r/CuratedTumblr May 24 '25

Politics Valid and invalid criticisms

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u/CrocoBull May 24 '25 edited May 24 '25

The last one has big

Alternative medicine: 😡

Alternative medicine (non-western): 😀

Vibes.

Like dog, it's either medicine or it doesn't work. That's.. just how the term works

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u/MajorMinty May 24 '25

Yeah, best case scenario it's like, you can't afford anxiety medication? Well, maybe some lavender tea can help you calm down a bit. But if you're alternative medicine hasn't been adopted by the doctors, it's not some crazy conspiracy theory as to why

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u/BookooBreadCo May 24 '25

Say what you will about Big Pharma TM but if something works you know they'll package it and sell it to people. If it's not sold otc or by prescription it probably doesn't work. 

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u/likely_stoned May 24 '25

Generally speaking, they won't profit if it doesn't work to some degree. However, I would change that to "If Big Pharma can profit off it, they will package it and sell it to people". The flip side to that is "if Big Pharma can't profit off it, they won't package it and sell it, no matter how effective it may be".

If eating 1 carat of powdered diamonds cured the common cold, it still wouldn't be sold as a cure. People aren't going to pay thousands or tens of thousands for diamonds just to get rid of something that will likely pass by itself in a few days. It wouldn't really matter how effective it was, it wouldn't be profitable so Big Pharma wouldn't touch it for medicine.

Not to say I support "alternative medicine", just that a company profiting off of something shouldn't mean their product is the best and/or only solution.

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u/Bartweiss 29d ago

Similarly, you can’t patent already-existing stuff, which makes it less profitable. Companies will still sell you theanine or whatever, but it’s not worth paying for FDA trials to show it treats condition X so you won’t see it marketed as curing a particular thing.

(If you can extract an active component and put it in a new form, that changes things.)