generalsemanticist wrote:Look at statin drugs. Yes they lower chloresterol but they deplete CoQ10 and can actually
cause heart failure. Now there is some irony for you. If you want to take that poison, be my guest.
No substance is intrinsically toxic. Toxicity depends on dose. Yes, all medications have risks associated with them. There is no such thing as a risk free medicine (or food item). This is an illusion. Even something basic as aspirin can cause bleeding ulcers if used regularly for a long time.
You have to compare the risk of keeping the drug on the market (in your example, this was a slight elevated chance of hearth failure) with the risk of keeping the drug off the market (related disease and deaths caused by high levels of cholesterol). In many cases, you might find that the risks of keeping it off the market is much greater than the risk of keeping it on the market.
Also note that this is a tightly regulated industry, with the precautionary principle being applied frequently (such as in the case of Vioxx, silicone breast implants, thimerosal etc.)
It is so retarded to develop a drug that lowers chloresterol without finding out why it is elevated in the first place.
No, it isn't. Would you say that developing a drug that cures a specific cancer is worthless if we do not know the exact cause of cancer? In fact, developing a drug that cures a specific cancer is one way to actually aid in discovering the exact mechanisms underlying this specific conditions.
This is the main problem with modern medicine - it treats symptoms instead of causes.
Modern medicine actually treats both symptoms (various painkillers) and causes (antibiotics), as well as act preventative manner (such as vaccines). Your assertion is based on no real knowledge of the field of modern medicine.
Is it possible that proper levels of Vit C can stop this and even reverse it? Who is going to pay to find out?
If it is possible that a certain level of vitamin C can help, then this will be revealed in controlled, double-blind scientific studies. If there is even a slight chance that vitamin C can help, big pharmaceutical corporations would immediately be interested, because that means that they would be able to sell many new brands of drugs on the market, patenting formulas and names and make a fortune, especially if vitamin C actually treated something that there was no treatment for before. They would make billions of dollars.
There is a huge economic incentive for accepting vitamin C into evidence-based medicine if there actually was any evidence for the effects you assert that it has.
If I was a Vit C manufacturer I would like to increase sales but if I fund expensive research then any other manufacturer can take advantage of it so why would I bother?
If vitamin C actually had significant health benefits, you could do cheaper pilot studies and get funded by either governments or private corporations. It is not true that private business prefer no competition; if you are the only person selling CDs, you have to pay for all the advertisement that can attract potential customers. If you are 10 competitors selling CDs and making advertisements for the CD product, you will benefit from the increased awareness of the CD product that the other competitors help create. Often, customers try to save money, so they check different CD providers for the best price.
The health business does not work the same as the sickness business.
What you fail to understand is that Big Placebo is the sickness business.
by 
, and the fact is, if it works it'll go straight into conventional medicine and won't need to be alternative, got any evidence of woo doing as well as conventional medicine?
