The Financial Finesse From The Pharmaceutical Industry

It’s so brilliantly covert that most people don’t even notice it.

I was engaging in conversation with some of my students about their future job prospects. Given that their background is in pharmaceutical sciences, and that they’d have a high chance of working in a pharmaceutical manufacturing plant in the future, which is, of course, supported by the Singapore government’s Tuas Biomedical Park…

We got into the idea of why the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector will always be on the upward, money-making trend, and when they saw the why, their immediate response was “let’s go finesse our parents!”

Because I could just randomly select a group of middle-aged people from a crowd, and chances are that most of them would be experiencing some form of long-term, chronic condition that requires a chronic use of medication — whether it be something like Type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol or hypertension.

And all these conditions are something that there is no medical cure for.

But the use of the medication is to control the symptoms of the situation such that it doesn’t worsen (or so we assume).

Because if we were to understand that the body has that many complex biochemical pathways that have the potential to interact with and influence each other, we’d end up realising that the visible symptom of a problem is actually highlighting that there are underlying unresolved issues within the body.

And that goes for any kind of human relationship too — what is the real matter at hand when a situation goes completely ugly? It’s usually the result of some hidden or unresolved hurt in a person that has to be first dealt with before the issue can be resolved.

But the thing is, as long as people are faking themselves into thinking (or buying into the marketing spiel) that their health condition (or rather, the symptoms) can be controlled via the use of medication, compounded by the fact that the symptom may not bring about much sorts of physical discomfort, then we do know one thing.

They’d become regular subscribers to the drug.

You know, those people who go to the doctor’s for a regular checkup, and get their prescriptions for a few months’ worth of medication to last until the next checkup comes?

Wouldn’t that be considered a subscription?

And since the drug doesn’t “cure” the problem, but just keeps the symptoms under control…

That’s when my students start thinking of finessing their parents.

Because if the biochemical pathways in the body are that complex…

Let’s just say that there’s a 20 step sequence in a biochemical mechanism that exists for a certain disease — which medical researchers have been able to piece together after years of experiments and analyses. Let’s call Step 1 the start of the process and Step 20 the end of the process — where the symptoms of the disease appear when Step 20 goes awry.

When Step 1 goes awry, Steps 2 to 20 will go awry.

So if we were to go after the root cause of the issue, we would have to deal with Step 1.

Altruistically, I’d know that being able to deal with Step 1 would bring about the most relief for the most people.

Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical industries ain’t gonna be that altruistic. Why would that be so?

Because sick people present the most lucrative opportunities for them to finesse money out of, no?

So if I were to be profit-mongering, I’d go after the development of a drug that can work on Step 15 of the mechanism. If things work out fine, I can get it patented and bring it out for clinical trials. If it is approved for use in specific situations, then I can make use of the patent’s remaining lifespan to charge top dollar.

And that’s how Pfizer’s statin drug, also known as Lipitor, was considered to be a legendary cash cow.

But when the patent lifespan expires, I need another profit-mongering source.

Now imagine I can pour in enough research funding to be able to get multiple drugs that can address various different steps of the 20 step mechanism. And get some of them patented…

I would be rolling in the dough, yo.

That’s one reason why the anti-inflammatory markets are always improving their products (and their profits).

And of course, how can we forget that the COVID-19 vaccine products have also spawned NINE new billionaires?

Inflammation is such a tough thing to comprehend, but non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are cheap, off-the-counter (OTC) stuff these days. They aren’t half as profitable as the patented biologics drugs, which can provide more inflammatory relief, though the downside is that the price of pain relief shoots up tremendously. (And of course, more potentially nasty side effects too).

The problem is…

There are many diseases that can potentially be reversed if we do find out the source of the problem to address. But yet there are many other diseases that may not be so because they are hereditary or genetic in nature.

Though let’s face it, it’s much easier to label some problem as “genetic” so that we don’t have to spend that much time talking about it… because who on earth even knows what “genetic” means unless they go read up on it and have a good grasp of it?

If we do buy into the idea of continuously self-medicating, for example…

1. Tylenol/Panadol for headaches
2. Advil for pain relief
3. Pepto-Bismol for heartburn
4. And so on…

We’d end up focusing on what happens on the surface of things, without pausing to wonder what’s actually going on in our body.

For example, if we do have a fever, we’re looking at an overexpression of pyrogenic substances that cause our bodily temperatures to overshoot beyond a “normal” range.

In the case of a runny nose, we’re looking at an overexpression of histamines, which triggers mucus hypersecretion within the nose.

The question being: what causes the overexpression of the pyrogenic substances that cause an overshoot in the body’s temperature, or what causes the overexpression of histamines in the nose?

Sure, taking an antihistamine drug will help to block the histamines from reaching and triggering the histamine receptors…

But does it do anything with regards to understanding what’s causing the overexpression of those histamines?

In the same way, statins block the synthesis of fresh cholesterol… but does it help one to understand why or how they’re actually accumulating cholesterol in their bodies?

It doesn’t.

And as long as people are kept unaware of the root cause, but are just happily subscribing to a recurring prescription…

The pharmaceutical industries will always be hiring.

My students will have consistent job opportunities in this sector.

They’d be finessing their parents.

And the Singapore government would come out looking extremely wise by dedicating one whole swathe of land for pharmaceutical manufacturing purposes. It even recently managed to get Sanofi to pour in investment money for starting up a vaccine manufacturing plant…

And, as we know it, anyone who can manufacture a “working” COVID-19 vaccine will be engaged in a highly profitable venture for the years to come. Just ask Pfizer about that, will ya?

Even though I personally do think that the marketing of the vaccine is designed to pull people's attention away from the fact that chronically poor, but sustained lifestyle choices have already caused their immune system functions to silently deteriorate over the years without them even knowing.

While I do think that the vaccine is a cash grab… There are 2 reasons for taking it.

1. If one has a healthy functioning immune system, taking it wouldn’t bring about many complications at all. Taking it would be kind of useless, actually. Personally, I’m only using it as a future license to travel.
2. If one doesn’t have a healthy functioning immune system, well… at least the vaccine might give their immune system a better shot at weathering a viral infection.

I’m not an anti-vaxxer — I do believe that most people already have poorly functioning immune systems that can’t withstand the viral load on any given day. So even though I think the vaccine isn’t really helpful and is just a disguised cash grab…

It’s much easier just to get the injections over and done with.

But in the meantime, understanding what nutrients in our diet may support a healthy immune system can be quite helpful too.

Joel Yong, Ph.D., is a biochemical engineer/scientist, an educator and a writer. He has authored 5 ebooks (available on Amazon.com in Kindle format) and co-authored 6 journal articles in internationally peer-reviewed scientific journals. His main focus is on finding out the fundamentals of biochemical mechanisms in the body that the doctors don’t educate the lay people about, and will then proceed to deconstruct them for your understanding — as an educator should.

Do feel free to subscribe to my mailing list for more exclusive content!