this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2023
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I worked for a medical clinic years ago.
One doctor was pushing natural hormone therapy.
I asked one of the other doctors. He wouldn’t touch it.
He told me he sees thousands of patients each year. Some number will get cancer, and some number of them will sue him.
If he prescribes a medication, he can defend himself by pointing to the medical studies showing the safety of the medication.
If he prescribes anything natural, there are no studies showing safety, because nobody can patent natural substances. Therefore there isn’t much money to be made, so nobody spends the money to do good studies.
Even if it was a miracle drug, he wouldn’t prescribe it.
He is wrong tho, natural substances can and are regularly patented when a use is found for them or a production method that's better is discovered.
That was my initial reaction at first as well. However as far as I can tell, natural products are not patentable, unless the product in question has been modified, manipulated etc, to produce something that is deemed to have been significantly changed.
So, in the US, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that human DNA, being a naturally occurring product, cannot be patented. However, it also ruled that complementary DNA, essentially DNA that has been extracted and then modified in a lab, can be patented.
Monsanto has entered the chat.
DNA shouldn't be patentable. I guarantee you that the scenario that Micheal Crichton laid out in Next will end up happening at some point unless we reign this shit in.
Medicine is any substance that has a demonstrable healthcare effect (demonstrated through double blind tests and not some rando's anecdote). That includes natural substances.
To put it another way, medicine and natural substances are not two mutually exclusive (i.e. disjoint) sets, as you and/or your doctor friend appear to be implying.
That’s not what I’m saying.
I agree a natural substance can be medicine.
His statement - not mine - is that it couldn’t be patented.
Therefore the profit is limited.
Therefore there are fewer studies than a comparable pharmaceutical.
Therefore when (not if) he is sued, he will be less able to defend himself.
Therefore he won’t prescribe it.
Thanks for clarifying. Although I don't agree with your doctor friend from an ethical standpoint, the point about natural products not being patentable is an interesting one and hadn't occurred to me before.