Swine Flu and The Third Reich

Since most of the hits I get on this blog are from my pharmaceutical related posts, and because I was recently given some stellar blogging fodder material on the subject, I thought I'd address the topic again. But before I do, I should point out that I am in no way a spokes person for the company I work for or for pharmaceutical companies in general, or for scientists or anyone else. I'm just a post-doc who works for a pharmaceutical company, trying to do some cancer research. Oh, and just to keep my hind parts safe I'm not going to mention the name of the company I work for anywhere in this post. Let's just call it Company X. The truth is, I could be working anywhere. The issues wouldn't change with the name of the institution.

Two Fridays ago, I was waiting outside the building where I work, waiting for my wife to pick me up, and I noticed some homeless hippie/hipster looking individuals meandering around the bus stop across the street. One was sporting some sweet tie-dye digs and he had hand-held video camera. His buddy was all decked out in black clothes, small dark sunglasses, a slick goatee and holding a stack of papers, looking like a lost beatnik. At the time I figured they were probably film students or they were on their way to an AA meeting or something, but I'll just say now that they were a little conspicuous.

Soon, Sara came by and I got in the car and as we were pulling away, the tie-died gentleman approached me and asked if I would like some information about the company I work for, "the one that makes vaccines." Sara immediately said "no thank you." But, I stopped her and said, "are you kidding? I'd love some 'information." And so, the rabbit hole of insanity began. I was given three hand-outs. One was a brochure style tri-fold that read across the front, "The [Company X] Family Tree: The Swine Flu and The Third Reich." I knew this was going to be fun. The second hand-out was a glossy 4x6 card chock-full of scary language about vaccines. Most of which, I don't even understand, but there's a picture of 3 little children crying while a blistered hand draws a syringe from a bottle labeled, "Vaccine Deaths & Autism" with a little line graph diagram skyrocketing from 1975-2009. - This is all very scientific stuff - I'm no autism and Asperger syndrome expert, but I would wager that the diagnosis of both has gone up dramatically between those dates particularly because they weren't added to the DSM until 1994. The text on the card also reads, "Just say NO to vaccines! Educate yourself before you vaccinate." Would you make up your mind people? Do you want us to educate ourselves or say no to vaccines? Which is it?

With all the craziness aside, I have to admit that the individuals were quite cordial and if I felt as strongly about a topic as they apparently do, then I would hope to go about persuading folks toward my agenda through similar means. I'm a big fan of education. It's even good to venture into the crazy once in a while, if for nothing other than to make sure you can recognize crazy when you see it. That's why I chose to respond to the third hand-out I was given. It reads exactly as follows [punctuation included, but I changed the font and various text colors just to improve the aesthetics of my blog... I do have standards]:

Questions we would like you to answer and reflect on:

So far so good. I'm assuming they want me to challenge my opinions and beliefs about the pharmaceutical industry or the use of vaccines in general. I can do that.

"what is the primary purpose of [Company X]?"

Easy enough. I think our purpose is to produce pharmaceutical therapeutics for common, unmet medical needs.

"what is your primary responsibility to; the people who buy your drugs? your share holders? the people who use your drugs?"

That's a pretty good question. To be quite honest, I'm pretty far removed from all of those people. The word, "shareholders" has never come up at work. I would say my primary responsibility is to publish oncology related research, but if I need to pick a person, I'm probably primarily responsible to the global head of oncology.

"if you found an open-license, non-patentable herb/substance/chemical that would 100% cure cancer, would you market and sell it?"

Ok, we're getting to the good stuff here. I think this touches on a few misconceptions about the pharmaceutical industry, but first I'll answer the question as best I can. I have nothing to do with marketing, so I can't really answer it directly. But, you bet your ass I would characterize, publish and be a huge advocate for any herb/substance/chemical, compound, treatment, therapy or rain dance that 100% cured anything, and particularly if it cured a cancer.

Now, the scientist in me has to point out a few things. First, there is no secret cure hiding behind the walls of big pharmaceutical companies. If I knew of a cure, I would publish it even if I couldn't make any money on it, just because I'm an ego-maniac. I would want everyone to know that I found the cure for cancer. All of the scientists I know are the same way. Then, after I published it, I would still manufacture and sell it. Who would you want to buy your "cancer cure" from? I'll buy mine from the guy who discovered it. You don't need a patent to make money from selling a drug. Did you know that Bayer's patent for aspirin expired almost a hundred years ago? Isn't it crazy that they can still sell boat loads of the stuff?

I will leave the complications of discovering a "cure" for the next question.

"would you market and sell a drug that would cure cancer at any level (not mediate but cure)?"

Yes.
Okay, now that my answer is out there, what do we mean by "cure?" because if you mean symptom free survival, then we already have "cures" for some cancers (although I agree, not nearly enough of them). And if you mean that it increases survival rates, then we have many more "cures." But, if you mean that 100% of the cancer is removed from the patient's body, then the issue gets muddled a bit. The semantical problem is that there's always a chance that cancer can come back. It's always possible that a single cancer cell is still hanging around and will start growing and make a new tumor at some point. That's why we call it "remission." So, even if we found a "cure" that was, for all practical purposes, 100% effective, unless you surveyed every cell in a person's body to prove no more cancer survived, we would still call it remission. Even then, I'm sure the lawyers would insist that no one ever mentioned the "C" word.

"Do any of your drugs actually work to cure, or fix problems, or just mediate or slow down a problem?"

Company X drugs? Yes. Specifically, I know of several. I only know of one in oncology (imatinib used for CML), but there are more in other disease areas (one of them is actually given to third world countries for free, and as a result leprosy is now basically eradicated). To answer the subtext of the question, no scientist I have ever met has ever intentionally produced a sub-optimal treatment for cancer. The goal is always to produce the most effective treatment possible. The goal is always to cure. The shitty reality is that cancer is an outstandingly complicated disease and, so far, we seldom do better than to extend the life of patients by a few months or years. But, I'll keep working on it and so will thousands of others.

"Since people take your drugs to fix problems, where are the now healthy people that are not taking your drugs any more" Any at all? why?"

Well, I met 3 of them last year. It was fantastic to hear from patients that had taken one of the drugs produced by Company X and are now in remission. But, personally, my mother had Hodgkin's lymphoma, which is a very treatable cancer. She is also now in remission and no longer takes any medications. But, it was several months of intense radiation and chemo, followed by a few years of post-treatment. Thank the gods there are people out there who took the time to find a treatment for that disease and good-on-em if they made money doing it. I'm sure they deserve it.

"how much money does your company need from the government to make a profit?"

Good question. I'm sure the answer is none. The pharmaceutical industry is the most lucrative business out there. That is not to say that pharmaceutical companies don't take any money from governments. I'm sure they take a lot, but they don't need it, and I would be 100% in favor to stop tax dollars from going to any company, pharma included.

"Can your drugs be used along-side homeopathic remedies and natural medicine? Why? Why Not?"

I suppose it depends on the homeopathic remedy. But, I would wager that the answer is usually yes, take your echinacea along with your cancer drugs. It probably won't hurt. It won't help either, but it won't hurt. I was always under the impression that most "homeopathic remedies" won't work unless the patient stops taking "traditional medicine." I've never heard of a cancer drug losing efficacy if taken alongside oleander soup.

So, there you have it, straight from a post-doc working for big pharma... for whatever that's worth. But don't take my word for it. Do your own reading and make up your mind for yourself. It won't take long to recognize the quackery where it exists. Thanks for the dialogue and keep the questions coming.