Do You Believe Pharmaceutical Companies Withhold Natural Medicines If they Cannot Make Money from It?

If only it were that simple...

Are there many medications that are derivatives of chemicals found in natural products? Absolutely. But is it feasible to use these natural products in place of the available approved medications? The answer is almost universally no. For one, you need to consider the dosages involved. Many times the chemical is purified or synthesized so that we can pack enough of it into a capsule for a patient to swallow. In many cases, large and unreasonable quantities of raw material would have to be consumed to constitute each dose.

Another thing to consider is purity. Why eat the whole plant if you're only interested in the medicinal properties of a dilute chemical contained therein?

Other considerations also come into play, like solubility, bioavailability, duration of action, etc. The drug companies make so much money off of patents because it's not easy to make a medication even once an active compound is identified. The human body is surprisingly good at keeping out or rapidly eliminating chemicals designed to alter the body's function.

"Natural remedies" is a meaningless term. Medicines derived from plants tend to be semi-synthetic because almost all of the extract of a plant is garbage, the active ingredient tends not to work well, and the study of the active portion gives the pharma guys an idea for a new and improved product that can be made pure and simple. You don't need to look for a conspiracy.

If you want to bash the drug companies along these lines, your effort will be better spent griping about them deciding to discontinue the manufacture of cheap, simple drugs that work well and are used every day. That's become something of a scandal, especially since the doctors who use them are generally the last people to be notified.

I think they would withhold a natural cure, partly because it is not worth their time and partly because that is not the business they are in. Plenty of companies exist to manufacture homeopathic medicine. The job of the pharmaceutical companies is to seek out new drugs. The profits they make are put back into the research, discovery and marketing of more new pharmaceuticals.

I don't think there are natural remedies out there undiscovered, because natural resources for medications are finite. Synthetic compounds, on the other hand, hold limitless possibilities.

Drug companies employ millions of people in many countries and find cure and treatments for the diseases that plague humanity. They are first and foremost, a business and they do what makes them the most money.

NO....but * I'm * not a conspiracy-theory paranoid nutcase.