"Men considered only the 'welfare' of the patient, with no thought for those who were to provide it." - Ayn Rand
Cancer medicines desperately needed by sick children and adults are in short supply, undermining the ability of U.S. doctors to administer treatments, top oncologists warned this week.
Many drugs are scarce because there is no incentive for drugmakers to manufacture low-cost generics, which have slim profit margins for pharmaceutical companies. Doctors do not expect that equation to change any time soon, making them scramble to find acceptable alternatives, or to ration or delay treatment when they cannot.
This sounds like a "Now is the time at SDA when we Juxtapose!" to be honest.
As long as big Pharma is in control of R&D there will never be a cure for cancer as a cure would decimate a trillion dollar industry. No long term profit in a cure and it would destroy millions of shareholders investments. The holy grail is 3 expensive pills a day to keep any disease in check for as many years as possible before the side effects kill the patient.
As long as big Pharma is in control of R&D there will never be a cure for cancer as a cure would decimate a trillion dollar industry.
Big Pharma?
And who exactly would do the R&D otherwise if "Big Pharma" doesn't want a cure and why haven't they(anti-Big Pharma) done it if they could and who exactly has stopped them from doing the R&D?
Progressives take the profit motive out of the equation and see what happens, everything grinds to a halt.
What exactly does Big Government do well, peterj?
Or am I wrong in assuming that Big Government isn't the cure for Big Pharma in your summation?
Well peterj if you can do better go for it. Why don't you develop that cure for cancer? Or perhaps the NDP party or maybe Obama can pull it off. I won't be holding my breath.
No one has assigned "Big Pharma" (whoever that is) a monopoly on R&D.
What exactly does Big Government do well, peterj?
Posted by: Oz at June 8, 2011 1:32 AM
Government does nothing well. There is no anti-pharma or competition. The big pharmaceuticals have complete control on a world wide market. They will always do what is in their best interest as far as sustainable profit is concerned. A cancer cure is not in their best interest.
No one has assigned "Big Pharma" (whoever that is) a monopoly on R&D.
~Bill
Exactly.
So no rich billionaire(Steve Jobs for instance) wants to have his/her cancer cured or to compete with greedy Big Pharma?
My guess is you are simply wrong, peterj.
This is a pretty good example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AazObF_pHSU&feature=related
I agree peterj. Cures should be in the interest of Doctors and definitely are in the interest of some ethical doctors but grants to R&D make looking for the cure far too lucrative to researchers to actually find and announce the cure.
MS is a horrible disease, it ruins the lives of the people who contract it. There is an operation that helps MS sufferers - it has turned around the life of a friend of mine who recently went to Mexico for the Liberation operation. If she is cured, and she does continue to get better (not worse); this banned in Canada/USA operation (too risky!) has saved her life! Even if she dies eventually of MS because the operation does not stop the disease she will have had a few years of quality life. The Drs. up here offer drugs (pharma drugs) and R&D take millions from tax payer grants and the MS societies who contribute to the 'studies of MS'. Why don't the R&D researchers 'study' the liberation treatment..if they are interested in a cure?
So no rich billionaire(Steve Jobs for instance) wants to have his/her cancer cured or to compete with greedy Big Pharma?
My guess is you are simply wrong, peterj.
Posted by: Oz at June 8, 2011 1:58 AM
I would love to be wrong. What a billionaire could offer is mere peanuts to what big pharma takes in on a annual basis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pharmaceutical_companies
The above is Big Pharma.
Nice link! So the biggest "Big Pharma" company in the world makes about $13 billion a year, while Microsoft rakes in about $5+ billion every quarter, and google does even better (that's $20 billion+ per year, since you're probably math impaired).
Ohhhh, Teh Conspiracy Is Horribles!
By all means, keep shooting yourself in the foot.
By all means, keep shooting yourself in the foot
Posted by: Alex at June 8, 2011 2:38 AM
Have trouble reading charts do we ?. Perhaps someone can explain gross and net to you. The 5 billion microsoft make every quarter is ?. And google is ?.
Johnson and Johnson was 62 billion gross.
Yes, perhaps someone should explain gross and net to you.
Johnson and Johnson was 62 billion gross.
~peterj
Well that explains why they don't want to cure the common cold, or why they don't want to cure human female's ability to make babies instead of just selling them birth control pills every month of their child bearing years.
No, wait a sec...we were talking about curing cancer and R&D into, specifically, a cure for cancer.
How much does Johnson and Johnson make from selling cancer drugs specifically and who told you only pharmacuetical companies could do cancer R&D, peterj?
As I said before, there are some very wealthy people in the world who could buy a country and find a cure for cancer if they were motivated by themselves or their loved ones having cancer and your Big Pharma conspiracy to 'not cure' cancer was true.
(which it isn't)
I'll take pity on you, pete, and help you out a little. Have a look here:
http://www.microsoft.com/investor/EarningsAndFinancials/Earnings/PressReleaseAndWebcast/FY11/Q3/default.aspx
Pay close attention to the phrase "third quarter", "net income", and "$5.23 billion". You may also notice the phrases "revenue" and "$16.43 billion". Now, let's do some math, shall we?
5.23 / 16.43 = 31%
12 / 62 = 19%
Now what does this tell us? Well, for starters, it tells us that Microsoft has far higher net revenues - almost double, in fact. Just as importantly, it tells us that the gross revenue is roughly the same. So while the amount of revenue coming in to each company is almost the same, the overhead costs for pharmaceutical companies are far, FAR higher, and their profit margin is far slimmer.
What's it all mean? Well, for starters, companies with slim profit margins tend to avoid getting involved with products which won't significantly increase their revenue stream. However, more importantly as it pertains to your conspiracy theories, it means that there's enough competition in the market to keep their profits low, and it means that being able to patent a single super-drug could drive their profits through the roof. No company wants to collect nickels and dimes over the next hundred years if they can massively increase their profit margin in the short term and get a leg up on the competition. So the idiotic cancer conspiracy theories don't even make sense from a financial perspective, let alone from any other POV.
tl;dr version: meh. Big Pharma is Teh Bad!
Peterj is just a classic example of the mental disease of leftism. He starts from a flawed premise, moves on to paranoia, and, when contented by the silliness of his own preposterous "evidence" and poor "logic", pouts, moves to sophistry and keeps digging a hole for himself.
The question is, how can we get these people something approaching a productive job so that they can begin to understand how the real world works.
The proposition that "Big Pharma", by which I guess we mean successful pharmaceutical companies, would not jump at the chance to offer a real cure for cancer is absurd on the face of it. You whole premiss is self-contradictory.
BTW, Peterj, you should try working in "Big Pharma"--you might discover that one of the biggest costs is dealing with all the government regulation.
What you call "big pharma" is one of the greatest success stories in history. It has literally changes the shape of human life. I suggest you have a little humility and stop using them as punching bag for your frustrations or as a foil for you self-importance.
You think there's no money in a cures for cancers, peterj? Each and every one of the pharmas is searching for those myriad golden eggs because to own and patent it will make the company and its shareholders very, very rich.
To Kate's post: One wonders how far off is the nationalization of Canada's pharmaceuticals, given Canada's government-rationed monopoly health care model.
As someone in the cancer treatment industry, I don't know of anyone here who wouldn't mind being out of work due to cancer being "cured". There are tons of other medical issues to tackle and I'm sure an Oncologist wouldn't have to resort to greeting folks at Walmart. Besides, cancer is a generic term for over 100 different diseases of different body cells mutating. That is why there is no single treatment out there.
In a similar vein of this health topic, five orthopedic surgeons in PEI have gone public complaining that they do not get enough operating room time while island folks have to queue up to the magic waiting list (unless they are a socialist politician). Some of there lists are years long. The system needs an overhaul in the worst way and that doesn't mean paying a former NDP ex-premier from Saskatchewan to wander the country then say pour more money at it.
Rant is done, amen and pass the ammunition.
peterj: Do you honestly believe that all the drug companies in the world are conspiring instead of competing with each other? The average CEO is not average at all. They are super-competitive alpha males and females that would rather crush their competitors than work with them. Consider also that every year millions of cancer patients are born; therefore the company that finds the cure for cancer will have a product that millions of new customers every year will desperately need. The company that cures cancer will rule the roost for a long time.
Why hasn't a cure for cancer been found? Well to start cancers are viruses so antibiotics (penicillin, erythromycin etc) are useless. Consider that the common cold is a virus and mankind still hasn't found a cure for that. The only defense against a virus is vaccination. Can you imagine the public outcry if a health department mandated "cancer shots"?
By the way I have read that there are over 200 identified cancer viruses so if you had a vaccination every three months it would take 50years to be immunized against them all.
This is in the same vein as the "such-and-such shadowy megacorporation has had working plans for Cold Fusion gathering dust on the shelves for decades". It's totally ridiculous. The amount of human talent, technical resources, and regulatory compliance required to successfully research and develop a drug means a large amount of capital investment, at which point you're pretty much looking at large corporations by default. What else is a corporation but many investors pooling their capital?
I for one would applaud "obscene profits" by pharmaceutical companies, all the more money for investment in further research and development. It would likewise attract even more investors, because as they say "nothing succeeds like success." But to the point of this post, they're in fact not "obscene profits" and that contributes directly to the reluctance of manufacturers to produce many of these drugs in the needed quantities.
Al - of course they are. That's why polio and measles combine to kill and main millions in North America every..... oh, wait a moment.
Peterj - do you honestly think that something similar to a vaccine against cancer wouldn't sell more than the current trial drugs? If you make a product that the healthy can also buy, the customer base is a lot larger.
"Well to start cancers are viruses ..."
Wait ... WHAT?
The first part of your comment was bang on ... but this part, I have no idea where you got.
Some types of cancer can be caused by viral infections, but most aren't, and even those which are would still not be considered "viruses" in an of themselves. Cancer is a genetic mutation which creates rogue cells within your body. The thing is ... cancer is not a single disease - there are hundreds of different types of cancers, and no single treatment has been shown to be effective against all of them. We're unlikely to find "a cure for cancer" because any treatment we find will, at best, cure a small subset of them. In the long run we may develop enough different treatments to be able to cure 100% of the different types of cancers, but it will take a lot of research to get there.
Price control = shortages
economics 101
Does anyone believe Government can do anything more efficiently than private competitive companies?
I agree with most of the comments above.
Now for some natural cures we all need to be aware of after our meds run out..
Diatomaceous earth for human and pet consumption- DE for short..
Many other cures, esp. my high cholesterol and high blood pressure.
diatomaceous earth for humans and pets...
http://www.earthworkshealth.com/
-
A 50 pound bag only cost $29 dollars,
hell it cost more to ship UPS-
$30 dollars than it did to buy it.
Anyway....
The only problem I have it comes from crushed fresh water fossilized mineral deposits and probably has a little dried fish crap in it.
I saw a poll that claimed 60% + of doctors would retire, scale back or relocate if Obama care were to be enacted here in the USA. I really didn't believe it though. As a side note, I know docs in the USA are scaling back on Medicaid and Medicare patients. Groups of docs in our area are not taking any more patients: that is until you can convince them you have good insurance and you pay any balance due. I’m in a somewhat remote area and 3-4 clinics are already doing this.
Norman at 08:45
You are correct. I have worked in pharma pricing, hospitals and in community.
The control the government places on drug prices, both generic and non-generic is onerous. Regulation is a big problem.
I believe that if there were no drug plans, or plans with very limited coverage, overall drug prices would be cheaper.
But then, as one of my government supervisors said, the system "wouldn't be fair" and some patients would inevitably not be able to afford some medicines.
I think we get the message....most people in government believe it is better to let everyone suffers equally, because God forbid, letting the market decide is NOT ACCEPTABLE.
So fearless leader
We should eat sand rather than pound sand?
Thank you, Norman. YES. Regulation strikes again.
So Peterj, the answer is to adopt Directive 10-289 and require big pharma to sign all of their patents over to the government. That way their shareholders will not benefit from the unjust acts. The profit from the shareholders investment can be redistributed to the people as represented by the government. And the government can put new people in charge of the pharam companies. Those people will direct all of the profits at finding a cure for cancer.
It is so simple. Thanks for pointing this out to me Peterj.
You've got to be kidding me. If a pharmaceutical company came out with a cure for cancer they would become one of the most successful enterprises of all time. Do you realize what you could charge for such a thing?
The only problem is the communists like peterj would accuse them of profiting off the sick or some other such nonsense. So yeah if you want to find the culprits behind taking away motivation for people to innovate look in the mirror there peterj.
This has been fun and a lot of good points of debate have been thrown on the table. I will however stick to my original point of contention which is that the primary objective of the big pharmaceuticals is not to find a cure, but rather a way to keep a major disease at bay to insure maximum profit over a lifetime. A cure is a dead end to profit. I believe in Capitalism, I vote conservative, don't like government, believe in private enterprise and cherish this "conspiricy" theory because it is capitalism at its finest. I am also aware that opinions are like assholes and everybody has one. Just putting my opinion out there and don't really care who agrees or disagrees. Thats what this forum is for. Last but not least, I would give a lot to be proven wrong.
But peterj, one purpose of any business is to become very efficient at what it does and to keep on doing that and making money. Once they are on a roll they stay on it. They stick on the path they know. Railroads kept on railroading while substitute means of transport reduced their relevance and significance. These businesses do try to find new sources of revenue when their model allows it. They will continue to try to find cures for cancer like they found cures for polio. If the cure is a cure it will command a good price. The recurring revenue model is that all the newborns will be inoculated.
Innovators strike the established industry from a different angle. Calling over the Internet is replacing calling over your telephone. Netflix has replace Blockbuster and could soon replace the cable company. It could be that wellness will reduce cancers. It could be that an accidental discovery of a plant compound will cure some. It could be some venture capital funded mad scientist who finds it.
The point is what you describe as a conspiracy is at worst and at best profit maximization. In order to be a conspiracy there needs to be an agreement between at least two individuals to a nefarious purpose. As a capitalist you must believe in the pursuit of profit and give up the sophists argument that pursuit of profit from this business model is a conspiracy.
There is some truths scattered about this thread. As much as "Big Pharma" does not have a monopoly on R&D, many other posters have indicated the cost, effort and time involved with gov't regulations is shockingly onerous and therefore limits the ability for small players to enter this arena...especially to get a product approved and publicly available. If there is any reason that a term "Big Pharma" exists is in part to the sheer necessity to be "big" and have the resources and stamina to make it through gov't hoops.
There doesn't need to be a "conspiracy" for 'peterj' to be right on the money.
Corporations are not by nature altruistic. They focus on what generates the best profit margins. Period.
R&D is a loss leader; it only makes sense if it produces a wildly profitable new product...curing something is NOT the objective. Offering relief over an extended period is the ideal.
Viagra was/is the Holy Grail, especially since it was originally intended as an angina med.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sildenafil#History
Look at the sheer number of over-the-counter pain meds available. And the number just keeps on growing. Huge profit centres! The Docs have got pretty much everyone over 50 taking a 'baby aspirin' daily. Remember when ASA used to be cheap?
!
This thread has engaged some good debate.I believe there are strong issues on both sides. "Big Pharma" as it is called has the resources to look for new medicines to the benefit of us all. Cancer is a complex disease that has many causes and a cureall will be elusive. This takes a lot of cash to research; however the profit motive creates issues. In the US the constant advertising of drugs and the myriad of side effects that can happen( in the fine print) absolutley drive me up the wall. You would hope there would be something simpler to use than these drugs. The real issue is the commoditization of the pharmacutical industry yet trusting the government to control the pharmacutical industry is not a good option either.We need to realize that no funding will exist for alternate treatments if the expense of researching that treatment outweighs the the profitibility of it. Simple economics. Companies need profit to operate, yet this industry should have some checks and balances.
All it takes to knock the props from under peterj's fantasy is to remember the existence of Laetrile "clinics" and the numerous other fraudulent cancer "cures."
Thousands of people have blown, and continue to blow, their entire life's savings on unproven and /or fraudulent "cures" for cancer.
If Big Pharma came up with a clinically-proven and safe cure for cancer, they could sell it for a hundred thousand dollars a shot, and people would be delighted to pay it.
peterj - because your conclusion is a hypothesis, an opinion, it cannot despite your wish for such an answer, be proven wrong. Or right. You have an opinion and, as you also say, that's that.
I have the opposite hypothesis, well argued by many here (see rroe for example). I don't agree with your view that the 'big pharma' are focused on, not a successful final end product, but a 'maintenance product'.
I suggest that in the competitive market of capitalism, maintenance products are untenable. And unprofitable. That's why, for example, we have cars that require less maintenance, means of communication that remove space, operations and prosthetics that are far more than maintenance..and so on.
Furthermore, we should not consider that alternative methods are either final end successes or even just maintenance. There are side effects with all ingestion - and that includes herbal remedies etc.
Finally, bacteria for example, mutate to develop their own successful life paths. After all, bacteria 'want to live' just as much as we wish to control them. Same with viruses, and we can't reject the reality of entropic dissipation of any and everything that is material. There is no way to inoculate ourselves against that - and finding a cure for cancer will mean that another bacterium, virus, entropic means ..will emerge.
"There doesn't need to be a "conspiracy" for 'peterj' to be right on the money.
Corporations are not by nature altruistic. They focus on what generates the best profit margins. Period.
R&D is a loss leader; it only makes sense if it produces a wildly profitable new product...curing something is NOT the objective. Offering relief over an extended period is the ideal."
Again, wrong. This only works when you have a monopoly. In a free market with a healthy amount of competition, such an attitude CAN NOT work. The worst thing you can possibly do is built your business on "maintenance products" because the moment some new upstart comes along with an actual cure, you'll be deeply in the red and filing for bankruptcy. On the other hand, if you come up with the cure first, you can massively increase your profits while putting a strangle-hold on your competitors. The conspiracy theories about the automotive manufacturers supposedly suppressing "battery technology" or "100mpg carburetors" fail for the same reason - you can only build a market based on the suppression of technology when you have no serious competition.
"I suggest that in the competitive market of capitalism, maintenance products are untenable. And unprofitable."
Utter nonsense!
-soap
-toothpaste
-waterproofing spray (shoes and outerwear)
-car wax/conditioners
-aspirin et al (as I said previously)
-lawn fertilizer and herbicides
-paint. interior and exterior...the interior type of course you need to redo FREQUENTLY as the Interior Designers dictate!
-clothes need to be replaced at least twice a year, as style dictates. (not really "maintenance").
-etc. etc. Whole industries based on maintenance.
In fact, now that I think of it, Proctor and Gamble is essentially a maintenance product conglomerate.
Curing something is in the same category as building something that lasts forever...you only sell it once per client.
Once you've saturated the market, you're finished.
There are relatively few NEW cases of say, MS, diagnosed daily; however there are tens of millions of women taking birth control pills daily, for years per individual. Now THAT is "maintenance", of the most profitable variety!
Nothing to "cure", but highly effective.
daninvan - I'll say that your view is, itself, 'utter nonsense'. Your examples are not meant to be 'final products'! How can you compare a product that exists, in itself, for maintenance with a product where research is focused both on maintenance of health and on a 'final end cure'.
Is soap supposed to end, forever, the existence of dirt and grease and...? Wash you hands once in your life - and then, never again?
Is toothpaste supposed to end, forever, keeping your teeth and mouth clean?
Is waterproof spray supposed to be used once, and then, forever after, the rains, rains, slush and etc..won't affect it?
Is aspirin supposed to end, forver, all possibilities of a headache, fever and so on?
Hmm..so your lawns sprayed once, never ever are susceptible to weeds? No more weeds on the planet?
Clothes? Wear and tear - and don't compare the psychological desire to 'wear something different' with a 'cure for cancer'.
Your attempt to compare a product that is geared to maintenance with a product that hopes for a final solution - is ridiculous.
Even in the maintenance realm, capitalism and competition produce better products. Soaps that clean better; toothpaste; dusters and cleaners; washing machines and dryers...and so on.
I have to admit - I'm a bit stunned by your attempt to compare what is not comparable.
If R&D was serious in their search for cures they would look outside the box for cures. They 'blame' tobacco, poor diet etc. , isolating what could be the cause instead of what is missing for the cure is a major mistake in R&D and many other serious pursuits for knowledge. The researchers lack ability to function using inductive with deductive logic has produced one sided conclusions and no answers in so many scientific studies ('Climate studies' come to mind).
The Hunza people in the Himalayan Mountains do not have Cancer in spite of the fact that they smoke tobacco and would have less than healthy diets and lifestyles according to the'experts'. Apricot Pits? My mom took this information to heart and she made her Apricot jam with ground up pits right in the preserve. Our family smoke cigarettes, we do not have Cancer. We all ate gallons of Mom's Apricot jam. This proves nothing but why not consider it...if one has an open mind!
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/land_of_hunza.htm
All those who think for themselves are not Bolsheviks.
you guys probably don't even realize that net profits aren't reported in the same manner from the US to Canada. The GAAP rules differ here. (or at least they used to)
jema 54 - come on - correlation is not causation. If apricot pits were the answer, it would have been marketed as such not merely by naturopaths but by the pharmaceuticals. The vitamin, B-17, has never been shown as a preventative for cancer.
The Hunza (who are Muslims...hmmm..yet another correlation?)..don't keep track of their ages as we do so age estimations are non-factual. And they don't examine causes of death. So, there's no proof of 'no disease' and 'no cancer'.
Indeed, the opposite is true.
And your notion of 'the perfect natives' is romanticism on a par with the naive views of such as Margaret Mead and her tales of 'no war', 'no poverty' among the New Guineas. You can check out the health of other isolate peoples...and diseases exist among them as well.
Is their health due to the water, the exercise, their natural diet, their isolation as a population from others and thus from infectious diseases, their genetic isolation? Or, as actual reports declare - they have diseases, malnutrition
If this was the case, then all non-industrial peoples, with a 'natural diet' would have the same results.
And your comment about induction and deduction is unclear.
"The Hunza people in the Himalayan Mountains do not have Cancer in spite of .. blah blah blah ... 'scary experts'."
This is, of course, complete and utter bull, as is the rest of your comment. The Hunza pop up every now and then when some uniformed nut wants to speak about the health benefits of X, but it's usually the lefty lunatics who go down that road. Rare to see a right-wing nut take that particular tack.
"All those who think for themselves are not Bolsheviks."
This is true. You really should try it.
ET - with all due respect - I was not asking your opinion of the Hunza people; I was wondering why researchers for Cancer would not wonder why these people do not have Cancer. I have never met any Hunza people but I do wonder why they do not have Cancer. I know very few people who eat Apricot Pits, the Hunza people do eat Apricot pits; I, like my Mom, thought that the Apricot pits could, perhaps ...have something to do with the fact that these people do not have Cancer. Inductive and Deductive logic.
Inductive and Deductive reason are both essential forms of logic for researchers , IMO. Like 'checks and balances' in banking.
I was wondering why researchers for Cancer would not wonder why these people do not have Cancer.
~Jema54
Maybe the researchers of Big Pharma think that these people do have cases of cancer.
The Hunza...don't keep track of their ages as we do so age estimations are non-factual. And they don't examine causes of death. So, there's no proof of 'no disease' and 'no cancer'.
~ET
Well put.
Anyhow, peterj's issue was that "Big Pharma" was conspiring to 'not look' for a cure for cancer because there was supposedly more money in maintanence drugs and somehow nobody else can look for their own cure because "Big Pharma" has a monopoly on R&D.
I guess there isn't any law stopping people from eating apricot pits if they think that it will help, I don't imagine "Big Pharma" is going to interfer there.
Maybe apricot pits are what has been keeping Steve Jobs alive for so long, who knows?
I utterly disagree with the premise in the first sentence of the second paragraph: that there is no incentive for pharmaceutical companies to produce low cost generic drugs.
I live in Richmond Hill, just north of Toronto. Just a few blocks from my home is a huge plant owned by Apotex. Apo is one of the large Canadian generic makers (like Biovail); I take their generic metformin for my diabetes every day. Companies like Apo exist solely to produce low cost copies of formerly expensive drugs. If big pharma wants to exit from a market, companies like Apo are eager to fill the void.
There's an argument to be made that generic drug firms stifle innovation overall, since they prevent the companies that invest billions in original R&D from reaping monopoly profits ad infinitum, but under the much maligned Brian Mulroney, Canada reached an accommodation with Big Pharma, extending the years of monopoly, and increasing the mandatory licensing fees the generic firms must pay; the result was an increase in R&D in Canada, better jobs for pharma grads, and still lower overall prices for drugs in Canada than in the US of A. In ideological terms, it might be a disappointment (I still like the US Constitution's original compromise of 17 year patents), but in pragmatic terms, it seems to have worked out.
I find it very hard to believe that generic drug makers are sitting on their hands while potential markets go a glimmering.
As for the idea that Big Pharma suppresses cancer cures in favour of on-going maintenance drugs: I consider this the equivalent of the "Big Oil is hiding the 100 mpg carburetor" - pure paranoid poppycock.
jema 54 - you are not using either inductive or deductive logic.
Inductive logic operates by gathering masses of factual data...and then, coming up with a hypothesis.
So, induction says:
Every Hunza I've ever seen has no disease.
I've seen quite a few Hunza.
[Hypothesis[ So, all Hunza are have no disease.
The problem with this method is that it is not exhaustive; it cannot provide a universal truth. Nor can you claim that 'the future will mimic the past'. So, people like Hume and Popper have rejected it as a basic for arriving at knowledge.
Your 'apricot pits' example is not based on either induction or deduction. Certainly, there's no empirical observation of the health of the Hunza that proves them without disease and/or cancer. Equally, correlation is not causation.
And, there's nothing deductive about your statements. Deductive logic can be valid or invalid according to a linear consequence. It begins with accepting a premise; not empirically validating it but accepting it.
All Hunza are healthy.
Healthy people don't have cancer.
Therefore, Hunza don't have cancer.
The problem with this deduction is that it's purely analytic without reference to any actual statistical validation of either the first or second sentences.
You can substitute apricot pits for Hunza. Same invalid results.
remember all those bingo halls full of smokers who where banned ?
They used to bring billions in charity to Cancer research. Now they have been banned along with its patrons in the name of cancer causing smoke. Yet another example of selious Collectivists making Gold into straw.