In the US, the budget for fundemantal research leading to treatment targets for cancer is many orders of magnitude larger than the budget for studying the possible effects of harmful compounds found in the natural or industrial environment.
Much, more more is devoted to the search for treatments than the search for causes, in other words.
1 is very much on point; there's every reason to believe that the resources put towards healthy outcomes are largely misplaced. Unfortunately, the sort of mind that's open to the message, "The System is ineffective" is very much open to "because a shadowy cabal is secretly making it so for their own nefarious reasons." I mean, that's pretty much the Tea Party in a nutshell, right? People shouting at the wrong buildings? And every form of leftist movement that goes much beyond NPR (or maybe Mother Jones/The Nation) attracts people of that mindset as well.
Once we (as hopped up East African plains apes, as BDL would put it) question the conventional wisdom, it's very hard to get grounded elsewhere. One of the strengths of the labor movement (and the late 19th C radicals who informed it) was in offering alternative narratives that were practical: "The boss tells you X, but the truth is Y", where Y represented something sane.
See also Paulism, e.g. End the Fed.
1- See also the Kochs, the Koch institute for integrative cancer research, etc. They could prevent an order of magnitude more cancer by not lobbying against environmental regulations than they'll ever cure by donating $200M to a building with their name on it. But only one makes you a big time Philanthropist that people fawn over when you visit.
One medical conspiracy theory that's basically true is that Big Pharma conspires to get doctors to recommend expensive new drugs over cheap old ones, and rewards them with junkets to "educational" meetings that happen to be in interesting places like Las Vegas.
My own medical conspiracy theory revolves around that fact that I can no longer find non-scammy offshore pharmacy websites because Big Pharma colluded with the Justice Department to keep them from advertising on the Google. Meanwhile, Google ads will happily lead you plenty of sites hosting malware or enticements for investment fraud, but neither Google, the Justice Department, or Big Pharma seem to care about that.
as BDL would put it
Bernard-Denim Levi
Bass-Dunking Lifeguard
Bantu-Defamation League
Boogie Down LaBelle
Thank god for Urban Dictionary
6: I certainly hope so, since I'll be there for a few days in September, trying to have a good time.
Mr. Bob Doba Lina.
Any relation to JR Bob Dobbs?
Bernard-Denim Levi
With the unbuttoned fly.
"The System is ineffective" is very much open to "because a shadowy cabal is secretly making it so for their own nefarious reasons."
It seems quite sensible to me that a shadowy cabal is conspiring to prevent widespread health testing of industrial and agricultural chemicals, and to hush up such effects when found. Did people see the recent New Yorker article on Syngenta ?
And I know for sure that a shadowy cabal is conspiring to double our health care costs and halve the access compared to other advanced nations...
And I know for sure that a shadowy cabal is conspiring to double our health care costs and halve the access compared to other advanced nations.
Is this cabal really so shadowy?
Yeah, I guess I wouldn't use "conspiracy" to describe activities that take place in plain sight, advancing goals that are open and obvious, and not illegal. Pharma isn't conspiring to eliminate illegal competition -- they complained to the authorities, who shut it down. They're not conspiring to get doctors to prescribe their products, they're openly and aggressively promoting them. I don't think the theory is that Lilly is part of some agreement to get doctors to prescribe more GSK product (although if they are, that sounds like conspiracy).
This "they can cure cancer and they won't" shit drives me nuts. Gilead just got FDA approval for a drug that cures, not treats, Hep C infection. They're being asked to explain the $84,000 price tag (7 weeks, $1K per pill). I think that makes it pretty clear what pharma would do if they found a highly effective cancer treatment: make patients pay through the nose for it.
Well, maybe more of a scheme than a conspiracy. But not quite in plain sight -- it's not like we get invited to the planning meetings or are in the room when they're meeting with the Congressman/FDA approval committee/etc.
Like a language is a dialect with an army, maybe lobbying is conspiracy with a sufficient number of large corporations involved.
Anyway, point is -- I'm not surprised people hypothesize conspiracies when there are so many manipulations of the system going on. Conspiracy theories are in some ways a general statement of lack of faith in the system, expressed through the medium of narrative folk art.
On the bigger picture of nefarious doings, I'd say yes, the US does an unusually bad job of researching causes, testing new consumer goods (eg plastics), and regulating marketing of new drugs. We don't even have good tests for so much of what should be done as far as environmental pollutants and new chemical entities.
And yet when the CPSC proposed that all children's toys had to be tested for lead, probably one of the biggest no-brainers in terms of health and society benefits, there was a huge backlash from craft and small scale manufacturers about how much it would cost to test their toys, that it was a plot to put them out of business in favor of Big Toy, etc.
We don't even have good tests for so much of what should be done as far as environmental pollutants and new chemical entities.
Yes, we just put in a grant where one component was using the tools we are making to better analyze and make conclusions about tox assay data. Forget testing everything, we don't even know what tests to run and how to interpret them.
2: There is a gaping hole where the leftist narrative should be, and the Democratic party has been trying to keep it from being filled for the last thirty years.
20.1: And when new flame retardants came into use to replace asbestos, Big Polymer (yeah, that sounds pretty dumb) yelled so loud that entire divisions got shut down/defunded at the relevant labs that might have done proper tox and efficacy testing. It's not new.
20.2 is neat. Good luck.
Big Polymer
Another fine name for a band.
I'd say yes, the US does an unusually bad job of researching causes, testing new consumer goods (eg plastics),
Asking from a position of ignorance, who's doing better? That is, there are a lot of developed countries other than us -- are there a lot of instances where there's good evidence that something particular is a serious environmental hazard that was developed by scientists in Belgium or someplace, and we've either adopted their conclusions or are culpably ignoring them>
Even discussing the science on this is IMO a mistake, makes things seem more complicated than they really are. 3 is the right idea, here are a couple of definite details:
Hickenlooper, the governor of Colorado, is taking the position that the composition of fracking fluid is a trade secret. Also that the federal government shouldn't be telling the states what to do. But the state government of CO can definitely tell localities what to do-- they're suing a town that's tried to ban fracking.
This year, WV has had a huge spill of toxic chemicals which were purchased in bulk and then stored in ancient single-walled tanks. The 2010 mining disaster executive, Blankenship, didn't get convicted. He made political contributions there in 2012 in his own name, not a pariah.
25.2 describes PA as well. Hickenlooper, of course, is a Dem and Corbett is a particularly shitty Republican, and yet.
I don't disagree with 18. Bad conspiracy theoies drive out good ones.
LB, I think EU/Australia are a little better. For example, Europe requires that new chemicals be registered with a central authority, including tox data. You can contrast with the US version where existing chemicals were grandfathered, plus we have the patchwork of who gets to regulate the chemical - EPA, FDA, or FIFRA (which covers pesticides). In terms of controlling use/sales, they seem to be more conservative about food additives like brominated vegetable oil, preservatives like BHT, and dyes. There aren't a lot of instances where they ban stuff that we allow (mostly because at that point, the evidence is pretty unambiguous), but for a country whose scientific output is large disproportionate to its population, we aren't really good at getting at longterm effects of chemical exposures. It's a huge question with very little funding.
I disagree slightly with 25 - I think separating public health from politics and profits is pretty much impossible, and powerful lobbying has kept the science from progressing very much.
28: Is this because the fitness function on conspiracy theories selects for more outrageous ones, or that the space of possible conspiracies is so big and "good" ones will always be a marginal number of them, so random selection will regress to a disappointing mean?
25.3 is a good example of a chemical that we literally don't know whether or not it's toxic. I looked up data when it happened, and there isn't really any. We know what the lethal oral dose is for mice and rats (and probably IV). Not really what you'd like to have when you have a huge spill.
30: Isn't one common thread that folk art conspiracy theories give agency to the powerless? Protect your kids by not vaccinating, save money by becoming a tax protester, etc. If that's right, they're not selected for outrageousness per se, but tend to be outrageous because they imagine that you have much more agency than you do.
25.2: It seems to me that getting the fracking companies together to collaborate on a minimally harmful fracking fluid might be possible. It's good PR for all involved and heads of regulation at the pass. Probably they won't go for it until someone gets seriously hurt by whatever the hell they are putting in the stuff, but they might go for it eventually.
@28,30
Someone needs to do a series of head to head competition studies. My hypothesis is that a conspiracy theory the involves the Knights Templar will always beat out one that doesn't.
29.2 Sure, that's true.
IMO, though, talking about lack of enforcement for practices that were known to harmful in WWII is the place to start. There is also a place for talking about compounds which might possibly be harmful or whether very low exposures are slightly harmful or more than slightly, yes, of course. But the real problems are political, are not subtle, not complex.
This article describing closures of 60 year old plants that burn dirty coal has a photo caption that mentions job losses but not Mercury or cancer.
Now the chorus of the Knights Templar from Sir Arthur Sullivan's Ivanhoe will be stuck in my head.
One conspiracy that's a little close to home is that of the big tech firms conspiring to hold down wages by not competing for employees. The CEOs involved are making shitloads of money thanks to compensation packages set by their cronies on the board of directors all the while preaching the glories of the free market. Color me pissed.
32: I think that's a factor, but I don't think you can underestimate the value of compelling narrative. While the truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, it's rarely got a better narrative line.
The typical historical myth (e.g. Grant was a drunk) starts with a kernel of truth (Grant had a history with drink before the war) and then modifies that kernel to become more interesting/compelling/titillating.
It's interesting to note that instances of genuine historical conspiracies (GM killing trolleys always strikes me in this way) don't get any more traction than comparable false conspiracies (GM could make a perfect electric car if they wanted to). That is, truth value is almost literally irrelevant to the salience of a conspiracy theory.
Conspiracies to keep new drugs off of the market are extremely common. There was a Supreme Court case this year, FTC v. Actavis Corp that describes a typical conspiracy in great detail: Actavis developed a competitor to Androgel, and the manufacturer of Androgel agreed to pay Actavis many millions to keep the generic off of the maket. My law firm's antitrust division lives off of those conspiracies (we represent victims, mnot conspirators ).
The conspiracies typically involve preventing generic competition to brand name drugs, not natural products that might cure cancer. But if you're accustomed to paying off manufacturers of potentially competing products, wouldn't you do the same thing if a superior product came along?
32: And of course labor-driven alternative narratives* DO in fact center on giving agency to the powerless. And it kind of worked!
*it would probably be a really good thing if people had a phrase like this to describe conspiracy theories that aren't all about the Illuminati.
39- That's a business conspiracy, not a science conspiracy. Selling a generic is not a new drug, this is just an anticompetition measure that's quite common in many areas (paying off your competition to keep your monopoly.) That's compared to the conspiracy theory that says there is a cure for disease X and companies hide it because then they'd couldn't sell profitable long-term treatment for disease X instead.
Which is sort of what you said in the second paragraph that I somehow missed- I need to get people to stop interrupting my blog commenting. Anyway, I think a company with a superior drug would be more resistant to bribery/ask for a payoff more than the first company could afford, compared to a generic seller that will have to compete on marketing/efficiency/etc.
41, 42 -- 39.1 is the sort of good conspiracy theory that gets driven out of the popular mind by the bad conspiracy -- thank goodness not out of the legal system. 39.2 is fine logic, which is a feature of all the better conspiracy theories, but doesn't mean anyone is really out there doing it with regard to a particular condition, which is a feature of bad conspiracy theories.
I saw this from a mainstream reporter in a Republican city yesterday, which references a conspiracy in which many of us are complicit:
One person who will be working for passage of the non-discrimination ordinance is Liz Welch, the LGBT coordinator for the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. I suppose you could call her an outside agitator, but she is a Billings girl born and bred.
I asked her, by the way, what she thought of the phrase "homosexual agenda." She surprised me by saying that there is in fact a gay agenda: "Security, dignity, fairness, equality, opportunity."
Sounds pretty subversive, doesn't it?
41, 42: I agree that it's unlikely there's enough money in the world to suppress a cure for cancer. Alternatively, the secret would eventually get out. But ther emay be a marginal case . . .
On the topic of cheap cures vs. expensive treatments: My nephrologist claims that most nephrologists in smaller communities discourage their patients from receiving kidney transplants, to the point of misrepresenting risks and benefits, because there's so much money in dialysis. Transplants aren't cheap but in the long run they cost less, and they are vastly superior for quality and length of life.
doesn't mean anyone is really out there doing it with regard to a particular condition
No clue how common it is, but I recently had occasion to become familiar with a case like that (at least as far as the jury believed): defendant had the rights to common treatment for X; bought up another company that was conducting trials for a new treatment for X (on behalf of a third company that had the rights to the new--allegedly superior and cheaper--treatment); then halts the trials, nominally because of safety concerns, but allegedly to keep the competing new drug off the market (by, IIRC, squandering enough of the patent period to make a new attempt at development unprofitable). Third company got something like a half-billion dollar verdict against the defendant.
45: I think the likeliest scenario if someone found a "cure" (hate this way of thinking of cancer) is that a big company would buy out the small biotech that discovered it, lay off all the employees, and sell the cure for a huge profit (see 7). Second likeliest would be an analog or formulation that they could patent, followed by poorly designed clinical trials and magic statistics to show theirs is "better" combined with aggressive marketing. Cancer drugs are hugely expensive as is (for no reason, in some cases); having a "cure," especially a cheap one, would be a windfall.
45.2 is sad.
On refresh, I don't get why 46's company wouldn't just buy the company with the drug, unless it was two big companies.
This thread is fascinating to me, but I don't have anything to contribute. Keep telling me the real paranoid delusions I should have.
There are drug companies out there that do nothing but buy up the rights to obscure drugs that happen to be useful for a very high-needs population and then jack up their prices, by, say, 1000 percent or so. The egregious example of Indomethacin . It's really unbelievable the kinds of crap we tolerate in this country. The more you know, the more outrageous it gets.
Also, there are a lot of real live conspiracies on Wall Street. The whole financial crisis was rooted in fraud. And more recently, pretty much every key industry-set index number or practice the regulators looked at closely was rigged. LIBOR, ISDAFIX, foreign exchange, probably elements of oil pricing too.
49 is insane and...I'm at a loss for words. Grotesque.
47.last: I think the third company (the one with the patent on the new treatment) was much larger than the defendant, though there may have been other factors. And to be clear, I'm not saying there was a plot to kill off a better/cheaper treatment (in fact I'm not a neutral source on this particular case), just that the jury thought there was. It may well have been wrong. More detail than anyone could possibly want here.
The more you know, the more outrageous it gets.
Believe it or not, a more familiar iteration of this sentiment actually played a role in my political awakening. My sister had one on her leather jacket (the same one that had a pink triangle, which she had to explain to me, and which did not lead me to think, "I wonder if my sister is a lesbian?"), and it made me think, "I'm not, in fact, all that outraged; perhaps I should be."
Incidentally, looking up that image reminded me that those douchebag tea baggers who weren't outraged by AIDS, Central American death squads financed by Ronald Reagan's Constitution-burning, torture by Cheney's CIA, or being lied into war sure are outraged that a black man is president poor people are getting fed more Americans have health insurance somethingsomethingLiberty.
For the record, the moment described above occurred around 1989, when I was a junior or senior in HS.
In part due to that hearing, the FTC sued Ovation for price-gouging on Indomethacin. Astoundingly to me, the FTC lost in district court. Apparently price alone is not an indicator of anti-competitive behavior. Even if said prices are exacted from sick babies. A great system we live in.
These scams do come to an end when someone can bring a generic to market, but that can take a lot of time, and you can go find other drugs that allow the same game to be played.
56: It's even worse when you have an idea of production costs. I hadn't seen the indomethacin story before. That's really interesting. From quick Googling, it looks like your summary omits that they bought both that drug and then a competitor drug (for a low enough price that it didn't warrant a regulatory approval), then sold both at hugely inflated prices. It looks as if they settled vs the FTC but didn't have to lower prices? How odd. It would be nice if our regulatory bodies had some real power.
57: Wouldn't research costs (including a proportional number of failed attempts) be more relevant?
Oh whoops never mind this case is complicated.
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