- Contrary to what one might think, pharmaceutical companies don't try to get the best drug to cure haemorrhoids (or any other condition); what they do look for is a drug that sells better than their competitor's. Lately, most pharmaceutical companies, whining as usual that the price of testing is too high, have joined in huge cartels (though they prefer calling them "strategic alliances" or some other business hogwash) like Novartis or Glaxo-Smith-Kline-Breecham for the precise reason of not having to worry so much about competition.
- Remedies of natural origin are very hard to patent; for this reason, drugs of natural origin are generally replaced with synthetic or semi-synthetic derivates. For example: heroin is a semi-synthetic derivate of morphine created by Bayer, Marinol is a synthetic version of marijuana created by a puppet laboratory of Boehringer-Ingelheim. Most natural drugs are so chemically complex that a synthesis is either impossible or antieconomical. On the other hand, nobody could keep you from growing a medicinal plant at home and, say, chewing its leaves instead of buying a box of suppositories, which is the kind of thing that cuts into pharm companies profits. As a matter of fact, if you analyse the common behaviour of pharmaceutical conglomerates, it is far more likely that the final aim of field pharmacology is eliminating potential sources of loss rather than improving the lot of patients. After all, all it would take to reduce unwanted competition would be burning down a few acres of rainforest; with more widespread types of flowers and weeds, one can always get the law to take care of the eradication.
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Of Drugs and Forests
Category: Inpharmy
Posted on: June 18, 2006 10:21 AM, by Dr. X
Being in Copenhagen a while ago, I happened to read an interview to Reninhardt Møbjerg Kristensen, one of the most brilliant zoologists of the 20th century; as is the case with most zoologists, brilliant or not, very few people have heard his name. The piece dealt mostly with marine invertebrates, a subject I personally find fascinating (as you might have inferred from my previous post), but which I imagine would knock most of my readers down within two-three lines. Anyhow, something that illustrious scientist said struck me, and not in a good way. Here it is:
[the disappearance of rainforests] is destroying many forms of life, including plants that could be useful to the pharmaceutical industry.
This is a very sad statement; not so much because of its subject, but because it betokens the humiliation of science in front of the selfish morons which constitute the common public. It seems that the only way people can understand why biodiversity oughtn't to be massacred is the possibility that it will give pharmaceutical companies a chance to find a better cure for haemorrhoids. Well, as you will see many times in this blog in the future, counting on pharmaceutical companies for anything good, including saving rainforests, is a truly foolish idea. Here are a couple of reasons why:
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Comments
Although I understand your problem with the statement, I have two questions. While people fighting against the loss of biodiversity certainly are not doing so in order to find better haemorrhoid cream, is it not true that many drugs are originally found in plant sources? While this is not the main reason to fight against the destruction of the rainforest and its many unique plant species, it's certainly a benefit of keeping it around. Secondly, what would you make of the ability of scientists not directly employed by pharmaceuticals to research natural cures?
Posted by: Dennis | June 18, 2006 06:21 PM
It's important to keep in mind that synthetic derivatives are often also better--either in terms of treating the condition, or in terms of reduced side effects--than the original isolates as well... aspirin is a classic example of this, as well as heroin. Marinol is a demonstration that this isn't always the case.
But nevertheless, we wouldn't have a lot of these drugs if nature didn't keep giving us templates for inspiration. And there are certainly companies out there interested in maintaining access to the ethnopharmacological well.
Posted by: Jonathan Ehrich | June 19, 2006 03:43 PM
For Dennis:
I see what you mean by plant sources: aspirin comes from primroses, morphine from poppies, quinine from cinchona bark and digoxin from digitales (there are others, but these are by far the most popular). However, all these drugs came into use at the turn of the century, when synthetic chemistry was not very efficient; since then, they have been replaced. The case of quinine is exemplary: it has been replaced by quinacrine, which works pretty much the same way (plus jaundice as a side effect) but is patented. Now that its patents have expired, even quinacrine is falling out of fashion: in order to cure spongiform encephalitis, a wasting brain disease, pharm companies are launching chloropromazine, which is a brain-wasting drug itself, on top of being far less efficient.
A vast amount of non-rainforest plants which were used with much success against various diseases in the past are not the subject of any serious research and have, sadly, become the domain of quacks and freaks.
As for the good will of single scientists, you see more of that than one would imagine, but the costs of pharmaceutical research are enormous, and hardly anyone can think of carrying it out without some form of support. Unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies have somebody on their payroll in pretty much every public and private laboratory, and this gives them enough power to either appropriate or interrupt the development of any product before it gets on the shelves.
For Jonathan:
I do agree with you for aspirin; then again, those were the days, and chemists actually tried (at times) to improve the lot of humanity; I do not agree for heroin: all opiates break up in the body to the same molecule, and the only difference between morphine and most of its cousins (heroin included), if any, is pharmacokinetics.
Posted by: Dr. X | June 19, 2006 04:23 PM
Beyond the need to cure illnesses, there is a kernel of pure discovery and scientific wonder waiting for us in shrinking wildernesses. There is immeasurable value in knowledge alone. One cannot wipe out entire fields of inquiry in physics or mathematics by driving fundamental particles or topologies to extinction but this is eminently achievable in biology or chemistry. This is a profound epistemelogical tragedy that awaits us.
A few weeks of 'introduction to medicinal chemistry' really hammered home the fact that my fantasy world of altruistic pharmacology died long before my parents were even born. Has the industry really reached this point where inventing new illnesses and extending drug patents by finding new uses is considered legitimate science? You are absolutely correct. Pharmaceutical companies cannot be relied upon to do a damned thing.
The brevity of my first comment may have created the impression that my sentiment was sorrow that we would miss out on a better antihistamine as a result of the rape of the planet. Not too fussed on the antihistamines. But the sentiment 'We destroyed an entire science and an entire world, but made some nice furniture' really does keep me up at night. It's making money by burning books, by burning beauty.
Posted by: Snarfevs | June 20, 2006 01:18 AM