Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for June 24, 2014

OK, then…… let’s cure tobacco!

Where do I get the funding? Because I really like the funding part…….

This has been going on for a good many years, especially in the Cancer Research Industry.

Global warming industry, in a nutshell. Or the FDA. Or the Center for Disease Control, where everything is a disease.

If throwing money at a problem was the way to make it go away, there wouldn’t be any problems left.I’m not saying that throwing money at them only makes them worse, but since it hasn’t made them better, shouldn’t we be trying something else?

So, I’m a scientist. I find it very interesting how many people firmly believe that we are such monsters that we would hide cures in order to somehow “keep getting funded.” As if the world is short on diseases or things that need to be understood, so if we figure out one, we’re done.

This belief – that scientists are willing to watch not just strangers, but their families, friends and even themselves die (being exposed to chemicals and toxins means that we in research have a much higher incidence of cancer), just to keep funding… is despicable.

This is the second Wiley has insulted everyone who works in science (and, generally, for miserable pay). He should be ashamed of himself.

@somebodyshort – “Big Pharma does not want cures, they want pills that alleviate symptoms…”

…and at the same time, the pills create new and/or different symptoms. When one listens to the disclaimers at the end of most TV Ads for modern-day drugs, the potential side-effects are more deadly or scary than the illness they’re supposed to treat. Oh, and if you STOP taking the pills, you’ll have a stroke. Yeah, that sounds like an effective treatment for some simple aches and pains that result from aging.

This is why so many medically-minded people go into dermatology. Most of your patients don’t die from what you’re treating them for, but they never really get well either.

@somebodyshort@WCLamb Right on! As my dad has said more than once: “Drug companies will let people die.” If it’s not profitable.

I’m 100% certain that I’ve seen this strip before…

So, what is wrong with another division?

Makes you wonder how many cures have been found and locked away. The common cold or cancer may have already been cured years ago. There is no money in finding a cure. But treating the symptoms makes billions a year. Copy and paste the following link ( I forget how to post hot links here)http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/06/18/1000-pill-hepatitis-c-drug-jolts-us-health-care-system/

Sad but true

This is why they’ve stopped funding antibiotic research at a time when antibiotic-resistant bugs are popping up all over the place (primarily due to over-use of antibiotics in agriculture): you use a course of antibiotics, you kill the disease germs, you get better, you stop taking the antibiotics. No long-term revenue stream for the company.

Government-run, taxpayer-financed research labs were supposed to be the remedy for this problem. But we’ve become so pathologically capitalist (that is, we’re becoming incapable of approaching anything from any standpoint other than maximizing profits) that the research labs have become just like the drug companies.

If the US were the only one doing and funding research, then your comments would be accurate. However, in countries with government-sponsored healthcare, research dollars are awarded to labs who don’t work for the drug companies who are working on cures instead of treatment and new treatments that do cure illness are fast-tracked through the approval process – the exact opposite of what happens in the US. Sick people are a US consumer-base that is federally protected. The US healthcare system needs a total overall.

I am not a biologist, I’m an engineer. I believe some things cannot be “cured” , only managed and controlled, because they are an innate part of our human system. Think of the amazing growth rate from birth to three or four years old, the ongoing growth for a few more years, and the again amazing rate of adolescence; and yet then at some point the growth stops and only becomes healing &replenishment, while a person remains pretty much the same height and size for some years (even if there is still other maturation and change, and/or fattening, still going on). If the growth doesn’t start, that’s an obvious problem; if the growth doesn’t STOP, that’s a much less expected problem. And if the growth starts up again at some point after it stopped, or in the wrong place at the wrong pace at the wrong stage of development, that’s cancer. Maybe someday we can get it down to a matter of pills or shots, like the way supplying insulin doesn’t “cure” diabetes but manages and controls it.

ah capitalism kills any kind of human inquiry and hope. just look at Nixon and those Republicans after him, and the Democrats too. Greed kills everything

In my mind, the money-will-stop-if-a-cure-is-found thing is analogous to a legislature’s cutting an agency’s funding for next year if there is anything left over from this year. That way, there’s no incentive for the agency to save $$ at the end of the fiscal year. Your supervisor will say, “Spend! Spend on anything you want!” I’ve seen this happen.

Bingo; WCLamb!!!! Couldn’t have said it better myself….

The more likely reaction is to run to the press before publishing ….. but regardless, there’s nothing like the thrill of discovery – especially when it can help someone in need!!

By the way: Most doctors now are licenced “dealers”; not “healers”!!!!….

Is Wiley on vacation? This is a repeat. Not that this is one I don not mind seeing again, just saying…

There are passionate people looking for cures for various diseases. People who lost loved ones to cancer or diabetes or ALS are among the scientists searching for cures. Those people would not be stopped by the end of funding when a cure is found.

Continued research after the discovery of a potential cure is made to be certain that it is a cure in truth. They have to test them extensively to be sure it works as well in life as it does on paper.

So to say this happens with fatal and life-threatening diseases seems rather cynical to me. If you suggest that it happens with less serious illnesses, I’d be more willing to accept it as a possibility, but I find it unlikely that a person who has devoted their life to medical research and the alleviation of disease would be so easily silenced.

RetiredDude, yeah, me too…

Diabetes is an awesome example of treating rather than curing that someone brought up. There are doctors that have actually come out saying that it CAN be cured by making changes to your diet, and have shown this to be true with patients. Patients that no longer require insulin or anything else, other than eating correctly. Drug companies AND doctors do NOT want this getting out. A cure is unacceptable (especially a cheap one!), because they lose money. And they will do whatever it takes to make sure it doesn’t get out, and have done so, through lobbying (bribes) to make sure their way is the wrong way.

Speaking of Diabetes, have you noticed the new commercials for pills to stop the pins and needles pain in your hands and feet? All with the usual list of side effects?There is a more effective product, with no side effects, made from a synthetic form of vitamin B called benfotiame. It works. I have been on it for 11 years. It is available on Amazon from several reliable companies .But you will never see an ad for it. The drug companies can’t make any money from it.

This is also the story of “global warming.”

The life expectancy in this country (US) has gone up dramatically from 50-ish to 80-ish in the last century and a half. Some say this is due to better medicine and cures have been found for some who died too young.*But the reality seems to be that medicine succeeds in prolonging the death rather than the life.*A century ago, when you got sick, one of two things happened: either you got well, or you died. Today, when you get sick, you get neither well, nor die, but instead remain in treatment for decades, providing money for entire industries.*A day before my mom died with Alzheimer’s, the doctors pressured me to override her end-of-life wishes by letting them hook her up to more machines and prolong her life. What life? A life suspended in a medical purgatory? (And no, that is not a religious reference.) A life without dignity, where her very wishes are ignored? What life indeed.*I take meds for various ailments, but often heave a heavy sigh at them, wondering why they are needed.

Something tells me that there’s a lot of truth to today’s strip!! Sadly!!

This strip seems like a repeat to me.

On a related issue, hospitals make money only when all their beds are occupied.

….and that’s why there will never be a cure for cancer or diabetes. Much more $$ in research and treatment of symptoms.

Seems like someone ought to ask who spends the money on these drugs, and why. We tend not to see ourselves in the problem.

-Now to rile up a lot of people:Maybe this is the real reason why there’s so little funding, comparatively, for genetic and stem cell research?

perpetual research and obsolesce forever? like making products to wear out as quickly as possible between uses for next year’s ‘new-improved model’, and on, and on forever….

Why do you think they have never found a cure for the common cold or cancer?

Re Type 1 diabetes: there is research going on and my cousin is a type 1 in the study who has started producing a small amount of insulin again. Big Pharma pulled funding when it threatened their huge revenue stream. Faustman’s lab is in Level 2 studies on patient-raised funding. http://www.faustmanlab.org/

Kinda like the race industry. Keep making up problems, the money keeps flowing in.

My favourite medical ad is one for a product that cures cold sores “in as little as 4.1 days.” When you read the fineprint at the bottom of the screen, it tells you that the untreated cure time is 4.8 days.

Must be a researcher funded by the CDC looking into autism…….no, that can’t be right, the CDC funds no studies into autism, at the grassroots, treatments, cures, nothing useful.

Deep Thoughts by Wiley Miller

This seems sick, but it makes perfect sense to me.

Where’s Danae?

sigh Cynical, but it’s cynical bullsh**. My main complaint is that storylines like this feed the ever-so-common myths about “miracle cure that ‘they’ DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT.” Seriously, we already have enough of that circulating in the conspiracy-theory-o-sphere that people actually believe.

….And the previous comments are the evidence of my complaint. It perpetuates utter ignorance of just how difficult a great deal of research actually is; it just spreads the story of “evil” scientists who supposedly find and suppress miracles (like, excuse me? Do you people seriously believe that there’s more profit in not completing a cure than there is in completing one and taking it to market? O_o)

And, yes, we do have many more chronic conditions in the population nowadays. That’s because in past times, people just died of most of them. Average lifespan continuously increasing all over the world because of those “evil” pharmaceuticals, how on earth did you fail to notice this?

Ay de mi ….usually I enjoy Wiley, but this bs just depresses me, and how it gives the rampant ignorance of science a chance to come out and pat itself on the back depresses me even more.

Someone should create a huge cash prize that ONLY pays out when real cures for cancer, diabetes, deadly diseases, etc. are found.

I see nothing stopping all you complainers from getting an education and finding the cures yourselves. Well, nothing other than laziness and the FDA.