Cures
Are Pharmaceutical Corps. Ethical ?
- Thread starter river
- Start date
Cures
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
Polio, rabies, whooping cough...
Note that it's usually scientists and doctors that find the cures, pharma just manufactures the drugs. And they can treat far more ailments than can be cured, like mental illness.
True
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
Some people get cured more or less.
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
It's actually been a revolution in the treatment of mental illness, where they used to confine the mentally ill to a horrible prison. Now people can take drugs and lead fairly normal lives.
And yet they do. Must be a flaw in your reasoning somewhere.
Cured? Not as such... But when I was a child in the 1960s cancer was pretty much a death sentence. Today I know many cancer survivors. Treatment has come a long way.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
I suspect many people imagine medicinology as super-advanced, and wonder why we don't yet have magic bullets for everything, therefore pharma is dragging its heels.
We are barely in our infancy of understanding of physio-biology.
Only a very few things are we able to understand - let alone treat - the cause much of what Medicine can do nowadays is merely treat the symptoms.
Watson and Crick only isolated the DNA molecule 60 years ago.
Penicillin was first used to treat infections only 75 years ago.
Yup - virtually all of modern medicine was invented within living memory of much of today's population.
Penicillin was only discovered 90 years ago.
The Germ Theory of Disease is barely 200 years old. (With methods as simple having doctors wash their hands). Yet, even then, it was widely rejected by the medical establishment as too woo.
We've come a long way (in a short time), baby.
We are barely in our infancy of understanding of physio-biology.
Only a very few things are we able to understand - let alone treat - the cause much of what Medicine can do nowadays is merely treat the symptoms.
Watson and Crick only isolated the DNA molecule 60 years ago.
Penicillin was first used to treat infections only 75 years ago.
Yup - virtually all of modern medicine was invented within living memory of much of today's population.
Penicillin was only discovered 90 years ago.
The Germ Theory of Disease is barely 200 years old. (With methods as simple having doctors wash their hands). Yet, even then, it was widely rejected by the medical establishment as too woo.
We've come a long way (in a short time), baby.
what does this actually mean? I am sure all those people who exhibit the symptoms of bipolar, and the like, are glad that there are drugs that treat those symptoms. But don't those same drugs also treat the cause of those symptoms, the chemical imbalance? sure, we haven't, as yet, the technology to alter a persons genome in situ, which would help cure bipolar.
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Well, that turns out to be problematic.
These medications have side effects troublesome enough that, invariably, patients must weigh the treatment against not getting treated at all, and determine which results in a net increase in quality of life.
Our medications are the equivalent of trying to put a broken china teacup back together using only a hammer.
The chemical imbalance, is itself, a symptom of a deeper underlying cause.
The question of whether the cause is literally a genetic one is still open.
Which is kinda my point. Despite what people similar to the OP might think we do not yet have the technology to address the cause, just the effect.
but if the cause is a chemical imbalance, due to a genetic defect, and you correct that chemical imbalance with drugs, then isn't that treating the cause?
DaveC426913
Valued Senior Member
Only if the drugs fix the genetic defect itself (which I don't see happening yet). Otherwise, all were really doing is treating the effects.
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
We don't know what causes bipolar and most mental disorders. All we know is some drugs help people live with it.
Thats all these pharmas are doing . Treating .
What is the evidence that these disorders actually exist in the first place ?
spidergoat
Valued Senior Member
A consensus among mental health professionals in cooperation with many institutions of society, including patients, universities, communities, and governmental agencies.