PROFIT AND LOSS IN MEDICAL RESEARCH
by Don Sloan, MD (US)
(reprinted from the Peoples' Weekly World)
Ever wonder why medical progress moves at a snail's pace while advances in weaponry, space travel and the like grow by leaps and bounds? Or why real advances have occurred in spite of, rather than because of, research?
Perhaps the single greatest advancement in recent history came in 1847 when Hungarian physician, Ignaz Semmelweis, started the hand-washing practice between tending to patients, and immediately, the mortality of childbirth fever disappeared, along with a litany of other infectious diseases.
Yes, there have been other milestones that have resulted in stark drops in morbidity - like the introduction of penicillin in the mis-1930s. But medical lore has it that although Sir Alexander Fleming's remarkable drug made a huge difference, better hygiene that followed hand-cleansing, better nutrition, and simple improvements in sanitation were all slowly resulting in improved patient care.
The medical community is becoming more aware that their research is responsible for the fact that the data for governmental overseers and the clinicians are basically flawed. And why is it flawed? For openers, it is because the pharmaceutical monopoly, with profits in mind, controls much of the watchdog agencies, resulting in frequent falsified reports, often with tragic results.
There is also the concern that the results of animal testing, still the benchmark for studies, is not transferrable to the human patient. Even two rodents do not match up. Penicillin cures infection in the mouse; it results in death in the rat.
Why does this testing persist and remain in vogue? The answers: profit and tradition. Animal experimentation is big business in the same way it is in the pharmaceutical industry.
It is supported in the U.S. to the tune of over (US)$15 billion annually from state and federal taxes. It is the myth that America's pharmaceuticals use to justify their enormous markups - that they "need" the return on their investments to recoup the costs of research and development. The truth is that most experiments are financed through federal grants and subsidies - that only the profits go to the companies.
Yearly, between 65 and 100 million animals of all sorts are killed or maimed in the US, under the guise of "necessary" experimentation for human benefits. The infamous Draize test, still in constant use, is the application of various chemicals that are swiped over the corneas of rabbits, leaving them in pain, blinded, and then dead. But the rabbit's cornea is of a physiology that is unlike the human's. The data is useless.
A university of Illinois research team fed massive amounts of newspapers to cows - to see if the human can survive on newsprint. The gastrointestinal tract of the ruminant is so different that the research was useless.
And there was Thalidomide, the sedative used in Germany a generation ago that produced so many birth defects that the Food and Drug Administration banned its import. But Thalidomide, too, had been declared safe - all based on animal testing.
And, lest we forget, every drug sold in America has a disclaimer when prescribed for pregnant women; yet, they were all deemed safe in tests made on lower animals. More useless data, more animals suffering without benefit.
The fraud perpetrated on an uninformed public continues because of profit demand and that tradition holds sway.
There are many alternatives in this modern age of technology: high resolution sonography, positive electronic tomography and magnetic resonance imaging can produce computer-generated models that provide useful and applicable data.
True, cost factors have delayed much of this development, but that is true in all circumstances when profits are placed before people.
Under a socialized medical system, where all the people of the world are given an adequate level of health care, something that the world's wealth and resources can provide, technology will be put to good use.
When the one hundred- to-one ratio that exists between military research and medical research is reversed, and priorities that put peace over war established, we would see results in a medical progress we deserve and can all apply.