Why capitalism can be a disincentive to good medicine

By Glen Wallace

There have recently been some prominent news stories featured on the mainstream media about shortages of certain drugs faced by hospitals and emergency rooms.  In addition to shortages there has also been problems with price gouging by pharmaceutical manufacturers of certain prescription drugs.  And one more problem that I recently saw featured on the mainstream network national news was about the growing problem of antibiotic drug resistant bacteria. What all those problems have in common is an inability of the drug companies to adequately respond to the needs of the public using those drugs.  The drug companies are not responding to the public's needs because they are not directed by those needs but are instead being driven and directed solely by the profit motive. Drug companies price gouge because they can get away with it because the drug patents can provide a total monopoly in cases where there are no comparable alternatives.  New antibiotics are not being developed at the rate that is needed to respond to drug resistance because there is not enough money to be made off of any new antibiotics to justify the enormous cost necessary to bring them to market.  And shortages are occurring because production capacity may be more profitably utilized by some other drugs. Once they are done making their money makers then if they have time maybe they will make more of the less profitable drugs for which there is a shortage. All this is recognized by the media and the medical field but few seem to put two and two together and realize that capitalism has been an abject failure at promoting good medicine.

So far I've only discussed the problems between capitalism and medicine that are already readily recognized by mainstream media and medicine.  But if one turns to alternative medicine one sees further evidence of the antagonism between Capitalism and good medicine.


The problem is that drug companies will not spend money at all on research that they cannot see a potential return on.  The only goal of the big pharmaceutical corporations is to make a profit, not benefit mankind.  Therefore, if there is already some research showing promise on an herb or compound that cannot be patented then there is no incentive to spend all the money on further research to bring the product to market.  Additionally, keep in mind that most big pharmaceutical companies are publicly traded corporations and therefore have a legal obligation to act in the financial interests of shareholders and not in the medical interests of the users of the pharmaceuticals that those corporations produce.

For instance I heard of a study of mice where their Alzheimer's disease was halted and reversed when the mice consumed caffeine in an amount that was the human equivalent of 5 cups of caffeinated coffee per day. 
 I have also read anecdotal reports of Alzheimer's patients improving just through the consumption of coconut oil.  Currently pharmaceutical corporations are enjoying a nice gravy train of profits from drugs for Alzheimer's that are not a cure but a treatment where the patient continually takes the medicine and therefore pays for the medicine over a period of time that will likely amount to years.  Why would the for-profit pharmaceutical corporations want to spend money to research something like caffeine or coconut oil that they wouldn't be able to patent, but instead if the caffeine was found to be as useful in humans as it is in mice for Alzheimers, or if the anecdotal reports about coconut oil and Alzheimers were scientifically verified, the drug companies would  be facing an elimination of the currently reliable long-term revenue stream that they already enjoy with their prescription Alzheimer meds?

As another example, there is an alternative medicine doctor by the name of Dr. Tullio Simoncini from Italy, that is using ordinary baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to treat cancer with what he claims is very successful results.  Currently the cancer treatment industry is very profitable as is; but if drug companies were to explore and find baking soda is indeed superior to any of their current chemotherapy meds, then billions in revenue would be eliminated if cancer patients were to be prescribed a non-patentable product like baking soda that can be had for fifty cents a pound.

There is a great deal of collusion and cronyism between such organizations as the FDA, the AMA, University research facilities, the mainstream media and congress.  Any close examination of those organizations reveals that they are clearly working together with the goal of maximizing the profits of big pharmaceutical corporations.

Have you ever watched the commercials during the breaks on the big network national TV news?  Those commercials are filled with ads for prescription pharmaceuticals still under patent protection that offer huge monopolistic profits to the big pharma companies buying the expensive ad space from the large TV networks.  The networks want to keep their largest sponsors happy so you'll regularly see features on the national news badmouthing any alternative medicine that would replace big pharma's monopoly profits if those 'supplements' became 'replacements'.

Anyone trying to bring a non-patentable drug to the mainstream medical market with FDA approval,  will be going against the collusion of cronies mentioned above.  Just to get a drug approved by the FDA requires investments of 100's of millions of dollars by an organization that is already set up to do the research.  Much more if you're not already a drug company or University that has the facilities and know-how to do the enormous research required for FDA approval.  As for universities, they are either already getting grant money from big pharma or they are already enjoying profits from patent medicines.  Universities get a lot of their funding from patents for medicines they own. 

There is a widespread assumption that there is always a synergistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine.  But the evidence indicates that the opposite is true; there is an antagonistic relationship between capitalism and good medicine.  If only the medical field would apply the same testing standards to the for-profit medical paradigm as they do to individual drugs, they would soon discover widespread refutations of the belief in the necessarily benevolent nature of the overall for-profit capitalistic setup of the mainstream medical system.

The only solution as I see it is to eliminate medical patents and nationalize most medical research.  There already are plenty of people that go into medical research with the highest of ideals, but only their ideas that have the potential to profit the company they work for, will be supported.  Instead, we need to set up a system that eliminates the profit variable and allows those idealistic individuals to act as both the researchers and executives in the medical development field, whose decision making control of what avenues to pursue is only measured by other members of the medical field and the citizens observing and funding their work.

The NIH has already set up a division to study alternative medicines, but even though I've seen promising results from at least one of their studies, it seems like we only hear about the the results on the mainstream media that are not so promising.  In Germany they've set up a government run organization called the E commission, that studies and gives rulings on herbal medicines and what they can be prescribed for.  Those are a couple of examples of the nationalization of medical research that are good starts in that direction.  But to achieve the ideal of  good medicine, the profit motive from patent monopolies needs to be completely eliminated.  The allure of those patent monopolies is too corrupting because there is just too much money that can be made with them.