At the chemist recently, I had to step around a pop-up display trap set for innocent shoppers, selling magic. Expensive magic. ‘Naturopathy’: iridology, homeopathy, kinesiology …
I tried to ignore it but the ‘alternative medicine’ merchants targeted a customer who did not appear prosperous, after a chunk of what money she had, for … what exactly? A box of nothing at all.
If they accosted pensioners buying the cheapest tinned tuna and sold them magical ‘alternative food’ which was really cardboard, you’d say they were pretty reprehensible.
Why would a pharmacist allow this? For the same reason I have to wade through an acre of snake oil to reach the ‘actual medicine’ counter and every pharmacy in Australia is now awash with this hoax.
Because quackery yields many times the profit of actual drugs. They cost hundreds of millions to develop, test in clinical trials over years, gain approval for and manufacture. You need labs the size of Bunnings with well-paid scientists and to gamble vast sums on research that might lead nowhere.
Bogus ‘medicine’ skips all that. Straight to market – watch the profits flow.
This is so unethical in what is supposed to be a branch of reputable medicine, I became agitated. If I’d got my script a little sooner, I might have just left, resigned to a regulatory regime which fostered a multi-billion-dollar fraud that swallowed actual pharmacology.
But I didn’t. By the time the chemist made his slow keystrokes, the snake oil ladies sold a pensioner a bucket of nothing at tenfold what I paid for real medicine. He held out my box. He and his colleagues were listed on the wall: ‘Name … B Pharm.’, in each case.
“Excuse me, you have a Bachelor of Pharmacy?.” “Yes.” “A science degree?”. “Yes”. “So what’s this?” I said, gesturing to my left.
“Would you like an appointment with our naturopath?”. “No, I would like an explanation. What’s next? A pop-up witch doctor?” He seemed nonplussed, so I said “This is really disgraceful. It’s exploitation. Thanks for the medicine.”
Where is ‘Big Pharma’ in this? Some of the biggest corporations on earth which make life-saving medicines, to many they now embody ‘corporate evil’.
Their abject failure to defend their industry and science has contributed to flourishing anti-science, which recruits millions ‘doing their own research’ on the internet.
Anti-science has grave consequences. It spawns dangerous weirdness like anti-vaxxers, anti-fluoriders and Pete Evans. Many of them are enriching themselves selling fraudulent products to the gullible.
Now we have a rabid mob of virus deniers, face-mask refuseniks and vaccine rejecters during the worst pandemic in a century. And how is ‘Big Pharma’ countering this deadly mass delusion and defending medicine?
With silence.
Ross Neilson is Director, Communications and Engagement at Retorix.