat room or news roundup as follows, “Rummy was CEO of Gilead Sciences until named to the Bush cabinet and, like Cheney, still has ties that bind to the ‘old company.’ Now isn’t it an ‘amazing coincidence’ that the drug Tamiflu patented by Gilead Sciences is being pushed by the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases as the NUMBER ONE choice for flu, which, wonder of wonders, is sweeping through in one epidemic after another.”
Umm…..................Things that make Rabbits go hmmmm!
What’s the guess no big Pandemic happens? Um Red alert everybody red alert. No no it’s just a Blue alert. Or is it a Green alert? It’s another Green Alert, $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 9, 2005 at 8:36 AM My last post was deleted, probably due to my own error, so this lastest epiphany is going to come as a shock to all of you…..
but Roche, and any other pharamaceutic company, is not the beast that stands between you and your inevitable death, ok?
You will not achieve immortality when all life saving measures are easily and freely available to all, ok?
And really, what would be the point? What would many of us do with all that extra free time? You can only mow the lawn and barbeque for the neighbors so many times before even THAT becomes boring…..
If you’re depressed about this, ask your doctor if Prozac, Zoloft and/or Effexor are right for you….
Posted by minerva on Dec 9, 2005 at 8:41 AM So does this help answer the question about who’s nest is being feathered? A big old bunch of Buzzards.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 9, 2005 at 8:42 AM Oops…. Dave…..... Rabbit was just catching up to the link you posted and can see he has duplicated your point in this regard, your thoughts about Buzzards was obvious the same as Rabbit’s. A Vulture is he.
WTF do these C**TS do with all that much money?
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 9, 2005 at 9:32 AM Minerva Rabbit wouldn’t mind if they just stopped mucking around with diseases and things, the problem for me is not that they are profiteering off the drugs, as because they are at some level apparently behind the outbreaks too.
If only we had to contend with what Nature threw at us, if only. Then life, long or short is largely in our own hands. They are trying to own our bodies in effect.
By the way, Rabbit could easily find enough to fill his days were they considerably longer. Some things Rabbit could easily do for a whole lifetime on their own, but there is never enough time.
Time’s winged Chariot is always at a Rabbit’s heals.
Life is short dears, it is frightfully suddenly, short.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 9, 2005 at 9:38 AM Reading my book…A Short History of Nearly Everything-Bryson, he talks about how the misuse of antibiotics in farming has lead to the inefficacy of penicillin and other anitbiotics. Our sterile environment is going to be ripe grounds for infection. I think if we s*it it out, we will see we are in less danger than we think.
So Rabbit, I agree, we should accept micro-orgs as our Gods…a collective being much more powerful than us, able to control everything from the sky above to the earth below. Lets feed Rummy and the Cabinet to our new Gods.
Posted by VikiBabu on Dec 9, 2005 at 4:23 PM Better is if we could shoot them out into space. Rabbit doesn’t think the earth really even want’s their putrid Carbon, it is no loss to the planet if even the carbon, hydrogen and oxygen and few trace elements which have contributed to their existence were discarded.
Better for the overall vibration at least.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 10, 2005 at 4:48 AM I only wish the government and health care industry were so well organized that they could conceive of a plan to take over the world by strategically leaking bacterium and viruses….
We’re talking about a labour and brain pool that typically insists on the right to be late for work everyday through it’s union efforts, lol.
I don’t think that some grand conspiracy is at work, selectively introducing us to treatment resistant diseases, lol
We are so entitled and oblivious to the fact that even 50 years ago, we were prey to a host of illnesses that we have a hard time begging off work for now….pneumonia, strep…even flu has become managable in this modern age. I don’t even want to talk about polio, gangrene, and tetanus.
We enjoy such excellent good health because simple antibiotics and vaccines are cheaply and easily available to us. We hardly ever die from Diptheria or Thypoid fever anymore at a young age. You hardly hear about ‘Scarlet fever’ anymore.
Yes, the drug companies have a free ride, I won’t dispute that. They are very rich.
But I wouldn’t want to go back to the old days, where most children died before the age of 2 because of a basic lack of immunity to agents in our own food chain that feed, parasitically, on our vigor.
Ely Lilly can have my few dollars if it can provide a defense against this reality..
Posted by minerva on Dec 11, 2005 at 7:44 AM Minerva
Exactly.
We are no longer prey to many older traditional deiseases, yet we seem to be bombarded every few years now with diseases which have become moneters supposedly overnight.
With all due rewspecdt I trhink you may ne a little young or have ashort memory in this regard. To read a lot of modern medical literature you would assume that just twenty years ago we were prone to all sorts of terrible afflictions, but in truth, we had never heard of many very common supposedly serious type diseases then., The evolution of “Species Threatening” diseases since about 1990, has been nothing short of miraculous.
Didn’t you read any of the rest of the posts? Rabbit and others too have seen many people cured of diseases, supposedly beyond modern medicene. The means of most modern cures, if not all, of serious disease are based upon ancient not new understanding.
This thread is more to do with the hijacking, the piracy of such understanding, knowledge, than it is to do with any arbitrary claims to having invented something, which history will usually show is a spinoff from traditional medicine. The piracy of what is often ancient knowledge, for what else can you call patenting of a herb or extract whichj was able to cure casncer, or some other “BIG MONEY” disease.
Minerva you are usually sensible enough, but you are not defending modern mefdicine here as you might suppose. You are merely falling victim to the sales pitch of the Drug Companies, who are hardly going to admit they nicked the cure off some bunch of natives and have done no more than synthesise the natural derivative.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 11, 2005 at 10:04 AM The drug companies invented nothing! They stole anything that works off native cultures and invariably patented it, or its synthetic copy.
Indeed, and what they cannot synthesize or patentize they will demonize and suppressisize.
I like making up new words.
Posted by David in Canada on Dec 12, 2005 at 1:43 AM Smallpox - gone. Due to nasty drug companies, who ripped off smallpox itself! (And put smallpox on the endangered species list!)
Polio - um, heard of it, but never knew anyone to get it. Again those nasty drug companies.
Modern drugs have changed the world (particularly the west, but the whole world as well), and in only the last half century or so. I don’t recall any such things happening in the middle ages or before. . . It is nonsense to say that natural methods worked effectively against such killers as: bubonic plague, smallpox, polio, rabies, etc etc.
Surely we live in the best of times! In part due to modern medicine.
Posted by wolf on Dec 12, 2005 at 5:39 PM Get some clues Wolfie, you are always spouting opinions based on platitudes and slogans, you know so little about the actual subject sometimes, it is embarrassing.
If you care ask the rabbit and he will direct you to some reading, otherwise, please stop barking, doggy.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 13, 2005 at 6:56 AM Oh and what is it with this idea that if some good has come of something then this somehow gives license to commit evil simulataneously or at another juncture?
So what if while getting super rich the drug companies, took part in curing or controlling “some disease” if at the same time they manipulated a situation to maximum profit at the cost of many lives?
So what if while making an inordinate amount of profit of some ideas and some stolen “natural remedies” the same companies are responsible for outbreaks of other more potent forms of disease, intentionally or otherwise.
So what if America once stood for freedom and democracy, when it has now become a hollow shell of empty and evidently ironic slogans.
A Rabbitism:
A Good act can sometimes help cancel the ill Karma of a Bad one, but a Bad act cannot ever be justified by a former Good.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 13, 2005 at 7:02 AM I guess I am not too young but not too old either…neither of these states confer extraordinary wisdom, in any case, lol.
I am influenced by the fact that when I was a child I did know people who had contracted poilio before vaccines were readily available to the general public, and I still encounter people who are subject to the impairments caused by their earlier exposure ( I’m 44, by the way). People died of TB in my youth , and there are some still afflicted with this disease in this country, in spite of our ATM’s and 24 hour supermarkets and ongoing profit inspired drug research.
I guess malaria still affects us in North America as well, and kills many children in Africa every year, in spite of their own home remedies and shamanistic rituals.
One of the few illesnesses I hear little about these days is leporosy…whatever happened to that condition? Time for another CNN breaking story…..
I don’t deny that drug companies market their drugs through scare tactics…( “imagine a world without erections…..ask your doctor if Viagara is right for you”...)
They even abuse consumers in rich countries without a socialized health care system, making them pay ‘what the market will bear’. I realize they prey on our fears, and invent new ones. They encourage the purchasing of their product rather than promoting wiser life choices ( hello? High cholesterol? Drop the Big Mac and eat an apple, ok? I hear it helps to keep the doctor away ...)
There’s a mindset running through this thread , that drug companies are withholding necessary cures through their own greediness, introducing illnesses, and generally trying to thwart our access to the good life.And the drug reps….greasy snake oil salesmen, or high priced escort types…seducing and conning the public into buying Aspirin instead of chewing on willow bark or drinking a tincture…and the government, dictating who gets to be dependent on opiates through the assessment and prescribing power of their state licensed professionals, when they’re not leaking pathogens into the atmosphere for their own gain, power hunger, and amusement.
I agree with this: .that people should take more responsibility for their own health and self care. That they should be knowledgable about their bodies. They also need to appreciate that there is a basic biological imperative at work here….
1.Bacteria, viruses and parasites seek a warm and nuturing environment too.This is not always to our advantage.
2.Time and wear will take the fighting edge off any immune system.
and
3.Death comes to us all.The drug companies do not restrict your access to home remedies…the government puts restrictions on substances with addictive potential but otherwise lets you poultice, tincture and consume any plant you feel might make you feel better.They do impose controls if you choose to market these ‘cures’ to the general public, however.
This is thought to be in the public interest.
Cheers
Posted by minerva on Dec 16, 2005 at 11:50 PM Minerva this is not an accurate ascessment, even though it is thoughful.
A number of herbs and various natural remedies are being controlled by legislation even to the extent of banning the use of traditional remedies due often to the Drug companies taking control of the thing.
For example Ginseng is listed on the Swiss Pharmaceuticals listings and this is the forerunner to all other lists. It means that eventually and we are seeing it more and more here, many of our own traditional remdies are being taken from our control, whoever we might be, and sold back to us, often in a form which no longer has the benefits of yore.
Rabbit and his wife are many years involved with natural health, she a practitioner and Rabbit naturally healthy. We are used to people surviving so many forms of supposedly incurable illnesses, due to alternative cures, usually herbal.
We have at one time been among the first Ginseng Growers in Australia.
Posted by GhostRabbit on Dec 19, 2005 at 1:40 PM Well bless you, and good health. Above all, happiness, in all it’s forms, eh?
minerva
Posted by minerva on Dec 22, 2005 at 2:37 AM And maybe some of the cares of the world could be remedied through the realization that :
Companies benefit from the good health of their employeesThoughtful attention to the health of people benefits everyone, even the greedy pigs who rape the world while disguising it as some sort of ‘largess’, eh?
(I’m thinking of the Walmart sociopathology here….but good health and ‘well fed families’ is the goal of everyone…
every where.
That’s my fantasy, and I’m clinging to it, lol.)
And that ‘health’ is not the random dispensation of some random controlling entity…
true, some people have a basic, insurmountable genetic obstacle…
most of us don’t have that excuse/problem/rationale for a disability claim…
I love our independence, and our interdependence. I even appreciate our dependence .We would be nothing without this sense of community
Posted by minerva on Dec 22, 2005 at 3:12 AM Page 1 of 1 pages -
register a new account »Posting Security
Also by Joel Bleifuss
- Block ’Em, Sock ’Em
- Buy Back Our Government
- A Specter is Haunting Dems
- Bailout Bandits
- Building Utopia
A new documentary profiles the rise and fall of a Depression-era utopian experiment in the Bronx. - To Boycott Israel…or Not?
Naomi Klein and Rabbi Arthur Waskow debate whether divestment will bring peace to the Middle East.
Popular Discussions
- The 9/11 Faith Movement
Many Americans believe 9/11 was a conspiracy by the U.S. government
1979 posts since Jul 11 06 - What’s the 411 on 9/11?
891 posts since Dec 21 05 - Democrats: It’s the War
659 posts since Nov 1 05 - Was the Presidential Election Stolen?
462 posts since Jun 19 06 - A Fundamental History Lesson
The rise of National Socialism proved politics and religion don't mix
427 posts since Oct 10 05
© 2005 In These Times | Reprint Policy | Privacy Policy | Powered by Expression Engine | RSS Feeds
