ofonorow wrote:I guess the answer to the last question is that there is a business that survives because the PT products do work. The business grows mostly by word of mouth, but is not profitable enough to fund the work that sounds easy to do. If people weren't being helped, believe me, they would not continue to take the products in the face of medicine and its dire warnings. And there is already a ton of good science, but none of it impresses anyone who has an interest in the business of medicine. So adding more "evidence" is futile. Sure, there are things I would like to know, but on the whole, those that follow Linus Pauling's advice experience "miraculous" results. I receive feelings of satisfaction daily that many mainstream doctors may never have.
I think your assertion that evidence is futile is false. I think there are many medical professionals who would be delighted if there was a treatment that offered significant benefits for their heart disease patients. When you consider that many doctors themselves would benefit or have friends and family who would benefit from this, there is definitely a motive to find a treatment that works better than existing therapies. A doctor does not benefit from prescribing a $100/month treatment over one that costs $5/month.
The issue is
precisely that of evidence. Doctors are trained to follow evidence-based medicine, and if you want to see widespread use of vitamin C - evidence is the way to go.
I saw you posted on a different thread that manufacturers make $180m per year on Vitamin C. I realize that it's probably a very fragmented industry, but if even 5% of that money could go towards funding a proper, well-run Phase II trial on Pauling/Rath therapy, then I can guarantee that this would at least spark some interest (if the outcome is positive). Getting an NIH grant fro a larger study would then be a lot easier.
As an aside, as a result of the federal stimulus, the NCCAM will have a larger budget - are Pauling/Rath advocates going to approach them to try and get this therapy evaluated? Sen. Tom Harkin was able to persuade the NCCAM to run a large ($30m) study on the use of chelation therapy. So I don't think it's impossible to get funding for vitamin C; there needs to be more advocacy from alternative doctors who are using this protocol.
Name one cure the NIH has participated in, sponsored or spawned.
Vaccines - even better than a cure. And you have to also wonder how many of the antifungals and antibiotics developed in the last three or four decades have at least built upon work funded by the NIH. To repeat myself, the NIH funds a lot of research that lays the groundwork for future discoveries.
I brought up the numbers because we "invest" in the NIH at a staggering amount, close to what the 10 most profitable businesses in the world make as profit!!! This is a windfall for Big Pharma - help with funding their research. It is not only outrageous, it should be a crime. I stand by the argument that if we paid a reward to private firms, some small firms would cure (and prove) the major chronic diseases immediately with the money we waste at the NIH. (And I can safely predict this because the "cures" for heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other illness are already well known...)
Not just big pharma, but also smaller biotechs and companies in other areas of science and technology benefit from government investment. It is not too different from a government providing loans.
The "cures" are not well known. You
believe they are, but you are unable to reliably demontrate this. Many people claim they have the cures - but curiously few of them seem willing to put them to the test. Hulda Clark published many books purporting to know the cure for all cancers, yet she herself passed away with Multiple Myeloma. You have to understand the point of view of people who are not entrenched in the CAM mindset - with all the delusion, misconceptions, and outright quackery associated with "alternative" cancer cures, the only way to sift through the madness is to identify those with scientific merit.