[Ulvefar]

Opprinnelig lagt inn av Kitty Bastard, her.

Men har får SUV og stresskoffert, da.
Fin rant. Death to the zombies, indeed.

Det er riktig. Bare at SUVen er en sliten offroad feltkjerre for aa ta jordproever og stresskofferten inneholder en vanntett laptop med minimal grafikk og maksimal state of the art number crunching capabilities. Because I don't think I will be on Pfitzer's payroll anytime soon either. Probably I am best suited to be where I am.

Despite my rant above, I have little faith in "Big Pharma" and their intense marketing of questionable procedures (you have billboards the size of soccer fields every two miles advertising lap band surgery here), their infernal use of patent laws to maximize their profits while millions die from for instance the lack of cheaper off-brand AIDS drugs in Africa, and their distortion of science by using in-house researchers that simply are not allowed to publish their results if they do not support the company's preferred conclusions.

However, this is a known enemy that it is possible to combat. Political action and legislation can curtail abusive marketing and provide drug access to third world countries, and independent research can find the hyped new expensive drugs that are no better than their predecessors, have nasty side effects or simply do not work. In a world with political entities and scientists who work for competing companies or, better yet, draw their funding from public health and thus have no pressure to spin doctor questionable drugs, the pharmaceutical companies cannot expect to get away with murder all the time and it is expensive for them to be found out when they try. Hence, they actually have an incentive to provide drugs that stand up to scrutiny.

Those checks and balances however, becomes less dangerous the smaller the population of people who can perform them, and even less of a problem for the companies the fewer the people scientifically literate enough to understand or care. If everyone else can get away with quackery, why, then Big Pharma can too. If nobody cares whether a procedure actually works, but buy it anyway, then companies will and do exploit this.

Moreover, if you publish a study condemning a new drug as useless or dangerous and the people who join your side in the ensuing debate are Andrew Wakefield and a bunch of homeopathic anti-vaxers, then you have a serious problem. Because the company whose bottom line you are threatening will obviously point to the company you are keeping and imply that as you are of the tin-foil hats and snake oil crowd your research should be dismissed as such.

Thus, the conspiracy theorists who carry their paranoia as a badge of savvyness and their scientific illiteracy as a sign of open-mindedness actually end up being their own worst enemies. Not only by adopting medical (mal)practices that harm themselves and their surroundings, but also by helping those who are taking advantage of them.

/end rant/