Is there a cure for cancer that's being hidden from us?
- Paige Phillips
- Feb 24, 2019
- 6 min read
The ‘Big Pharma conspiracy theory’ refers to the conspiracy that pharmaceutical companies, regulators, politicians and others are secretly working in consort to hide natural cures based on the principle that they are not patentable and thus not profitable to sell. This allows them to keep profits up, as it keeps the patients sick enough to require more and more of the expensive treatments they currently promote.
In 2002, approximately 27.3% of Americans believed there was a cure for cancer that was being hidden, and a further 14.3% said they were uncertain.
The major abuses committed by the Big Pharma industry are said to be as follows:
Inventing new maladies so that patients will have to buy more drugs to stay alive (as opposed to inventing better drugs so more people would become addicts)
Censoring alternative treatments that would be cheaper or more effective, rather than patenting and industrializing them
Renaming old maladies so people will think their conditions are more serious, encouraging them to pay higher prices for prescriptions
Current issues within the pharmaceutical industry which some say provide evidence of a conspiracy:
Opioid deaths:
Since 2010, there have been more overdoses resulting in death in the US from prescription pharmaceuticals than heroin and other street narcotics. The CDC classifies prescription drugs as the leading cause of injury.
Advertising:
Whilst many countries allow over-the-counter drugs such as nightol and fluconazole to be advertised on TV, only the United States and New Zealand allow prescription drugs to be promoted on television. Many critics believe Big Pharma has abused this tolerance by pushing drugs that may not be effective or applicable to their conditions on viewers.
As a result, advertising accounts for 42% of the money spent on prescription drugs in the US.
Medicalisation and renaming:
Big Pharma often enlists the help of advertising executives to coin names for new maladies and rename old maladies to try to expand the number of prescriptions written. An example of this is ‘Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS)’, which is said to be caused by too much stress, not enough sleep and the use of stimulants e.g. caffeine.
Because old diseases don't have the emotional punch that 3 and 4 letter acronyms have and the fact in order to sell a drug it has to treat a disease, Big Pharma regularly practices Newspeak and creates new names or even new diseases, which has been coined "disease mongering" or "medicalisation".
Ghost-writing:
One of the major problems with the Big Pharma is ghost-writing. This involves pharmaceutical companies paying off doctors to add their names on some glowing review or commentary, which is nothing more than an advertisement for a product, and then attempt to use this in medical journals. A particularly bad case of this was when pharmaceutical companies hyped menopausal hormone replacement therapy for off-label therapies and downplayed the risk of breast cancer. In one instance, a company even managed to get an entire journal set up by Elsevier called the ‘Australasian Journal of Joint and Bone Medicine’.
Publication Bias:
An additional problem with the influence of pharmaceutical corporations is the possibility of publication bias in research they sponsor. Pharmaceuticals carrying out their own clinical trials must register the trials in a database by law, but they are not required to disclose the results of all of their trials. This enables them to inflate the effectiveness of a drug by not releasing and publishing negative trial data. It has been studied on multiple occasions by critics that some big companies refuse to release the data from inconclusive or negative trials.
Funding:
The imbalance between private and public funding of cancer research has led some critics to argue that Big Pharma is actually slowing the search for a cancer cure by focusing so much money on developing patentable, single-drug treatments rather than testing combination therapies or exploring the repurposing of existing cheaper generic drugs, like aspirin. Repurposing of existing drugs and FDA-approved compounds not originally created for cancer treatment is often an approach that's ignored by for-profit pharmaceutical companies and underfunded by government agencies.
Other conspiracies:
Other conspiracies state that many ‘Cancer-fundraising’ charities spend a small portion of their income on actually funding cancer research. In 2009, it was reported that the Walker Cancer Research Institute, raised $12.7 million, but spent more than half of that on fundraising and only around 4% on actual research. Additionally, the National Charity for Cancer Research, whose parent organization is Optimal Medical Foundation Inc., raised $5.3 million in 2009, none of which appears to have funded research.
An additional argument states that many incredibly carcinogenic drugs, such as tobacco and alcohol, are still readily available to the public with no laws preventing them from being purchased. These theories state that, if these substances are so dangerous, why are they available in almost every shop you walk into? It questions whether the Big Pharma are wanting to make these substances readily available to increase cancer incidence and therefore drive up sales of cancer-related treatments due to the increased number of cases caused by the availability of cancer-inducing products. Other products, such as anti-perspirants and deodorants, include a high percentage of aluminium salts, which can increase levels of oestrogen and ultimately promote the growth of breast cancer. Using this one case as an example, many argue that carcinogenic chemicals shouldn’t be used in such readily available and everyday used items, and the knowledge of these toxic effects are not apparent to a wide variety of people. Due to this, some conspiracy theorists state that the Big Pharma is incorporating cancer-causing chemicals into our everyday lives and hoping the general population will remain oblivious to its use, driving the diagnoses of cancer and therefore funding the Big Pharma industry.
People promoting alternative medicine as a cure for cancer:
Tullio Simoncini:
Tullio Simoncini is a former Italian oncologist who is known for his bold claim that cancer is caused by the fugus Candida albicansand has argued that cancer is a form of this fungus overgrowth. He has also since claimed that it can be cured with injections of sodium bicarbonate.
According to his theory, the fungus known for its infections such as thrush, can be treated using a natural antifungal such as sodium bicarbonate. His hypothetical treatment would involve IV systemic infusions of a bicarbonate drip, or local injections. In other cases, it would propose the use of selective arteriography, to identify the artery that carries blood to the tumour mass, and implanting a port-a-cath in the artery to apply the bicarbonate as close as possible to the tumour.
He was jailed in 2018 for culpable manslaughter of a patient in 2011, but some advocating for alternative medicine claim this sentence is a method of silencing Simoncini and preventing his treatments from becoming common practice, as it could greatly impact the drugs the Big Pharma promotes, at an expensive price, to treat and cure various cancers.
Joseph Mercola:
Joseph Mercola is an alternative medicine proponent and osteopathic physician, who markets a variety of controversial dietary supplements and medical devices.
He is known for criticising many aspects of standard medical practice, such as vaccination and overuse of prescription drugs and surgery to treat diseases. Some of his views include:
· Claims that many commercial brands of sunscreen increase, rather than decrease, the likelihood of contracting skin cancer with high UV exposure, and instead advocating the use of natural sunscreen.
· Claims that microwaving food alters its chemistry and makes it unsafe to eat
· Questioning whether HIV is the cause of AIDS
· Cancer risks arise from mobile phone radiation, which is pseudoscientific
Many of his claims suggest the idea the government are increasing the likelihood of cancer in order to reduce world population and cause an increase in sales of expensive cancer treatments.
**DISCLAIMER**
I wanted to end this blog entry by stating that I do not believe any of these theories to be true, and disagree with all opinions expressed by the individuals mentioned. Please vaccinate your kids. Please take the treatments given by a doctor and don’t use homeopathic remedies to treat terminal illnesses. Drugs are expensive, it’s an incredibly big market, but if this conspiracy was true, it would have been exposed within 10 years due to the sheer volume of people that would know and have to keep it a secret.
Cancer is shit.
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