[dkliman]

Hi everybody,

I was just diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the last few weeks.

The doctor put me right on Metformin and told me to exercise and lose weight. I'm working on it. Lost 8 pounds in 2 weeks so far... We'll see if I can keep in shape.

One thing that really struck me was when i went to CVS pharmacy and they gave me the "diabetes welcome brochure."

It was chock full of advertisements from all the parasitic companies who gleefully are welcoming me as their new paying customer.

It was really disgusting, to be honest.

It seems so profitable to just maintain diseases compared to the dead end business model of simply curing them. It is just more evidence, in my humble opinion, that we need to remove the idea of profit from medicine, and instead focus on getting more doctors doing research to find actual cures, which would be profitable to the world, rather than a group of stock holders.

I hope something happens and we move in the right direction.

 

[Richard157]

Hello!

Hello there, welcome to our community! Congratulations on losing that weight so fast. You are doing a good job, keep it up. I think all of us diabetics agree with you on the profit from medicine issue. I don't think there will ever be an end to that though. I am sure that there are many who do profit from our diabetes and therefore would not want there to ever be a cure. Our cure/gain would be their financial loss. Enough said!

Richard

 

[dkliman]

that's why

.. we need pure government funded research and development.

there are plenty of researchers and doctors who are merely interested in finding a cure... not a new path to profit... those researchers need government funding though.

in the 1980's My brother became a pathologist, and he wanted to do research on placentas.

He was getting federal funding, like most doctors at the time, to conduct his research.

Reagan came in and slashed NIH's budgets to the bone, forcing my brother to change his career, and do the "deal with the devils" of the drug companies. My brother is rich now, and he makes tests that cost something like $250 each, that many patients across the land purchase, but it didn't have to be that way.

he would have been perfectly happy making modest money and finding a way to cure the problems he was learning about.

If we were to vastly restore funding to NIMH and NIH, and let them give out grants to young up-and-coming medical students and universities, then there are so many ways we could make medicine cheaper.

alternately, we have to rethink how money courses through the entire system.

In England, for example, doctors are paid by the national health service to keep their patients healthy.

As you probably know, nobody in England pays a penny for health care. They have completely democratized medicine there. Since doctors are paid to keep people more healthy, and to show improvements in their patients' health, people there happen to be more healthy than we are here. go figure.

If companies could make medical equipment or supplies but only be paid when people are cured, as opposed to just having a natural form of market as we do now, i think we would see some very interesting changes.

 

[MissMeg]

I agree as well. I think that the bottom line in health care has been overlooked for the profit. It really is sad.. I had private insurance and still one pen of insulin cost me $20.00.. which is not too bad until you realize how fast you go through that pen... now I am on cash pay -- and that 1 pen costs me almost $100.00... Now that is just unreal to me. I watched a special on how much it costs the drug companies to make the medicine that we inject, put in our mouths and wear each day and it is unreal the mark up.. all to line the pockets of someone who really just don't care about the outcome.

There is enough money in our nation to do the research and testing to help out the people who deal with diseases everyday. And with diabetes on the rise I think it is time to focus on this disease for awhile.

 

[dkliman]

I think the best way to look at the relationship between patients and the drug companies is similar to the relationship between a host and a parasite.

Ever since the first single celled creatures floated around in the primordial oceans, there has been an arms race between hosts and the various diseases and parasites that would profit off those hosts.

The ideal situation for the perpetuation of a disease, is to never actually kill the host, but to suck as much energy from it as possible without killing it.

I would say we are right about at that point here in the usa with regards to drug companies.

When drug companies, and other care givers cannot make a profit from merely perpetuating a condition anymore, but from curing us, that is when we will become more healthy.

 

[Anthill]

Drug Companeis.

This is the argument that gets my rift as an industry that profit from us, It's just sooo sick. Good folk like Denise L. Faustman, MD, PhD in her quest to cure diabetes and drug companies to stall her efforts for a cure.
Shure Drug Companies will loose their profit once that a cure is found and they should bite the bullet when the time comes.

 

[MissMeg]

That is exactly why they don't want a cure to be discovered. Well I know one thing-- I am a fighter.. and I will not let it get the best of me.... I came into this world fighting for my life (being born 31 yrs ago at 27wks gestation and born to a heroin addicted mother) I will leave it the same way --- it will take alot to put me out.. And if we all stand strong then we will be ok!

 

[dkliman]

Broken

This is the argument that gets my rift as an industry that profit from us, It's just sooo sick. Good folk like Denise L. Faustman, MD, PhD in her quest to cure diabetes and drug companies to stall her efforts for a cure.
Shure Drug Companies will loose their profit once that a cure is found and they should bite the bullet when the time comes.

That's why there has to be universal health care. Because right now it is simply more profitable to keep people sick than to cure them. Yet for a society it is obviously cheaper to just cure diseases. Having drug companies able to sell and profit from products that prolong suffering must come to an end. Pardon the typos. I used my iPhone for this.