Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2011 as a news item; the funding situation and research status it describes are from that year.
These days, when public outrage goes hand in hand with political and banking corruption, it is clear once again that wherever there is power and a dark capitalist shadow, there is corruption and a lack of ethics in many forms. The pharmaceutical industry was never going to be left out. It is praised for curing and relieving disease, yet it is never accused of letting millions of people around the world die while holding the solution in its hands.
The cure for cancer may already be ready to see the light of day, but it probably never will. The substance used to cure the cancer is dichloroacetate, which isn’t protected by a patent and is cheaper than other, less effective cancer treatments. That makes it an unprofitable business for the pharmaceutical industry, and its launch could be blocked.
In the end, it all comes down to investment and business. For the companies, it isn’t a profitable business, and for investors, it isn’t a profitable investment. And what about our governments? Why don’t they put money into funding drugs like this instead of space rockets?
The newspaper Vanguardia has picked up the story, accusing the drug companies themselves of censoring the spread of this cure. Television channels aren’t talking about it either (censored, I imagine, by the governments themselves), but the researchers at the University of Alberta (Canada) aren’t giving up, because they hold in their hands the possibility of ending cancer in a natural way.
Dichloroacetate destroys cancer cells while leaving healthy cells alone, in a completely natural process with hardly any side effects. Best of all, it has already been tested on human cells with excellent results.
The problem now is that the study’s supervisor can’t find the funds to carry out the trials required to bring the cure to market.
As Richard J. Roberts, winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine, has put it, drugs that really cure aren’t profitable; it is better business to market drugs that people take over long periods.
Isn’t this outrageous?
See also: Interview with the Nobel laureate in Medicine on the drug business and politicians’ interests
Featured image: Unknown photographer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
