Despite representing a multi-billion dollar industry, alt med practitioners don’t seem to understand the basic principles of business and management as they defend their remedies from skeptics asking them to provide clinical evidence for their claims. According to them, Big Pharma is unable to buy up patents to homeopathy or treatments made by other alt med disciplines and could never make a profit by reducing their R&D costs and yet, be able to buy rights to promising conventional treatments and aim to make their drug pipelines cheaper to maintain. It’s as if the principles of finance and strategic management cease to apply when pharmaceutical companies are even mentioned in the same sentence as homeopathic potions and alternative regimens.
The argument that Big Pharma is on the warpath against alternative medicine is trotted out on a regular basis by the faithful defenders of naturists, homeopaths and biomedical quacks who feel free to administer all sorts of highly speculative treatments without going through the proper clinical trials and approvals by the FDA. For the latest example, let’s consider an article by homeopath Amy Lansky, who tries to defend her craft against a pharmaceutical conspiracy by terrified corporations which want to suppress her mystical cures.
“What if an expensive drug could be potentized to create billions of effective doses at essentially no cost? It would destroy big pharma entirely. Medicines that cost essentially nothing? Nontoxic ultra- diluted medicines that cause fewer side effects? How could [big pharma's coffers] be sustained? Forget about the Law of Similars. It’s potentization – the process of creating effective ultradilutions – that big pharma is scared of! No wonder Baum and Ernst got the word “potentization” wrong. This one word is the small stone that could take Goliath down.”
Really? Medicines that cost essentially nothing would cripple the pharmaceutical industry? Big Pharma can’t buy the rights to mass produce homeopathic cures, then close down plants it would no longer need, saving a few billion dollars worth of expenses on an annual basis? If making products cheaper was the death knell for companues, big box retailers and electronics companies would’ve been dead in the water long ago. So what Lansky is basically telling us, is that cost cutting is the first step towards bankruptcy. If there was clinical proof that homeopathy works, Big Pharma would be buying their cures and saving countless billions in getting them to market. Far from being the stone that could take down a goliath, legitimate, empirically proven potentization would be a cash cow of epic proportions, eagerly embraced by CEOs and investors.
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Spot on Phillis. Being in ‘Big Pharma,’ I witness the daily focus on spending every penny as wisely as is possible. I would add that the constant need of ‘Big Pharma’ for supporting clinical evidence is driven by those prescribing and regulating drugs. It’s not Pharma’s way of keeping any other preparations out but a clinicians means of ensuring he is spending NHS money on the most effective intervention.
Ang on a minute – “Big Pharma would be buying their cures and saving countless billions in getting them to market.” – buying from whom? Surely these ‘antick remedyes’ are – diluted to ineoperability or not – just as available to big-pharma as they are to lil-apothecary right now? Why does ‘buying’ anything’ come into this at all? Unless I’ve missed something (which I feel I must have) then Lansky’s argument is not even wrong.
Companies don’t necessarily know what cures what – or what the most effective technique is. That’s what they would be effectively “buying”. – Phillis
LOL. You\’re right. We don\’t get Big Pharma. Neither did George Washington (who understood the value of hemp – unlike the \’author\’ of this nonsense). http://not4me.tk | http://thymeforhemp.viviti.com makes more sense. *passes it on*
A good rebuttal to the AltMed nonsense about Big Pharma.
Coincidentally, Skepitcat blogged about Amy Lansky yesterday: Homeopathy: there’s nothing in it. Part 1.
The problem is that they’re not entirely wrong. Think about the difference between generic drugs and brand drugs. Brand drugs and their patents bring in much of the money generated by the pharmaceutical industries, even while it is possible to produce them much cheaper. When the patents run out, then the cheaper generic drugs flood the market, and the earnings for Big Pharma go down for those particular drugs.
It’s not wrong that Big Pharma makes a lot of money, nor that not everything is done for entirely altruistic purposes. “It could be done cheaper” is a valid argument that they propose, but nonetheless, the pseudoscientific process of homeopathy is not the way to go.
“DOSEN”T”?… pun, typo, or Freudian slip?
1. homeopathy is fine with being “fringe”, passed along like home remedies. the less corporate it seems, the better.
2. trials & FDA: double blind studies would merely point out inefficacy. FDA approval? the FDA approves drugs whose side effects are FAR more dangerous and damaging that the illnesses they “treat”. why bother?
3. doubt homeopathic “remedies” are in danger of buyout… even if they worked, the consumerism model is “outmarket, outsell”. Windex comes to mind. people cleaned glass with ammonia and water for generations. convince them it’s better when tinted blue in a flashy bottle, and they’ll buy it at 50 times the price. the DIY pendulum is swinging the other way, but attitudes persist…
(kindly refusing LoL’s “pass”. GW and Pfizer didn’t coexist, wastoid)
Far be it from me to accuse homeopaths of logic, however this is a bad example.
“What if an expensive drug could be potentized to create billions of effective doses at essentially no cost?” If by “no cost” you take them to mean not just that the raw materials for the medicine are cheap, but the actual manufacturing infrastructure that pharmaceutical companies have invested in is not required, the point become more reasonable. If it was not only cheap to manufacture a new drug, but the capital to start production was negligible, AND THE PRODUCED MEDICINE WERE AS EFFECTIVE AS TRADITIONAL PHARMACEUTICALS, it would suck to be Merck.
That last requirement is a dilly, though, and it’s one that the homeopaths just assume.
Spot on as usual.
You can almost hear her excitement building as she gets further emboldened by her unique authoritative view, finally exposing a spelling mistake as proof.
You couldn’t make it up! Except in the case of potentization. A completely made up process more akin to a religious belief.
Homemopathy – There’s nothing in it
10:23
Why do these people insist Big Pharma is evil for making profit? How much profit is there in selling magical water or sugar pills with a “memory”? No expensive double blind placebo controlled studies just give odd, high dilutions to healthy people record any effects call it “proved” and start racking in the cash from gulible or desperate people, now who’s evil?
Homeopathy – There’s nothing in it!
10:23
The Chinese have been practicing natural medicine/homeopathy longer then any modern drug companies and the FDA have been in existence. Tell me who is right? In fact i suggest everyone studies ancient Egyptian medicine as well. It’s not that there evil for making profit but it is that the US has something against alternative treatment even though interestingly enough some cancers can be cured by diet alone. Don’t believe me then do the research. Self-reliance into ones well being is the first step to prevent illness, something that most have forgotten because we rely on big medicine too often, huh big government as well. Yes, they can solve all of our problems because were dumb and helpless and there smart and have all of our answers.