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Funding Alternative Medicines Research
Bruce Barbour - September 2024
I was thinking about this the other day and concluded that this should not be the case. The alternative or "natural" medicine industry is a multi-billion dollar industry in Australia alone. Just go into any Chemist Warehouse or some other pharmacies and you will see huge number of shelves stocked full of these medicines. In fact in some pharmacies there is more shelf space devoted to these products than to doctor prescribed medicines behind the prescriptions counter. The funding of research is a matter of how can we get a small fraction of that billion dollar industry turnover being devoted to researching "alternative" medicines and practices?
Firstly as it is a billion dollar industry we have to answer the question - why isn't the industry voluntarily doing more research itself to "prove" the efficacy of their medicines? There are two answer to this question that I can think of:
- there are no patents on alternative medicine. Many are manufactured and supplied by multiple companies. If one company does research on the medicine and proves its efficacy it is not just the company that did the research that will get the benefit from that proof. All companies that manufacture the medicine will. In other words one company spends the money and does the research to Western medical standards - which would not be cheap - and the other companies effectively freeload off that getting the same benefit as the research company. If there are say 10 companies making the medicine the company that spent the money on the research might only get 10% of the benefit.
- if the research is done and it comes back negative (the medicine is not proven effective) then what do they do with that research? Do they stop selling that medicine - they should. However that medicine, even though proven ineffective, might be making the manufacturer tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. And the alternative medicine is more likely than not to come back as ineffective to the standards required by Western medicine.
It is clear to me that some alternative treatments are effective despite not having scientific proof of efficacy. And because they haven't scientific proof few Western doctors will recommend them to their patients. This is unfortunate because often these treatments are a fraction of the cost of the medically recognised treatment.
My own experience - a sample of one and therefore anecdotal. I had tinea between by toes - admittedly a minor condition though very annoying. I bought and applied many tubes (and many brands) of the anti-fungal creams available without prescription from a pharmacy and it still didn't resolve the condition. Then for some reason - I can't remember whether it was due to something I read or some other reason - I started to dry between my toes with a hair dryer - after the morning shower and also before bed at night. I also started to use metholated spirits on the toes - spraying it on using a plastic trigger bottle. Worked like a dream - much more effective than the pharmacy creams. To prevent re-occurrence I still continue to use the hair dryer after showers or swimming and occasionally spray with metho if there is a "tingle". I have heard that vinegar is also very effective as a treatment.
OK - so not the most Earth shattering treatment discovery. But it is a hell of a lot cheaper than the multi tubes of creams that were ineffective anyway. I doubt whether if you went to a medical doctor they would advise this treatment. They would suggest pharmacy creams and when that didn't work anti-fungal drugs.
There are other alternative treatments that address more substantial diseases or conditions. One of these is the use of vitamin D as a treatment or a prophylactic against Covid 19. I wrote about this here. In summary there were a couple of small scientific studies that suggested that vitamin D might be useful. However these studies where very small and insufficient to make population wide recommendations about its use - as a prophylactic or a treatment. The issue I had was not with the conclusion that the small studies were insufficient for a general recommendation to the public for its use but with why, given the prima facie evidence of effectiveness, wasn't a larger definitive study undertaken to either prove or disprove its efficacy. If found to be effective it would give the World another tool (a cheap tool!) in the toolbox against the Covid 19 epidemic.
I suggest that the reason was that there was no funds - either from manufacturing companies, probably for the reasons outlined above, or from government. Governments for some reason don't see it as their role to do or fund medicine effectiveness studies. Or, putting on my conspiratorial hat, due to the political parties' donors from big pharma not wanting them to.
Funding should come from the manufacturing companies as they will benefit from increased sales but there is the issue as discussed - how to get funding from the billion dollar industry to go into research when it may run counter to their business model but would be of benefit to the general public?
My suggestion - the imposition of a surcharge on the turnover of all alternative medicine manufacturing companies and importers. The money collected would go toward funding of an independent organisation (the "Organisation") tasked with determining which alternative medicines are effective.
Their tasks would be to firstly determine which alternative medicine should be investigated. This could be self determined by the Organisation or from suggestions from the alternative medicine companies, medical (alternative and Western) practitioners or even members of the public. The first part of the study would be a desk top review looking at what existing scientific research and testing (patient trials) has been done on the medicine, whether they showed promise or in fact verified or disproved the efficacy. If the alternative medicine shows promise but the testing is inconclusive then the Organisation could fund larger and better testing that is sufficient so that a firm usage recommendation could be made that would satisfy the Western medical community and the rest of us of the efficacy of the treatment. The results would be made widely available to the public and medical doctors. Doctors would be encouraged to suggest the patient tries the cheaper alternative medicine first before other drugs.
The size of that surcharge would have to be determined based on what the amount of funding it is needed to carry out the Organisation's task. Might be a couple of percent on turnover. A one percent surcharge on a billion dollars is ten million dollars.
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As a further suggestion this could be expanded to include drugs out of patent. Sometimes these are found to be effective in treatment of diseases other than what the drug was originally made for. They still need to be researched and they have the same problems as the funding of research into alternative medicines. If implemented it would involve a surcharge (perhaps different to that for alternative medicines) on the makers or importers of out of patent drugs. However this is a secondary suggestion that could be implemented a number of years after the alternative medicines proposal if thought warranted. It is the main proposal that is the most important.
