Business will lead us to a world of plenty by 1kiki

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Business will lead us to a world of plenty

POSTED BY: 1KIKI
UPDATED: Friday, September 21, 2012 04:45
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Saturday, September 15, 2012 4:08 PM

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

/ http://the-scientist.com/tag/tuberculosis/

“No drug firm will pay for clinical trials if they don’t expect to make a profit on the agent. And that would be the case for an off-patent drug that people can buy over the counter for pain in most of the world.”

Double-Edged TB Drug

A cheap pain reliever that can kill drug-resistant, tuberculosis-causing bacteria may never be tested.

An inexpensive, over-the-counter pain reliever can kill the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB)—even the drug-resistant varieties—according to a new study published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science this week (September 10), yet it’s not a promising candidate for drug trials.

Researchers at the Weill Cornell Medical College designed a screen to find drugs that target dormant TB bacteria—triggered by certain lung conditions, dormancy is a key strategy Mycobacterium tuberculosis uses to evade drugs and cause lethal infections in nearly 1.5 billion people per year. The researchers found that the anti-inflammatory drug oxyphenbutazone, developed to treat arthritis in the 1970s, is activated in lung conditions that induce dormancy, and can kill dormant, active, and even resistant bacteria.

But the researchers are skeptical the drug will ever be given to a TB patient. “It is difficult today to launch clinical studies on a medication that is so outdated in the United States,” Weill microbiology professor and the senior author Carl Nathan said in a press release. “No drug firm will pay for clinical trials if they don’t expect to make a profit on the agent. And that would be the case for an off-patent drug that people can buy over the counter for pain in most of the world.”

Another hurdle for the drug is that it can’t be tested in mouse models because the animals metabolize the drug to an inactive form faster than humans do—too fast to treat TB infection.

“This makes testing the drug for TB use in humans problematic since the FDA requires preclinical animal testing studies for safety and efficacy,” Nathan said in the release. “Yet there is a long track record of oxyphenbutazone’s relatively safe use in hundreds of thousands of people over decades.”

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Saturday, September 15, 2012 7:17 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Well, time for off-label prescription and lots and lots of published "case studies". Doctors of the world, unite!

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Saturday, September 15, 2012 8:10 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

And yet, if they had real studies to elucidate dosage, frequency, and duration, how much better off people would be.

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Sunday, September 16, 2012 3:48 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Of course. I'm talking about progress despite the corporations, not because of them.

At one time, my dd was dx with a rare neurological disorder. As it turns out, a solution for many of our kids could be found in a group of cheap, already-available drugs: immunoglobulins, prednisone, dexamethasone... not in any of the then-newly-available anticonvulsants like Felbatol or Vigabatrin, nor in (expensive) neuro-surgery. Since I accidentally found her dx online, I was horrified that so many parents might not have had the same good fortune that I had, and so I spent the next six or seven years online trolling for other undiagnosed cases. We parents met online and created a potent force, making doctors to try immunoglobulins and steroids when they might not have considered them otherwise. I daresay that by catching SOME children early and forcing rapid remission, we prevented mental retardation. (Too late for my dd, tho.)

But this was despite the drug companies not because of them, and the basic research into understanding HOW these drugs work was never done, and so neither parents nor doctors understand to this day how to distinguish one kind of case (where the rx might succeed) from another, nor was the basic research ever done into how to make the treatment more effective and also how to reduce side effects. At one time, we were trying to create an online database for doctors or researchers to access, but none of us had the computer skills to make that happen. What remains is the mere outline of an approach which is moldering somewhere.

Fucking drug companies.

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Sunday, September 16, 2012 6:46 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Fucking drug companies indeed.

Quote:
No drug firm will pay for clinical trials if they don’t expect to make a profit on the agent

Is pretty much the bottom line, as far as I'm concerned. Tho' it goes far beyond that, into suppression, egregious actions, and more.

Some drugs have been used for off-label treatment of bipolarity, such as neurontin, which was found to work well as a mood stabilizer for some of us--and did for me for years--but which didn't work for many, so it wouldn't generate a huge profit. As a result, it wasn't put up for trial as a treatment for bipolarity, while it's "sister drugs" which came out at the same time, Lamictal and another whose name I forget, went through trials and were accepted. Lamictal has a potential side effect of a life-endangering rash and had to be dealt with carefully; Neurontin has no serious side effects and can be used in high dosages. Nonetheless, Lamictal was accepted, Neurontin wasn't (it's accepted as a pain medication only).

But there are also many, many other things which aren't doctor-prescribed DRUGS which have been very effective, and the same lack of knowledge of those is as you detailed. But you have to look. Sometimes HARD.

Big Pharma is a power of which I think few are aware of just how powerful they are--even those of us who think we know. Their actions can be defended by saying the expense of trials, etc., should rightfully be reimbursed by making a profit, but it goes so far beyond that, that it's a weak excuse in my opinion.

Word of mouth is really our only resource, and many congrats to you for getting involved and making a difference. In the depression and manic depression support group I was in, most of us knew not to try St. John's Wort because of all the bad news about its effects, and that was mostly from word of mouth. Some in the group tried omitting caffeine, sugar, white flour, or other things from their diets, and had good results...but again, at least at that time, little was made public knowledge of these things. Now there is more, but the drug companies certainly wouldn't have encouraged the dissemination of that information; there was no profit in it.

Big Pharma has been found to be complicit in--or even PERPETRATED--so many bad things, in my mind I'd believe just about anything of them! They are a powerful, monied corporate interest with a huge bank of lobbyists at their command, and few realize just how big their reach is. Fucking drug companies indeed!

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Sunday, September 16, 2012 7:31 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"Their actions can be defended by saying the expense of trials, etc., should rightfully be reimbursed by making a profit ..."

Considering that the basic research was publicly funded I'm not sure I agree with this statement. I think the business model which leeches off public resources is broken. I think it needs to be replaced with either a social model where businesses using public resources are under the control of society; OR or a truly payment-based system whereby they pay for ALL the resources they use, including research, infrastructure, toxicity and environmental testing etc - no freebies.

In any case, what I get from both your posts is that due to pharma business practices, there are presently two alternate paths to the pharma machine - one is word-of-mouth patient-doctor collusion to use pharma products in pragmatically useful but medically unintended ways, as person-by-person group-by-group self-experimentation; and the other is to eschew pharma products entirely and rely on historical nostrums, potions, practices, healers and the like.

The third way, if we had a robust government not mostly under the thrall of business, would be to spend a chunk of public money on these kinds of useful investigations.

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Sunday, September 16, 2012 10:42 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Good catch; I forgot that a lot of this is publically-funded. And actually, thinking on it, any meds they produce lose a certain amount of profit down the line when cheap alternatives come out (I forget the word for that).

As for your choices, I'm afraid it's "none of the above" for me. I use Big Pharma's products, and some of them important enough that without them, my life would be a lot rougher (like an anti-reflux med I take; I'm too stubborn to change my entire diet, which would be my only alternative, or my thyroid med, which was the first clue that I was bipolar--and how I wish THAT had been followed up!). I would take your Option Three, except I don't see it ever happening. I guess mostly I'm just bitching, but realistically I suppose I'd like to see Big Pharma have less power, and better dissemination of non-pharmaceutical options. I can't think of anything else that could realistically be done in the world as it is now.

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Thursday, September 20, 2012 7:13 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

from Chemical and Engineering News Weekly...

Big Pharma Fights Drug Ruling in India

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Thursday, September 20, 2012 7:17 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

Niki

I have sympathy.

Sigh.

grit. teeth.

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Friday, September 21, 2012 4:45 AM

CAVETROLL

I would prefer that the money spent to fund research and development on drugs was used to pay the production costs for non-profitable drugs that have been tested and had the effectiveness verified, but drug companies will not produce them since they will not make a shekel for the companies. Let the drug companies figure out their own funding.

Kwindbago, hot air and angry electrons

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