Of "Medical Conspiracy Theory": Some Thoughts

These days we hear a great deal of what some deride as "medical conspiracy theory." Perhaps not the most important but certainly the most striking example of these is the idea that the rich and powerful are keeping a great many discoveries to themselves, with the most "interesting" such example their supposed use of devices like the sarcophagi we saw in the Stargate franchise for rejuvenation purposes.

The conventional response is of course to sneer at such claims. Yet one can argue that, fanciful and unlikely as they may be, they reflect, in a distorted way, a great many important realities that receive nowhere near so much public attention as they should. There is the sheer volume of resources poured into medical research--underscored by how spokespersons for Big Pharma insist endlessly that obscene prices for medication and insane notions of the legitimate extent of intellectual property rights are not merely justified by but necessary given their spending on "research" to develop that medication. There is, at the same time, the constant claim that the relevant researchers are making "revolutionary breakthroughs every day," given concrete expression by the daily headlines of world-changing cures being just over the horizon--combined with the reality that none of these ever seems to produce a product that makes much difference. (How long have they promised humanity that a "cure for cancer" is just around the corner?) One may add to this the extreme contrast between the health care the general public gets, and the health care the Davos crowd gets, all of which may not be the only factor but is at least a factor in the significant and growing difference in longevity and health to be found between the poorest and richest in even "First World" societies, to say nothing of the planet as a whole.

Faced with all that it is easy enough to imagine that the immense resources being poured into medical research and enabling "revolutionary breakthroughs every day" are simply being kept off the market, enjoyed by the rich and powerful who at ages that the "common" man and woman cannot reasonably expect to reach going by the statistics, still seem almost youthful in looks and movement and alertness, all as the rest of the public is going bankrupt purchasing the far more meager standard of care that endlessly makes the "god in a white coat" pretension of the doctors providing it so insufferable--the lousy care at outrageous prices part of the system of exploitation that makes the rich so rich. Indeed, this is all the easier to picture in a context in which the same rich and powerful people who have the benefit of all that so openly despise the public off of which they live as "takers" from the "makers" they believe themselves (and only themselves) to be, and indeed are openly determined to take away their meager health and pension benefits as they usher them toward exercise of the "right to die."

Of course, this is far from the only explanation. After all, perceptions of the funding of medical research are wildly exaggerated, not least by the Big Pharma spokespersons--the reality that the business, just like every other, leaves others to pay the great bulk of the research bill as they keep the benefits (while, again, insisting that they are makers while the public and academic funders of the research are takers). Moreover the system for distributing the research monies is horrifically broken, yielding lousy returns for what money is spent, with it not helping that the short-termist shareholder value-minded scum who run the operation have no interest in curing any real disease anyway (not a "sustainable business model," you know), just taking the public for all it can get. (Consider, for instance, their extreme disinterest in developing long-needed but not particularly profitable new classes of antibiotics as against the less-than-half-measures for chronic problems forcing lifelong use of their product we see so much peddled in the commercials.) Indeed, the disgusting picture is all too consistent with the reality that a neoliberal economy is a generator of hype about INNOVATION, rather than the real thing. And indeed even the rich often suffer for it as their doctors, more highly paid occupants of plusher offices than those you are likely ever to see, bestow on them the same professional arrogance, the same impatience, the same shabby treatment the rest of us get in exchange for their exorbitant bills.

Alas, the mainstream media rarely tells those stories--at all, let alone properly. The result is that, once again, if "fake news" flourishes online this is because of the ways in which the mainstream media has itself promulgated fake news and a false image of the world, all while earning the extreme distrust of the public it so disdains. But of course the mainstream media never admit that as they instead they demand more public deference to the grifting eyeball-chasers and propagandists for Big Business of the Establishment outlets, and applaud any and every move that will strangle the flow of any and all information, opinion, analysis not admitted through its carefully kept gates.