Pharmaceuticals Looking Up, When Prevention is Under Their Noses
Allergic Reactions to Propaganda
Pharmaceutical manufacturers see nothing but blue skies over the rapidly increasing sales of allergy diagnostic tests and treatments. Projected global sales will total $52 billion by 2026, doubled from $25 billion in 2020, during a world wide pandemic. Consumers will spend $7 billion in the U.S. alone, growing at 7% a year, with obscene profits built in. What’s not to love?
EpiPen showed how to milk full fat cream for a life saving drug from a desperate public. Mylan Pharmaceuticals, producer of an affordable jab of adrenaline, was bought out by an unscrupulous financier who marketed sales heavily, partnered with Disney World, merged with Pfizer, lobbied for laws requiring schools to store them on premises, greased the political wheels, then jerked the price sky high to the public. Laughing all the way to the bank. The fines paid out were a fleabite on an elephantine profit.
Asthma and esophageal allergic conditions are future markets for the fastest gowing biologic drug ever. Costs over three grand per month. Expects $13 billion sales per year. Regneneron struck a gusher. It does cause conjunctivitis in 40% of patients, higher white blood cell counts for one fourth, and new patches of eczema on their face by another 25%. Some may experience all three.
Steroids suppress immune system inflammation, even the helpful part. Interfere with bone growth, muscle maintenance and fuel skin infections. Newer brands promise fewer side effects by targeting allergic inflammation more precisely. Dupilomab or Dupixent is approved for treating resistant eczema for infants, children and teens. One jab every two weeks takes 3-4 months to help. Thirty to 44% show “dramatic improvement, enough to justify its high cost” by promoting more diverse skin bacteria, reducing staph overgrowth. Has to be taken indefinitely, naturally.
The NIH is the largest funder of allergy research in the world, almost none goes to prevention from identifying causes (except genetic markers), nutritional adjustments and supplementation, or reducing environmental allergens. They grant millions for exploring physiological mechanisms of allergic reaction and clinical research to manipulate it chemically. They devote public monies to “basic science to understand processes of the disease”, not eliminating profitable causes. They see their role as funding the “next generation of treatments. No Pharmaceutical company is ever going to do that. “ Dr. Alkis Togias of the NIH told MacPhail.
Dr. Dean Metcalfe at the NIH explained that academic research is published publicly in scientific and medical journals, allowing corporate labs to look for potential patents on drugs to turn allergic signals on or off as needed. “Big pharmaceutical companies have the money and systems in place to do research trials. Academic labs don’t have the staff and funding to develop new molecules like Dupilumab.” Estimates range from $19 million to $3 billion to bring a drug to market. The NIH total budget was $46 billion in 2022.
MacPhail excuses the wholesale purchase of government, university and nonprofit biological science needed to create drugs for BigPharma to reap the profits as symbiotic. “Large companies like Sanofi do not have the time and resources to invest in long term studies of disease progression. That’s what academic research labs do well. It’s a dynamic, complicated relationship. It works.”
There’s no incentive or funding to pinpoint causes, even those right under their noses. Inflammatory injections. Fossil Fuel Fractionates. Petroleum Products. Chlorinated Chemicals. Where Household commercial cleaning products are used more frequently, children are more likely to develop wheeze and asthma. Spending 90% of their time indoors playing with screens exposes them to duration doses. Air purifiers sales increased $30 billion in five years pre-plandemic. Sales have gone through the roof since.
Allergen free rooms at pricey hotels are even pricier. No guarantees, when hypoallergenic has no regulations on labeling content. Eighty five million American shoppers are avoiding at least one of the major allergic triggers, wheat, milk, egg, peanut, seafood and soy. When all “public health”monies generously fund profitable pharmaceutical treatments, nothing is left for helping individuals and families in need because they were adversely exposed.
Historian Greg Mitman got through to MacPhail near the end of her best selling, science journalism book Allergic: Our Irritated Bodies in a Changing World published by Random House this year. “Invest the same millions to provide kids who live in inner cities earlier access to inhaled steroids” [one proposed medical equity fix] or we could focus on interventions against bus depots and truck transfer sites with high diesel emissions near low income housing. We’ve never done a comparative study of cost vs benefits for environmental infrastructure changes. What if the preventive actions are ultimately much cheaper than finding their treatment and paying for it?”
Alkis Togias of the NIH, gained a response. “Doctors should not be worried about the costs of the treatments they prescribe”, but without real universal health care that scientifically regulates drug safety and costs, primarily practices prevention by reducing proven harms and increasing benefits, “that isn’t realistic.”
Patients are looking elsewhere for solutions in droves. Most of the people she interviewed had tried alternative approaches to relieve suffering. Many said they worked well to reduce symptoms, but for most they eventually failed to help. Just another placebo. Most patients were using varieties of information sources to make their choices. Not waiting for “science based medicine” to catch up to a possible cure. They wanted relief now, not in some promised heaven.
MacPhail acknowledges “Not all alternative or complementary treatments are bogus, though many are and can be dangerous if used without medical supervision”, trotting out the high lead, arsenic and mercury levels in some Indian Ayurvedic and Chinese Traditional Medicine preparations, ignoring mercury, aluminum and microscopic machined metals (tiny razors) in vaccines. After all, the ethyl mercury in vaccine preservative “does not pose a health risk.” Nothing to see there.
Nevertheless, she admits that [non-contaminated] Chinese herbal medicine, homeopathy and acupuncture are among alternative treatments for allergies that “may have actual benefits and are currently being studied in clinical trials. Taking probiotics, Reiki massage, chiropractic treatment and consuming local honey have shown little or no benefits.”
MacPhail grants stress reduction a role. “Yoga may help better control asthma [by relearning balanced breathing and deep relaxation], ideally in tandem with biomedicine. ” Even her experts thought the best approach was integrative therapy, combining methods to reduce suffering and symptoms. Although one’s idea of alternatives was using vaseline on eczema, instead of steroidal creams.
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This wraps my Allergic to Propaganda series. It will also be available as a free e-book to subscribers when I add a chapter on real alternatives to prevent onset and subdue suffering for good.
Thank you!