Not exactly 'surprising', but still rather shocking?

[V]

http://www.naturalnews.com/035616_cancer_industry_scientific_fraud_studies.html

I have heard all kinds of rumours about this, including the idea that a cheap 'cure' for cancer already exists, it's just not being developed or marketed properly, perhaps because pharmaceutical corporations want more money out of a 'miracle cure'?

This report, though I can believe. I notice how there are so many headlines about health in the last 10 or 15 years or so, every couple of years someone claims a new 'link' and yet the studies do not seem to be backed up with long-term data? Like, one minute they claim obesity is linked to this, then that... or chocolate makes you thin, then reduces risks of cancer, then makes you fat if you eat too much (obviously!) and now they're back to claiming 'it's good for you'... all this 'pop science' is awful and only serves to confuse people. (And, laughably, then we have fast food giants being appointed as some kind of government-approved 'health advisors'...)

From a scientific viewpoint, this is very disheartening. My mother is a scientist and I myself was going to follow the path to be one and did for a while, and it's shocking to see this kind of attitude among scientists and their funding bodies today. Science is surely the search for fact, not money. Any self-respecting scientist knows if he or she lies in their experiments, or conducts pointless experiments without context or a decent sample size, all they are doing is making human progress stall or even go backwards. The fundamental principle of science is to find out the truth, not lie to get more funding.

... And yet it doesn't really surprise because our government and others are hell-bent on turning academic institutions into businesses. This, to my mind, can only bad for all of us, and for the world at large. How are we going forwards, if this is how things are going to be done - and if most funding comes from self-interested corporations? When you have institutions that exist to find out the truth about things, integrity is surely important - more important even than cost, else what is the point? And "career scientists" of this type are more harm than good to anybody.

Privatizing universities and research institutions = bad news.

Thoughts...?

 

[Dante's Stalker]

I've got to agree with you Lexy, it's not surprising at all. People seem to have forgotten that you can't always believe what you read, the media has a way of twisting things around or purposely neglecting to mention honest information to the public, in a way brainwashing/deceiving the world into thinking and acting and believing a certain way that is often a diluted version of the whole truth. Kony 2012, December 21st, Osama Bin Laden, the Iraq war, Coca-Cola, is chocolate good or bad - everything goes through a filter of some sort so the public is shown only bits and pieces to give them a certain impression on something, to get them to react in a certain way, but the reality is that there's a lot of the truth that is concealed.

So, if this article is true, I'm not surprised at all. It is shocking to see to what level people will stoop for money. Not many people, aside from other scientists, will question what medical scientists put out for public viewing because people believe they have humanity's best interests at heart. They are in the field to improve our health, to create miracle wonders or find amazing cures for the uncurable(?) therefore it will never occur to us to question these studies. There are constantly blurps about them finding a cure for aids, and cancer, and finding some kind of bacteria at the bottom of the ocean that has the potential to wipe out the entire human race....and then there's silence.

It's devastating for people who have, or who are close to someone, who is battling cancer. People who are given three months to live. You WANT that cure at any cost, so it is pretty harsh when you hear scientists have discovered something that could 'potentially' (they LOVE this word, btw) cure or lengthen the lifespan of a cancer-sufferer but when you start looking and asking questions, you're directed to dead-ends and contradictions and reverted back to 'you could try chemo' which is not only expensive but is also not a gaurantee that the patient will make it through.

On a slightly lighter note: I don't eat chocolate for my health, I eat it 'cos it's NICE.

 

[Vergil's Waifu]

I know it's a little off topic, but i can remember a few months ago scientists said that they found a 'cure' for asthma suffers.
The patient is 'put under', and then they heat up the lining of the lungs, which start to 'melt' and when they 'come to' they are able to breathe easier.
HOWEVER:
1.It WILL NOT work for all asthma sufferers
2. the lining of the lungs will eventually become scarred
3. If treatment does work, the patient will still need to use an inhaler from time to time
4. Even if it does work. The procedure would have to be repeated in a few years as the effects wear off.

So It's not really a cure and gives false hope to those who suffer with severe asthma.

I can also remember a few months ago, someone in devon was claiming that he was able to cure cancer be using bicarbinate of soda... if it was that easy then people would be stock-piling the stuff as a precaution...

 

[V]

I find it morally repugnant that in this day and age, money comes before life. When we are supposedly better off, more knowledgeable than previous centuries and gifted with all the distilled learning from hundreds of years' scientific discoveries and development, that someone can't get a life-prolonging drug for cancer on the NHS because 'it's too expensive' to be made available to the average person. Are we going backwards or what?

And I used to think that I was lucky to live in a time that highlights the tragedy of past centuries when people needlessly died of cholera, smallpox, TB... diseases that don't run rampant here any longer because of vaccines and hospitals and hygiene developments. Now I'm living in a time when only the rich will be able to afford certain cures, and people don't search for them properly for 'the good of mankind' but for the good of a pharmaceutical company, or more funding?

I realise the system worships money and in a sense always has, this just stands out as morally disgusting to me. I realise now more than ever that like we are supposed to trust politicians, or the police, we are also supposed to trust our academics to tell us the truth and unless you can get access to their papers, it's very hard to know if they are being truthful any longer... it seems the people we expect to have integrity in the world are increasingly showing that integrity is an endangered principle nowadays.

 

[Vergil's Waifu]

Speaking of money Has anyone noticed the price of prescription charges in the UK?
£7.60 an item
With the amount of stuff that I'm prescribed it's about £40.00+.
I'd rather go without and end up in hospital. (But that's what happens to people. They can't afford the medicine and they get worse. I know that's to do with the government, but it's still wrong. It's up to the NHS to foot the bill for the government's greed when someone doesn't get their meds.)

I still say half of treatment these days belongs in the medieval times.

TBH, I don't trust my doctor anymore (let alone politicians), but that's a discussion for another day.

 

[Kammosjuttu]

All of this is awful to hear/read. I myself am a sickly person and it ****es me off when I’m carried to a hospital, suffer a lot while going through treatments, and then they slap expensive bills right in front of me alongside the prescriptions to many expensive medicines. Not to mention I have to pay for ambulance rides and the fact that even when I don’t have the need to go see a doctor I must buy a crapload of pills to keep me alive.

This might be off-topic in some sense, but once I was especially angry and frustrated with the way how hospital worked; when in two days they hadn’t figured out what was wrong with me, they send me home with painkillers… only to come get me back in the dead of night when I ended up having a real bad fit and was about to choke. After that they kept me in the hospital for a week taking tests after tests and drugging me to no end, and only when they were at the end of their rope they listened to my parents who thought I was suffering from one certain sickness that had been in our family but don’t occur in young people. It turned out that I was a rare case; a young one with a sickness that normally only adults get. I still am very angry that they didn’t check it right from the start just because I was a bit young. Because I wasn’t treated right from the start the next year of my life was nothing but recovering from the sickness.

I am afraid of it that the prices of medicines and treatments sky-rocker and that I will face huge problems in my future. I haven’t followed actively what happens in the medical world and what researches they do, but every time I hear something it usually isn’t that heartwarming. I guess I would just get even more depressed if I closely paid attention to all of this --- ignorance is bliss sometimes. I worry about tomorrow very much already, and all of this is bad for my heart.