Anyone else think it is strange that Smallpox is the only disease we have eradicated?

GuilewasNK

GuilewasNK

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First, I'm not one for a lot of conspiracy theories, but doesn't it seem odd we haven't been able to do this with any other disease?

I know I can't stand seeing drugs being marketed like a common retail product on TV. Do you think it is plausible that some diseases go uncured not for difficulty in finding a cure, but because money can be made and people's behaviors can be somewhat controlled (especially after the sexual revolution)?
 
What about polio?

Small pox is an old old disease. HIV, not quite as old. Give it time, they are billions upon billions going into R&D for these diseases, I doubt it has anything to do with a want curbing sexual deviance (because it certainly hasn't).
 
Like RAM, I was thinking of polio too. To "eradicate" a virus, you have to vaccinate basically everyone who would come into contact with it (while quarantining those infected) and pray to god that it doesn't mutate. They found a pretty cheap way to make smallpox and polio vaccines and had the willpower to do it (I could also mention the standard Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine that children get here in the US too, nobody gets those diseases here anymore either).

Viruses are tricky things and if they mutate a significant amount then no vaccination will keep you from getting infected. Added to that, some viruses can jump species, so even if you vaccinated every human on the planet, some non-human animals could still get the virus and it would continue to live and possibly mutate and jump back to humans in a form that the vaccine doesn't prevent against (or come back when people quit getting the vaccine - polio vaccines aren't standard in the US anymore...).That's where HIV is such a hard thing to kill - it mutates like crazy even while inside the host.

HIV wouldn't be the best idea for controlling people's sexual deviancy though - it's a reasonably hard disease to contract. Even if you have sex with someone who has HIV your chances are pretty low that you'll actually contract it (unless you have some open wounds on your genitals). You almost have to have contact with an infected person's blood to get HIV and that's not something that happens everyday or even during sex (and a condom will pretty much eliminate those risks).

(I'm not a doctor, so this is all just AFAIK :p).

There isn't always some easy fix to natural problems. Like other conspiracy theories, this one mainly fails in its assumption that people (or some group of people) have ultimate power. Nature is not easily controlled, it can kick our ass any day of the week.
 
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[quote name='Msut77']FoC, you had me going for a second.[/quote]

Watch your History Channel shows about the USSR's work on smallpox.

http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/020619.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox

I think (hope) the work was disbanded in the 80s.

EDIT: The History Channel I watched mentioned an outbreak of hundreds of people in Vladstock (who knows the exact spelling), but I can't find a reliable source. Bad stuff. The Commies were playing for keeps.
 
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Well after the medical advances of the early 20th century you would expect that the easiest diseases to defeat would get knocked back first (flu, polio , smallpox, etc)

During the Korean war US docs put Korean hookers on a constant regime of antibiotics, that's how bacterial STDs like gonnorea learned to mutate and resist treatment.

Diseases we think of as eradicated like the bubonic plague still exist in some places (like outer mongolia)

And yes, enough funding is not going to cure diseases partially because the batshit insane religious right thinks they're good fear fodder for morality policing. Just look at AIDS funding in the 80s before some of Reagan's hollywood friends got hit, or heck look at the HPV immunization debates of today. It's ironic that Jesus was known as a miracle healer, and today many "Christians" are at odds with the modern healers who want to use technology to work miracles.
 
[quote name='camoor'] It's ironic that Jesus was known as a miracle healer, and today many "Christians" are at odds with the modern healers who want to use technology to work miracles.[/QUOTE]

It's not ironic, it's a fundamental belief. You only say it's ironic because (I assume) you're not a practicing Christian. To a Christian Jesus =/= using stem cells from aborted fetuses to cure people.
 
[quote name='RAMSTORIA']It's not ironic, it's a fundamental belief. You only say it's ironic because (I assume) you're not a practicing Christian. To a Christian Jesus =/= using stem cells from aborted fetuses to cure people.[/quote]

If you told Jesus that his preaching would one day be an obstacle to a kid getting the use of his legs back, I bet he would vehemently deny it.
 
[quote name='camoor']If you told Jesus that his preaching would one day be an obstacle to a kid getting the use of his legs back, I bet he would vehemently deny it.[/QUOTE]

Sure, if you told him in a simple explanation like that.
 
[quote name='RAMSTORIA']It's not ironic, it's a fundamental belief. You only say it's ironic because (I assume) you're not a practicing Christian. To a Christian Jesus =/= using stem cells from aborted fetuses to cure people.[/quote]

That would be nice if stem cells always came from aborted fetuses. But lying is apparently also a fundamental belief of Christian extremists.
 
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[quote name='SpazX']That would be nice if stem cells always came from aborted fetuses. But lying is apparently also a fundamental belief of Christian extremists.[/QUOTE]


I understand that, and I'm playing devil's advocate here (devils advocate for christians, lulz!), personally I support stem cell research. But for the Christian voter that opposes stem cell research it's because of the fetus thing. And even though there are stems cell coming from all over the place there hasn't been, to my knowledge, legislation for the research that specifcally excludes cells from a fetus. If there was I'm sure their tune (well most) would change.
 
[quote name='RAMSTORIA']I understand that, and I'm playing devil's advocate here (devils advocate for christians, lulz!), personally I support stem cell research. But for the Christian voter that opposes stem cell research it's because of the fetus thing. And even though there are stems cell coming from all over the place there hasn't been, to my knowledge, legislation for the research that specifcally excludes cells from a fetus. If there was I'm sure their tune (well most) would change.[/quote]

Hopefully realizing that stem cells don't come exclusively from aborted fetuses would change a lot of people, but I think there are many who are opposed to using stem cells from blastocysts too. They go all the way with the personhood thing and it's a person from fertilization, even if it's artificial fertilization.

Their leaders certainly aren't trying to be reasonable about it either. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to find out that stem cells =/= aborted fetuses, but they're certainly not going to tell their followers that. It's hard to tell somebody that what their leaders have told them and they've believed for a long time is a lie.
 
[quote name='SpazX']Hopefully realizing that stem cells don't come exclusively from aborted fetuses would change a lot of people, but I think there are many who are opposed to using stem cells from blastocysts too. They go all the way with the personhood thing and it's a person from fertilization, even if it's artificial fertilization.

Their leaders certainly aren't trying to be reasonable about it either. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to find out that stem cells =/= aborted fetuses, but they're certainly not going to tell their followers that. It's hard to tell somebody that what their leaders have told them and they've believed for a long time is a lie.[/quote]

I don't think you're being fair. Why, just in my lifetime they've accepted the fact that Galileo was right after all and that the Earth does in fact move around the Sun. At this rate they might give us permission to find a cure for degenerative diseases around 2500!
 
[quote name='camoor']I don't think you're being fair. Why, just in my lifetime they've accepted the fact that Galileo was right after all and that the Earth does in fact move around the Sun. At this rate they might give us permission to find a cure for degenerative diseases around 2500![/QUOTE]


:roll:
 
The sad reality is that in the pharmaceutical industry, relative to other classes of drugs, antibiotics simply aren't profitable so very little R&D is expended in researching them. The nature of antibiotics are that they are essentially biological toxins that just happened to be more lethal to the bug than the patient so it's a lot tougher to get FDA approval for these drugs. Also, because of rampant antibiotic resistance, you really have to come out with a brand new class of antibiotic to really make a dent into the market (it wouldn't make any sense to come out with a new type of penicillin for example since most bacteria are resistant to it). Since there is a narrow window for a drug to go generic after patent expiration, it's just much easier and profitable to churn out a new ED drug or cholesterol drug, where they can just modify a small part of the compound to create a "new" patentable drug, rather than go through the added time and expense to come up with a brand new drug from scratch that will be tough to get to market.

Quite messed up when you think about it. There hasn't been a brand new broad spectrum antibiotic for at least the past five years and our big guns (vancomycin and linezolid) are increasingly encountering resistant strains.
 
Generally speaking, I avoid pharmaceutical drugs, and Dopa nicely summarized why. Well, other than DayQuil and NyQuil for control of my nose when I get sick for a few days every few years.

Considering how drug companies casually advertise their products all over the place, I would assume money considerably factors into the equation. I assume the situation is like the Madden NFL games. Create a loyal user base then release mild improvements each year that many addicts will buy just because it is said to be "new and improved" and will quell their need for a fix.
 
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