Why there is no cure for Diabetes, Hypertension, heart diseases and Cancers?

GUEST COLUMN: Dr. N. Prabhudev

Bangalore, Jan. 14: Total Non-Communicable Disease mortality – 41 million deaths of 55 million deaths in 2019 were due to NCDs.

Are pharmaceutical companies to be blamed?

Pharma is the industry that many love to hate. There is A Crisis of Trust.  They have the drugs we need to stay healthy and they won’t part with them except for hard cash; therefore, they must be evil. Pharmaceutical companies make too much money for their own good.

•          Would it be wrong to say that the pharmaceutical industry thrives on diseases? 

•          Drug companies are guilty of many sins of cartelization to raise the prices

•          The pharmaceutical industry spends more on ads and bribes than on research!

•          It lavishes money on people and institutions promoting their drugs and devices!

Finding the cure for a common cold has been mankind’s’ pursuit for hundreds of years. With today’s Corona virus concerns, Cold & Flu makes you suspicious. I am no fan of the Pharmaceutical industry in this country. They have shown, time and time again that they do not care about the people they pump their drugs into –  whether or not someone can afford the drugs that they deem “necessary” for overcoming certain health obstacles.

Why there is no cure for illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer- affecting such a large population?  Why companies that actually care about our health have not found a more effective means of “treating” these illnesses by now, especially given the billions and trillions of dollars in “research” they supposedly conduct each year.

Yet for a cancer patient, it feels like a massive betrayal. I need a cure NOW! This is how a cancer patient reacts! Some cancers are more likely to be cured than others. But each cancer needs to be treated differently. There isn’t one cure for cancer. Cancer is the general name for more than 100 diseases, and we’re currently able to cure a number of them. Breast cancer, most skin cancers, testicular cancer, Hodgkin lymphoma, and thyroid cancer are a few of the cancers with a high cure rate, and research in several key areas is increasing the odds of curing – and preventing – more types.

Why is the Pharmaceutical Industry Not Developing New Antibiotics?

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health. Antibiotic resistance is increasing to dangerously high levels across the globe and is threatening the ability of clinicians to treat common infectious diseases. As this resistance continues to grow, the ability to treat infections such as pneumonia, tuberculosis, food-borne diseases and others is becoming more difficult. Antibiotics are essential drugs for many common medical problems – from organ transplants to after surgery to food poisoning. Resistant bacteria kill nearly 700,000 people every year.

The last original class of antibiotics was discovered in the 1980s, but since then, no new or advanced antimicrobial agents have been introduced by pharmaceutical companies.

COVID-19 – we owe the pharmaceutical industry an apology! Hope through vaccines. Thank you, Pharma!

Pfeizer and Moderna and our own Serum institute and Bharath Biotech have the vaccines. Billions have been vaccinated! They have followed all the protocols. They are, I am told, available at $ 3 to 4 per dose! It was thought to be impossible to produce a Vaccine in such a short time. Many scientists professed that a vaccine would take around five years to produce, to test and to be approved against COVID. Now in less than a year the vaccines are a reality.

Life expectancy has doubled! The Drug companies have saved millions of lives. Between 1920 and 2020, the average human life span doubled. How did we do it? Science mattered. Many, once incurable diseases are being cured relieving misery and possible death to the humankind!

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