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[Baffler]

In semi-related news, a collaboration between a few teams of scientists around the USA put out this the other day:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-09/wuso-zvk083117.php
http://jem.rupress.org/content/early/2017/09/05/jem.20171093

Who knows if this'll actually get anywhere therapeutically, but it's pretty cool to see at least a possibility of something good coming from all that.

[Reelya]

(in fact, if you invented a drug that cures all cancers, you'd probably never get it approved. Too many financial interests at stake)

This. It might sound like a conspiracy theory but we have concrete examples.

e.g. when it was proven that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria and not by stress ... the pharma companies manipulated politicians to get antacids turned into an over-the-counter medicine instead of a prescription medicine, which they then started advertising on television, thus bypassing the medical establishment completely and encouraging people to self-medicate rather than seek medical advice about their ulcers. So, they just doubled-down on medicine that doesn't work and deliberately manipulated the public so they would be discouraged from seeking proper medical attention.

[ChairmanPoo]

So, when it was proven their medicine did jack shit and there was now a cure, they doubled-down on their useless medicine

Not to be a nitpick but

- Antiacids aren't exactly OTC. I mean,  technically you need a prescription in most places. In my home country pharmacies don't usually demand it if there is no abuse potential, but you still should have it, in theory. And in my current place I had to write a prescription for myself to get a pill package of antiacids from my workplace's pharmacy. So... not OTC, no.


- H Pylori erradication protocols usually have antiacids

[Reelya]

Let me clarify:

http://www.ulcer-cure.com/index.php/h-pylori/all-about-h-pylori/h-pylori-conspiracy

In 1994, the patent for Tagamet had run its course. That same year the NIH (National Institute of Health) acknowledged that H. pylori was a major factor in the development of ulcers. They also conceded that successfully treating the Helicobacter Pylori bacterium with the use of antibiotics could cure stomach ulcers.

Oddly enough, it was at this time that Zantac and Tagamet, which were two extremely lucrative prescription antacid/acid blockers prescribed for ulcers, were approved by the FDA to become available over the counter without a prescription.

From 1995:
https://www.thepharmaletter.com/article/fda-committee-gives-nod-to-glaxo-s-otc-zantac

A US Food and Drug Administration advisory committee has recommended approval for an over-the-counter version of Glaxo's antiulcerant Zantac ... Contrary to the expectation of some doctors, the committees are not recommending that Glaxo puts warnings against drug interactions on the label for the OTC version of Zantac. ... Pepcid also got approval to be sold for a new use - preventing indigestion and not just curing it. While Zantac and Tagamet will do the same, Glaxo and SB did not do the extra studies to get this approval.

Oddly, from 1993:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/glaxo-faces-us-legal-action-over-zantac-claims-1496393.html

GLAXO, the British pharmaceuticals giant, is facing possible legal action from the Food and Drug Administration, the US industry regulator, that could force the company's best-selling drug, Zantac, off the market. The move follows a seven-year campaign by the FDA to stop the company from using allegedly misleading sales methods to promote Zantac, which provides almost half the company's profits.

So somehow, in between 1993 and 1995, the FDA did a backflip from banning Zantac over Glaxo's misleading marketing, to making it available over the counter and allowing them to promote it's use for things they didn't test it for and without the expected warning labels. That's a really fast backflip when you think about how long regulatory processes normally take. It heavily supports the idea that Glaxo manipulated the FDA behind the scenes to get this approved in such a hurry.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/GlaxoSmithKline

Also, there's evidence of FDA officials parroting Glaxo's line when it comes to taking down doctors who bring up safety concerns about Glaxo's products, suggesting that quite a few people in the FDA are on the Glaxo payroll:

Following Dr. Steven Nissen's publication of a study warning that "GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes drug Avandia increased the risk of heart attacks by 43% and death from cardiovascular events by possibly 64%," he was publicly pilloried. "More than one story from ostensibly different sources" derisively referred to him as "St Steven," the "Patron Saint of Drug Safety," and "Saint Steven the Pure," reported Evelyn Pringle in an August of 2007 CounterPunch article.

Among the Nissen attackers was Food and Drug Administration (FDA) spokesman Douglas Arbesfeld. Arbesfeld previously worked for the public relations firm Manning Selvage & Lee (MS&L), helping Glaxo and other "healthcare clients maximize internet-relations." Former FDA Deputy Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who ridiculed Nissen in a Wall Street Journal editorial, also consulted for pharmaceutical companies at MS&L. Two more FDA alums, Peter Pitts and Robert Goldberg, mocked Nissen in a Washington Times piece. Pitts is the senior vice-president for global health affairs at MS&L. Goldberg doesn't have ties to the PR firm, but serves with Pitts as an officer of the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI), which Pringle describes as a "nest of ex-moles who served the industry in one capacity or another in the Bush Administration's FDA."[15]

[Karnewarrior]

Plus there's the part where we screw up because we didn't know what we're doing. The faster you go, the higher the risk.

In any case, when there's a cure for lifestyle diseases, I'll get excited. Before that, people will smoke, eat and drink themselves sick no matter what you do.

*woosh*

We've researched Retroviral engineering, but we still don't have an Empath's guild and Psionics.

I was lied to. 

Technological advance is an inherently iterative process. One does not simply take sand from the beach and produce an iPad. We use crude tools to fashion better tools, and then our better tools to fashion more precise tools, and so on. Each minor refinement is a step in the process, and all of the steps must be taken.

Go jump in the recycling tank and become one with the people, Yang.

[RedKing]

So, when it was proven their medicine did jack shit and there was now a cure, they doubled-down on their useless medicine

Not to be a nitpick but

- Antiacids aren't exactly OTC. I mean,  technically you need a prescription in most places. In my home country pharmacies don't usually demand it if there is no abuse potential, but you still should have it, in theory. And in my current place I had to write a prescription for myself to get a pill package of antiacids from my workplace's pharmacy. So... not OTC, no.


- H Pylori erradication protocols usually have antiacids

Whaaaaat? Antacids are totally an OTC thing in the US. I'd be in wretched misery otherwise. And they're hardly useless if your goal is treating symptoms.

[ChairmanPoo]

I never said they were useless.

At any rate we werent talking about the same antiacids. He meant zantac, while I had PPIs in mind.

They very much demanded a script for a PPI this monday

[Jimmy]

In Australia, PPIs are OTC. A pack of 7 days of treatment falls under the Schedule 2 drug category (available through any pharmacy over the counter) and a pack of 14 falls under Schedule 3 (available under guidance of a Pharmacist without prescription, in some states and territories requiring dispensing first).

That's definitely not the case for stuff like your Nexium HP 7 packs, but nobody should be making that type of a diagnosis over the counter anyhow.

Of course, OTC medications are a pit of conflicting evidence and grandfathered drug safety standards. Many OTC ingredients have little to no evidence of statistically significant benefits for their indicated uses. Still, they empower folk to hopefully look after themselves. The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease, as Voltaire said.

[martinuzz]

Antacids are supermarket material over here

[wierd]

He isn't talking something like tums.

He specifically stated PPIs, or proton pump inhibitors. This class of drug prevents the release of acid, rather than neutralizing acid that gets released.

However, in the US, you can still get this class OTC. specifically, there is an OTC package for Prilosec. (Omeprazole).  That most certainly is a PPI.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0000AN9L7/ref=mp_s_a_1_1_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1505211364&sr=8-1&keywords=otc+prilosec&dpPl=1&dpID=51FQxNNNiML&ref=plSrch

[Jimmy]

You've got three basic categories of anti-reflux medications.

The most basic are your antacid medicines, mostly calcium carbonate to neutralize acid with alginate ingredients to form a raft over the stomach contents.

Then you've got your H2 antagonists, which stop acid being released into the stomach.

Finally there's your PPIs, which also block the release of acid, but far more potently.

Overall, antacids work fast, but don't make a long term difference since they're not treating the source of acid production. H2 antagonists are older, cheaper but less effective than PPIs and shut off the release of acid. Ballpark, H2s are about 70%ish to PPIs 90%ish acid reduction overall.

[Paxiecrunchle]

I know this is practically old hat by now, but I failed to see anyone mentioning progress on creating artificial wombs so I'm posting this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCGF8qrBKjY

[Reelya]

Watching that video made me realize something, the concept of artificial wombs sounds like it's something you'd have a hard time selling today. Overcoming the barrier to acceptance is the hard part. But that's because we imagine the changeover being sudden, e.g. the machine completely replacing women overnight, to which there could be public or legislative resistance.

But what if we stick premature babies into them to finish gestating? That's a clear pathway for the things to come into regular use, and you're going to see the tech ending up on TV with feel-good news stories like we do with current incubators. Except the artificial wombs sound like you could put much more premature babies into them, meaning many more babies saved, and it even becomes an option that if someone is having an abortion, the fetus can go into an artificial womb instead. So if the tech works for that, then it's inevitable that it's going to be available and used for much earlier babies, which just naturally segues into babies incubated for the entire 9 months, and most likely already starting to happen before people have had time to properly debate the ethics.

But then again IVF was sort of like that. There was a huge row about it, but they were like "we're already doing it, get over it" so people just got used to the idea.

[Paxiecrunchle]

^you do realize the whole point for the people developing this IS to help premies, not too replace women.

[Reelya]

^you do realize the whole point for the people developing this IS to help premies, not too replace women.

Regardless of the current purpose, what they're making becomes a replacement for a womb, so it has all the ramifications of that.

What if the artificial womb is more controllable, more reliable and safer for the mother? Being in favor of natural pregnancy then might make you an immoral killer.