LONGECITY

Is the reason doctors usually do not prescribe vitamins and supplements to help manage disease actually the fault of Big Vitamin, rather than Big Pharma?

 

Many in the alternative health crowd blame Big Pharma for dominating the medical agenda, but could the fault really lie with Big Vitamin?

 

The global supplements industry is worth around 120 billion each year (which is around one tenth of the 1.2 trillion the pharmaceutical industry earns globally each year). Refs: 1 2

 

Yet in spite of that huge amount of money coming in, how many clinical trials do Big Vitamin actually run, to test out their products as a means to treat disease? Without providing scientific evidence of efficacy, doctors will not prescribe supplements. 

 

 

Pharmaceutical companies have to spend around $500 million on R&D and clinical trials to bring each new drug to market, before they get a licence to sell them. Whereas Big Vitamin has no such clinical trial expenses, and can introduce new products with little or no R&D or clinical trials cost.

 

Therefore I would imagine that some Big Vitamin executives and shareholders are probably making a fortune, as they don't have the high expenses of Big Pharma, but still have a massive global income.

Edited by Hip, 28 March 2020 - 02:09 PM.

You mean because they want you to get your antioxidants from pills instead of infusing electrons directly like this?

Inactivation of viruses using pulsed high electric field
https://ieeexplore.i...document/152263

The effect of pulsed high electric field on viruses in liquid was studied. Swine vesicular disease virus (SVDV) and equine herpes virus-1 (EHV-1) were used in the experiment. Pulsed high voltage was applied repetitively to the converged electric field type electrode, which had an insulating plate with pinholes between parallel-plate electrodes. A pulsed high electric field was formed at the pinhole through which the virus suspension was continuously transported. SVDV in deionized water or in bovine serum could be inactivated effectively when the pulsed electric field (crest value of 30 kV/cm, exponential-decay waveform) was applied 60 to 120 times. or the input electrical energy was 43.6 to 87.2 cal/cm/sup 3/. After inactivation by the pulse application, the shape of the protein shell of SVDV did not change, but RNA contained in the core of SVDV disappeared, and hollow particles were observed. EHV-1 in minimum essential medium (MEM) could also be inactivated effectively when the pulse application number exceeded 45, or the input electrical energy was more than 32.7 cal/cm/sup 3/. Apparent damage to the envelope around EHV-1 and to the core of EHV-1 consisting of DNA could be observed.< >

It's a complex issue. It's all kind of a bad feedback loop. Doctors want to give their patients drugs where they can point to clinical trials and clear concrete effects.  But big pharma wont do clinical trials on Supplements it can't patent. So natural supplements are not rigorously tested and don't get the attention they merit. Patentable compounds produced in a lab move to the front of the line. Doctors forget that medicines like Aspirin were discovered as a natural plant derived products which today might be called a supplements. And the snake oil salesmen aspect of parts of the Vitamin and supplement industry only makes the situation worse. 

But big pharma wont do clinical trials on Supplements it can't patent.

Big Pharma is often blamed, but it's Big Vitamin who are actually selling these supplements. So I suggest it's Big Vitamin who should be paying for and conducting the clinical trials. You cannot expect other companies like pharmaceutical companies to do the clinical trials on your supplement products.

Of course natural supplements are not patentable, which means that if one supplement company were to pay for a clinical trial, which got positive results and so the supplement started to get prescribed by the medical profession, that company would lose out, as all the other supplements companies would also profit from increased sales of that supplement, but without having to fork out for the clinical trial.

So the solution to this issue I propose is to get all the major supplement companies to all contribute to the costs of any given supplement clinical trial, paying according to their global market share (larger companies would pay more than smaller companies). Then if there are profits to be made from the medical profession prescribing the supplement, all the companies would benefit in proportion to their market share.



 

Doctors forget that medicines like Aspirin were discovered as a natural plant derived products which today might be called a supplements.

That's often claimed, but aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) is not naturally found in plants. There is a similar compound in plants called salicylate, which has anti-inflammatory effects too. Aspirin was inspired by that, but is a different compound.

Edited by Hip, 29 March 2020 - 05:28 PM.

You mean because they want you to get your antioxidants from pills instead of infusing electrons directly like this?

Inactivation of viruses using pulsed high electric field
https://ieeexplore.i...document/152263

The effect of pulsed high electric field on viruses in liquid was studied. Swine vesicular disease virus (SVDV) and equine herpes virus-1 (EHV-1) were used in the experiment. Pulsed high voltage was applied repetitively to the converged electric field type electrode, which had an insulating plate with pinholes between parallel-plate electrodes. A pulsed high electric field was formed at the pinhole through which the virus suspension was continuously transported. SVDV in deionized water or in bovine serum could be inactivated effectively when the pulsed electric field (crest value of 30 kV/cm, exponential-decay waveform) was applied 60 to 120 times. or the input electrical energy was 43.6 to 87.2 cal/cm/sup 3/. After inactivation by the pulse application, the shape of the protein shell of SVDV did not change, but RNA contained in the core of SVDV disappeared, and hollow particles were observed. EHV-1 in minimum essential medium (MEM) could also be inactivated effectively when the pulse application number exceeded 45, or the input electrical energy was more than 32.7 cal/cm/sup 3/. Apparent damage to the envelope around EHV-1 and to the core of EHV-1 consisting of DNA could be observed.< >

Actually this got me wondering if this is an efficient way to make a vaccine.....