As long as medicine is run by money, there will be no cure, period, whether one actually exists or not.

Ian.

The troll won’t reply, because in reality it has no specialized legal (lawyerette) knowledge–just neo talking points. It is just like this troll, who is famous for posting links that don’t work, to finally post one that does work–except that it’s really just PR material for phrma.

Have you ever had cancer I_am? I have, twice. Colon & lung. I survived both and it wasn’t because of any cure a government agency produced. It was because of a great relationship with my doctor, family, and friends. It was also because of all the incredible research and trillions of dollars that private companies have invested into finding a cure. They have more to gain by finding this cure than the government has. Would it have been more comfortable for me to take a pill as opposed to having those chemicals injected into me? Of course! But I won’t hold my breath waiting for our government to fund that cure. $40 million out of trillions? Do you really think that $40 million reduction will set us back 1 second in finding a cure? Tell me yes after you’ve experienced the disease.

****Exactly angel michael, it will just go into *research*, at some useless university, that has some overly edumacated feller that’ll just apply sciency stuff that I don’t undermastand!

“There are currently thousands of universities, private institutes, public companies, and governments around the world spending TRILLIONS of dollars on cancer research. Comment by michael — January 18, 2007 @ 7:44 pm”

****Who cares if the bulk of that research *begins* as pure research at universities that the government funds as *seed* research! It doesn’t matter that much of our modern medicine comes from these approaches!

Just look at those guys at the University of Alberta this week, that think they found a *cheap* and already available treatment for cancer! Without that *government funded* pure research, the *corporate* research would probably never have stumbled onto it!

Of course, without government support, it’ll also never see patients since no company will want to FDA process a drug that’s cheap to make, and fully cures a patient!

“How much have the governments of Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Russia contributed? Why is it that the US government is the only one you chose to criticize when they decide to cut back on contributions that isn’t even a drop in the total bucket? Comment by michael — January 18, 2007 @ 7:44 pm”

****Yeah, those blame america first types, that instead of relying on foreign governments and foreign companies to come save us, expect us to grow research and new companies domestically! How dare they! We should be relying on Iran to find the breakthrough in medical care for americans suffering cancer! Dam Iranians!

In basic, government funded research, not only are we peer-reviewed, our goal is to UNDERSTAND the disease so that we (and drug companies) can take an intelligent approach to drug design. We don’t use trial and error, we use the scientific method. When we think we’ve found something about cancer that a drug can exploit, we either make it ourselves or we partner with Pharma to make it. If we left it to Pharma we’d have 10-fold the drug disasters that we’ve had in the past 10 years.

Excellent post!

****Dear satan worshiper, our *king* can flip-flop as much as he wants. We will never hold our own to *any* standards, as long as they’re working to bring about Zion and the *rapture*. So blow it out your hell-hole!

****Of course, never mind that for that 39.4 billion in R&D, the top ten pharma companies alone received 37 billion in profits! That’s right folks, the amount of profits was higher than the amount of R&D!

In fact the profit margins for this *generous* pharma industry is 18.5%, compared to an average of 2.2% for the fortune 500 as a whole.

And despite this *generous* economic bonanza the pharma companies experience – they miserly fund R&D into anything that isn’t a potential blockbuster. So why *cure* something, when you can simply *maintain* the disease? Who needs to *cure* AIDS or CANCER, when you can be assured people will pay you daily to keep it in remission. Why do new, risky and innovative R&D, when you can spend billions in just incrementally tweaking the drugs returning an 18.5% profit margin. That profit is after the extravagant advertising, *lobbying* – *cough* and general wastefulness of the industry.

Yet we wonder as a country why our health care costs skyrocket. It couldn’t have anything to do with the 10Bln a year in tax credits given to an industry with over 40 billion a year in profits, could it?

“The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) represents the country’s leading pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies, which are devoted to inventing medicines that allow patients to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives. PhRMA companies are leading the way in the search for new cures. PhRMA members alone invested an estimated $39.4 billion in 2005 in discovering and developing new medicines. Industry wide research and investment reached a record $51.3 billion in 2005.”
http://www.phrma.org/about_phrma/

NOTEProgs are whining about a $40 million cut in government funding and FORGET to mention (!!) the BILLIONSspent by the industry….