We might like, or wish to believe that when a cure is found in a clinical study, big pharma swoops in and takes it to market. Or perhaps, when big pharma discovers a cure, they hide it away because cures are not profitable. The truth is not obvious, but much simpler.
Suppose, just suppose for a moment, that a double blind placebo controlled clinical study of a treatment for arthritis, or back pain, chronic disease, cancer, depression, diabetes, epilepsy, fibromyalgia, gout, hypertension, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), jaundice, kidney disease, lupus, mental illness, nutritional diseases, obesity, Parkinson’s, tinnitus, ulcers, or perhaps vision impairment – myopia or farsightedness, finds a patient cured. What happens next?
Nothing. Zip. Nada. The cures are lost.
All of the above are non-infectious diseases. Cured is not defined for any non-infectious disease. Not one. There are over 300,000 trials listed on Clinical Trials.gov. Not one has a medical definition of cured for a non-infectious disease. No such definition exists.
It makes no difference if the cure appears on the medical side of the trial, or the placebo side – the result is exactly the same. Patient’s who are cured are ignored. After all, they don’t need attention, they’re cured. But that’s not the reason they’re ignored. .
When a cure occurs, it’s out of scope. It’s outside of the parameters of the study. It might be measured as an “improvement in signs and symptoms“. It might be documented as a remission, or reversal of signs and symptoms the disease. But as a cure? Not. Cures cannot be documented for non-infectious diseases.
That’s not all. Cures are not defined for the common cold, influenza, mumps, measles, and many more, thus the mantra of medicine: “There is no cure for the common cold.” Clinical trials can test medicines and sell medicines for the signs and symptoms of these diseases – and many more, but no cures can be found. Cured is not defined.
The cure for the common cold is health. When we are healthier, we get fewer colds, and our healthiness cures them faster. When we are less healthy, we get colds more often, and they last longer. It’s the same for the flu – and many other infectious diseases.
It’s not hard to define cure for every illness. The definition of cure is published in A Theory of Cure, published at Academia.edu, and in the book The Elements of Cure. It’s simple and clean, and complete.
An illness is cured when:
- the present cause has been successfully addressed,
- when the signs and symptoms have faded and gone,
- when no more medicines are necessary.
(but, but… how can we define cure without reference to medicines?…)
(but, but… who buys medicines when no more medicines are necessary?…)
Clinical studies don’t look for individual cases of cured, they search for general treatments, preferably patentable and profitable.
When we define cured as “the present cause has been successfully addressed“, we begin to understand that most diseases are cured by health, not by medicines. But nobody studies healthicine.
And nobody studies cures. The word cure does not appear in many medical dictionaries. Neither does incurable – claims of incurable are made without proof, proof of incurable being impossible. Incurable : “being such that a cure is impossible within the realm of known medical practice” (Barron’s, 2013). If it can’t be cured with a medicinal treatment, it’s incurable.
Cured is defined medically for a few infectious diseases, cured with a medicine. Our medical systems use the germ theory of disease – even though most diseases, all non-infectious diseases, are not caused by germs. Killing germs is the only cure recognized by current medical bureaucracies. Modern medicine insists on killing the germs with antibiotics, even when it is an ineffective dangerous treatment. When an infectious disease is cured without a medicine – the cure is ignored. Surgery is often described as a curative, but there is no test of cured for any surgery – and certainly no test for a cure of the same condition without surgery.
What happens when green medicines cure a patient’s disease? Nothing. Nobody cares. Cures don’t count. There are no statistics for cures, so there are no statistics cure cures brought about by alternative medicines.
What happens when Kelly Brogan cures a patient’s depression? Nothing. The patient is cured. Kelly is happy. But nobody cares. Kelly has cured depression many times. Nobody cares. According to the DSM, we still need to “advance the treatment and eventual cures for these conditions“. Current cures? They don’t exist.
What happens after a cure by an osteopath, a naturopath, homeopath, a chiropractor, or a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine? Same same. Nothing. Cured is not defined for any condition cured by a chiropractor, and most cured by osteopaths. Cures by homeopaths are simply ignored. Cures by Traditional Chinese Medicine? Inscrutable.
Cures can be so embarrassing. What happens when a clinical study finds that warts are cured by homeopathic medicines? The study is replicated, by the same team – but cures are excluded from the results.
What if you cure your own illness? What if it is cured by your grandmother’s chicken soup, or sensible advice? What if you cure your warts with a potato, or a prayer? It doesn’t count.
What about cure rate? Officially, cure rate is Survival Rate: “The percentage of people in a study or treatment group who are still alive for a certain period of time after they were diagnosed with or started treatment for a disease, such as cancer” (Cancer.gov, 2019) is often stated as “cure rate“. It’s not about cures – it’s about survival. It’s not even about disease. Cure rate can only be calculated for specific conventional medical treatments, not for diseases. It’s never calculated for alternative treatments.
There are no statistics for cured for any disease.. Cures don’t count. Cures are not counted, they are ignored.
“Did it cure?” Nobody knows. Today, most treatments are compared using the concept of “works“, answering the nonsense of “which medicine DOES NOT CURE better?”
What will happen when we start counting cures, accounting for cured. All medical and non-medical treatment results can be compared on an equal plane. Big Pharma is not interested in true comparisons. They don’t bring products to market.
It’s time to study, cures, to count, and account for cured. It’s time to end the ignoring, to replace ignorance with science, a science of cure.
to your health, tracy
Author: A Theory of Cure
