Your completely baseless statement about the content of my reply to shaffaaf27's question, made before I replied to that question. You posted without knowledge of my reply, since it didn't exist at the time.
Questions...
- Thread starter Robert
- Start date
ROFL. I would struggle to take anything you say seriously if you think new scientist has a bias.
I would say this is a very good place to start:shaffaaf27 said:
Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution - Cann et al 1987, Nature vol:325 iss:6099 pg:31 -36
The genetical history of humans and the great apes - Kaessmann et al 2002, Journal of internal medicine vol:251 iss:1 pg:1 -18
There are literally tens of thousands of research papers on the subject.
Caporegime
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Do you think major pharmaceutical companies withhold certain cures to benefit their own profits?
no, if chemo drugs cost £1000 a pop, they could simply charge £80000 for a cure. they DO and its well known, make marginal changes to drugs to renew the patent to keep prices up and infact charge more for effectively the same drug. IE, some guy makes a drug for diabetes, he gets a 10 year patent, after that 10 years 50 other companies can make that drug and charge less, so in that last year they add a completely useless molecule to the chemical that they prove is slightly statistically better, and renew the patent so they can charge more and also not have competition for the specific drug. Its INCREDIBLY common. whats more the stats don't have to be cooked up, a drug 10 years ago probably gets marginally more effective as they increase its potency anyway and find a way to make it absorb faster or something and thats stats aren't up against the recent improved version but the 10 year old unimproved version. thats capitalism for ya
Remember that for every proper cure and seriously useful drug hundreds or even thousands of completely useless things are made that didn't work, and years or decades of sometimes huge numbers of people go into the research to make the drugs. they do invest billions a year into research to make them and do need to make it back, though they make it back and then some
but eventually other companies come up with similar not quite patent infringing equally good drugs that cut into profits and force competition, so drug companies have no reason to hide cures/drugs , at least not for long
Do you think power companies withhold major advances to maintain their profits?
no, power companies do research sure, but thats probably an industry where more people outside of the power companies themselves do the research into new fuels. maybe they don't research new fuels as much as they could, but thats a far cry from withholding advances. the breakthrough for a "next gen" power source is 99% likely to come from a research team outside of a power company which is completely different to pharmaceutical companies where the biggest cures and drugs will come from within that industry. Guys outside the powercompanys that could come up witha power source stand to make billions upon billions upon billions to find a replacement for oil, they could become the richest person on earth in the space of a few months selling the tech, theres almost no chance that will be withheld.
Do you believe in aliens?
to believe this is the only planet anywhere with life on it is fairly naiive. but then again, one of the planets with life on it has to be the first, thats the way of things. in all likelyhood we aren't the first, or last or anywhere near either. but as someone else said, the likelyhood of aliens visiting here anytime soon, or being close enough to get here, or us having the travel capability anytime soon to get to an inhabited planet are incredibly , incredibly low.
Where do you think we came from?
evolved from some pile of fungus, pus, goop, random asteroid dropping some dna that mixed with something and evolved into us eventually, who knows, who cares. god? no.
no, if chemo drugs cost £1000 a pop, they could simply charge £80000 for a cure. they DO and its well known, make marginal changes to drugs to renew the patent to keep prices up and infact charge more for effectively the same drug. IE, some guy makes a drug for diabetes, he gets a 10 year patent, after that 10 years 50 other companies can make that drug and charge less, so in that last year they add a completely useless molecule to the chemical that they prove is slightly statistically better, and renew the patent so they can charge more and also not have competition for the specific drug. Its INCREDIBLY common. whats more the stats don't have to be cooked up, a drug 10 years ago probably gets marginally more effective as they increase its potency anyway and find a way to make it absorb faster or something and thats stats aren't up against the recent improved version but the 10 year old unimproved version. thats capitalism for ya
Remember that for every proper cure and seriously useful drug hundreds or even thousands of completely useless things are made that didn't work, and years or decades of sometimes huge numbers of people go into the research to make the drugs. they do invest billions a year into research to make them and do need to make it back, though they make it back and then some
but eventually other companies come up with similar not quite patent infringing equally good drugs that cut into profits and force competition, so drug companies have no reason to hide cures/drugs , at least not for long
Do you think power companies withhold major advances to maintain their profits?
no, power companies do research sure, but thats probably an industry where more people outside of the power companies themselves do the research into new fuels. maybe they don't research new fuels as much as they could, but thats a far cry from withholding advances. the breakthrough for a "next gen" power source is 99% likely to come from a research team outside of a power company which is completely different to pharmaceutical companies where the biggest cures and drugs will come from within that industry. Guys outside the powercompanys that could come up witha power source stand to make billions upon billions upon billions to find a replacement for oil, they could become the richest person on earth in the space of a few months selling the tech, theres almost no chance that will be withheld.
Do you believe in aliens?
to believe this is the only planet anywhere with life on it is fairly naiive. but then again, one of the planets with life on it has to be the first, thats the way of things. in all likelyhood we aren't the first, or last or anywhere near either. but as someone else said, the likelyhood of aliens visiting here anytime soon, or being close enough to get here, or us having the travel capability anytime soon to get to an inhabited planet are incredibly , incredibly low.
Where do you think we came from?
evolved from some pile of fungus, pus, goop, random asteroid dropping some dna that mixed with something and evolved into us eventually, who knows, who cares. god? no.
Caporegime
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to a certain degree or unproveable inaccuracy i'd personaly guesstimate that the evolution of goop to us took on trillions, hundreds of trillions of random changes, that is how evolution works, some of those changes die out in a branch of evolved whatever that simply can't survive, ie some animal in our long chain of evolution was born without the ability to use oxygen and that chain dies off. anyway i digress, my point is, if it took trillions, gajillions, upmteenmegaillion's of random changes to evolve to this point, one random change to start it all off doesn't sound that unlikely does it
what makes your head spin is how we are so similar around the world and how unvaried we are. maybe the dominant style species killed off other 3 armed varients of humans 100k years ago, who knows. but one tiny difference 5 million years ago and we could all have 4 arms, 2 legs, and 2 eyes on the back of our head, thats the bit that makes my head spin.
I thought I might as well make an attempt of these questions rather than moaning at other replies like a grade A whinger:
Man of Honour
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How cynical are you? It would depend on the disease probably but for arguments sake suppose company X makes two forms of drugs: drug Y and drug Z, drug Y acts as a suppressant/partial cure for the disease and costs £50 per cycle, drug Z is a complete cure with negligible side effects and costs £100 per course. Company X then has two main choices - either to not bring drug Z to market and maintain a steady revenue stream from drug Y or go for the complete cure that is drug Z but accept the profit(s) will be higher on a one off basis.
I've got my doubts that such a thing would happen, I'd like to believe that humanity is better than that but I couldn't totally discount the possiblity. I'm just positing it as a scenario where it could be more profitable to supress a cure.
Yes thats all great on paper, but can anyone identify a pathogen which has a virulence pathway which can be 'supressed' and not 'cured'? Its generally 'all or nothing' as far as I am aware. But again, please enlighten me.
I guess something like herpesvirus could arguably fit your criteria on paper.
EDIT - I suppose most dormant viral infections like herpesvirus could fit this scenario, so I would have to say it is potentially a 'cure' is witheld. I would assume that published research would highlight possible exploits for pharmaceuticals to act, but it is well known that private companies can be light years ahead of acadaemia. Quite frightening.
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no, because I wasn't aware the the original question was specifically adressed to you, I was thinking that it was just a general question.
cool it
