[WEBSITE NOTE: This is section 4 of the Preface. It concerns some of the
underlying problems that exist in alternative cancer medicine, which hinder
its acceptance. See also our many Cancer Chronicles articles on the economics
of cancer.]
4. Underlying Problems
But all will not be clear sailing. Unfortunately, the fact that the government
is finally encouraging a serious study of alternative methods do not render
the main conclusions of this book invalid. Before alternative medicine can
receive a fair testing, or be accepted, certain major obstacles have to
be overcome. The biggest of these, in my opinion, is the entrenched opposition
of the "medical-industrial complex."
Monopoly is a long-standing problem. As early as the 1950s and 1960s,
five major companies, whom the Federal Trade Commission described as a
cartel, were convicted of fixing the prices of then-new antibiotics. Since
1989 there has been an unprecedented wave of mergers: SmithKline and Beecham;
Bristol-Myers and Squibb; Glaxo and Wellcome; Pharmacia and Upjohn, etc.
In early 1996, Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy announced that they were "rushing
into each others' arms" (Wall Street Journal, 3/7/96) to create a giant
with a market value of over $60 billion.
Such mega-mergers have turned the pharmaceutical industry "upside down
in the past three years" (ibid.). Each of the top ten companies now has
annual sales of between six and twelve billion dollars. These mergers
raise the specter of even greater monopoly, patent abuse and the stifling
of innovation--all things that are disastrous to that spirit of open inquiry
in which alternative medicine thrives.
The immediate result of the mergers of the 1990s may be layoffs and
other cost-cutting measures, raising their profitability in the short
run. But they do not solve the industry's underlying problem, which many
analysts identify quite simply as too few good ideas.
