I'm a big fan of modern medicine.
But I recognize it's limitations and weaknesses, too.
One of those is these: It largely ignores the role of nutrition, and in particular it ignores the role that nutritional supplements can play in preventing and treating various conditions.
Why is that?
One of the reasons is that doctors aren't given a great deal of training in nutrition. Another reason is that drug companies aren't interested in the subject.
Why is that?
Because they make their money off drugs–synthetic substances that they can patent and then charge lots of money for.
I don't begrudge them that. I'm glad that they're developing new drugs, and given the costs of doing that, they need to be able to make their money back and make a profit.
But there is one aspect to this that can be rather insidious.
You see, the human body contains a lot of different natural substances that it needs to run right. Sometimes it needs particular natural substances to repair itself.
But you can't patent these substances, and they are often easily derivable from natural sources that don't require a patentable process to extract them.
That means drug companies can't make money off them. Or, rather, they don't think that they can make the kind of money they'd want in order to invest in producing them.
So what do they do?
Often times they'll sink a lot of research dollars in coming up with a synthetic substance that mimics the function of a natural one or that stimulates production of a natural one in the body–or something along these lines–and this synthetic substance they can patent and make a lot of money off.
If they can sell it to doctors, who (just coincidentally) don't know much about nutrition or nutritional supplementation.
What's bad about that?
Well, for one, it costs patients (directly or via their insurance companies) a lot more money to pay for the synthetic substance when they could just take the original natural one.
For another, the synthetic substance may not work exactly like the natural one. It may, for example, have side effects that the natural one doesn't. (Because, y'know, it's not naturally found in our bodies. Though, N.B., that I'm not arguing that just because something is natural it's automatically harmless or harmless in a particular dose or automatically effective or effective at a particular dose.)
So I don't like this aspect of the situation.
What brought all this to mind?
IT WAS THIS STORY ABOUT A NEW INSOMNIA DRUG.
As a life-long suffer of insomnia (when people ask me "Where did you get your theological background?" I tell them "School of Late Night Studies"), I'm always interested in possible insomnia treatments, so I read the story. And guess what it says?
An insomnia drug that helps the body produce more of the sleep hormone melatonin may improve sleep for jet-lagged travelers and shift workers, researchers reported on Monday.
Maryland-based Vanda Pharmaceuticals Inc. reported on two studies of its drug tasimelteon, also known as VEC-162, that showed it helped patients sleep longer and more deeply than a placebo.
Okay, great. A drug company has come up with a drug that stimulates melatonin production and, as a result, people taking the drug sleep better than if they take a placebo.
Fine.
But . . . uhhh . . . excuse me. . . . why don't people just take some melatonin?
I mean, melatonin is a natural substance that is widely available. It's in every nutritional supplements store out there.
Why spend lots of money (directly or via your insurance company, which ultimately has to be paid for out of the customers' pockets) to take a drug that stimulates melatonin production when you could just take melatonin itself?
I can imagine reasons.
For example, some natural substances are ones that we can't nutritionally absorb by eating them. Some, for example, need to be taken sublingually so that they go into the bloodstream directly, bypassing the digestive system. And, in fact, there are sublingual melatonin tablets out there. Whether melatonin needs to be taken that way, I don't know, but it's available either way.
So . . . why?
The story notes toward the end:
Melatonin can fight jet lag too but over-the-counter melatonin products are not regulated, they pointed out, and have not been consistently shown to help treat jet lag and other sleep disorders.
Okay, so we are offered two reasons: First, over-the-counter supplements aren't regulated the way drugs are.
That's not a sufficient argument. Lots of things, including food, isn't regulated the way drugs are, and it's a good thing, too. Imagine what would happen to your ability to eat if every single meal you consume had to be prepared under strict, patented processes that had been rigorously scientifically tested for safety. Even the cost of the healthiest food in the world would skyrocket.
Lack of comparable regulations thus isn't a reason on its own. If one wants to argue that something should be avoided if it hasn't been regulated the way drugs are then one needs to show (a) that it needs to be in the same class as drugs and (b) that the regulations on drugs are calibrated correctly.
The second reason was that OTC melatonin products "have not been consistently shown to help treat jet lag and other sleep disorders."
That is a fascinating statement for sooo many reasons.
For instance: "Consistently"? Is that an admission that some studies have shown them to help these conditions, though not all? Just how many studies? What the ratio? How were they done?
And . . . just how many studies have been done on the new melatonin-encouraging drug? One?
Something like a third of all studies turn out to be wrong. Is the stution that we have a bunch, though not all, studies saying melatonin helps sleep disorders but only one saying that the new drug does?
And if the drug company is interested in arguing to Reuters that their drug is preferable to natural melatonin (note that the story says "they pointed out" these arguments), why did they only test it against a placebo instead of melatonin itself?
Interesting questions!
