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Sometimes knowing isn't better :(

lokiju

lokiju

Lifer
Decided to look up the side effects of some meds I've been on for a sinus infection and saw this noted about the antibotic I'm on.

Ceftin belongs to a class of medicines called cephalosporins, which were originally discovered in one of the world's most unlikely locations. A fungus found close to a sewer outlet along the coast of Sardinia turned out to cure a number of nasty infections. From this chance observation many extraordinary antibiotics have been developed.
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http://www.peoplespharmacy.com/2000/04/01/cefuroxime-axet/

That just sounds horrible. 🙁
 
I'm allergic to those. Last time I took them I couldn't walk for a week and a half as my legs wouldn't work. Effectively paralyzed me from the waist down.
 
rudder said:
I would like to know who crawled into a sewer thinking they could find super fungi.
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Man they look everywhere for that stuff anymore. Like everytime you see someone on the Discovery channel exploring a cave they'll make sure to remind you that you never know when they might find the fungus to cure cancer or what have you.

I mean which is possible and great and all, but still.
 
Many antibiotics come from organism that grow in bacteria-rich environments to enable them to out-compete the bacteria. These also include penicillin (bread mold), eutrythomycin (soil sample), bacitracin (infected tibia fragment), and many others. There are actually relatively few that are genuinely synthetic (sulfa drugs are one).
 
I hate big pharma probably more than any other big ______. There's no money in cures, only treatment, and they milk that philosophy for all it's worth.

Anyway, OP, if it heals you, who cares? 😛
 
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crashtestdummy said:
Many antibiotics come from organism that grow in bacteria-rich environments to enable them to out-compete the bacteria. These also include penicillin (bread mold), eutrythomycin (soil sample), bacitracin (infected tibia fragment), and many others. There are actually relatively few that are genuinely synthetic (sulfa drugs are one).
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^^ Exactly - if it can grow on the edge of a sewer, with all that bacteria surrounding it, then it must have some powerful chemicals to allow it to do so.
 
Beev said:
I hate big pharma probably more than any other big ______. There's no money in cures, only treatment, and they mil that philosophy for all it's worth.

Anyway, OP, if it heals you, who cares? 😛
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That's not really true. I'm not a big fan of a lot of stuff that pharmaceutical companies do (particularly their marketing and IP strategies), but they have a significant incentive to cure, rather than treat.

Let's say Merck has created a treatment for cancer. You would never get rid of it, and you'd have to take the medicine for the rest of your life, but you wouldn't die and you'd have a decent quality of life.

It's 5 years later, and Glaxo is looking at developing either a cure for cancer or a treatment similar to the above. If they develop the treatment, they'll be in direct competition with Merck's product. By the time they finish it, the patent on Merck's treatment will be only about 5 years from running out, at which point it will hit generics. That means that there's a very small window in which Glaxo can recoup its losses going up against an established product.

By comparison, if they make the cure, they completely out-compete Merck's product. Everyone with cancer will buy it, and they'll still get 10 years or more of use before others can make it. The cure is suddenly a much more attractive research option.
 
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crashtestdummy said:
That's not really true. I'm not a big fan of a lot of stuff that pharmaceutical companies do (particularly their marketing and IP strategies), but they have a significant incentive to cure, rather than treat.

Let's say Merck has created a treatment for cancer. You would never get rid of it, and you'd have to take the medicine for the rest of your life, but you wouldn't die and you'd have a decent quality of life.

It's 5 years later, and Glaxo is looking at developing either a cure for cancer or a treatment similar to the above. If they develop the treatment, they'll be in direct competition with Merck's product. By the time they finish it, the patent on Merck's treatment will be only about 5 years from running out, at which point it will hit generics. That means that there's a very small window in which Glaxo can recoup its losses going up against an established product.

By comparison, if they make the cure, they completely out-compete Merck's product. Everyone with cancer will buy it, and they'll still get 10 years or more of use before others can make it. The cure is suddenly a much more attractive research option.
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Wow, very informative actually. Thank you :thumbsup:
 
Beev said:
Wow, very informative actually. Thank you :thumbsup:
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No problem. The one thing that you have to be careful of, though, is that things like this can only occur in a competitive market, which is why is important both that patents eventually run out and that there are no monopolies or collusion. The latter, for example, is what makes cable TV/internet so expensive. In most areas, if you don't like the rates you pay for cable, your choices are simply to pay them, go without, or move.
 
Beev said:
I hate big pharma probably more than any other big ______. There's no money in cures, only treatment, and they milk that philosophy for all it's worth.

Anyway, OP, if it heals you, who cares? 😛
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You really need to re-evaluate your conspiracy theories there, cause that one is pretty laughable. Medicinal chemistry isn't good enough to specifically make a drug that only treats a disease and not cure it.

Big Pharm is not "evil". They're just trying to make as much money as possible, just like everyone else.
 
Cheese is dried up partially digested udder sweat, made with stomach juices from dead mammals.

Beer is made by adding fungus to watery grain soup and then letting it stew for weeks, sometimes until you get the point where some of the fungus goes into a coma partially from poisoning from its own waste.
 
Meghan54 said:
And the basis of this "fact" is....???
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Here you go.

From the paper:

The degree of excess prescription of antibiotics varies for each diagnosis. Antibiotic treatment for a cold, an upper respiratory tract or acute bronchitis is almost always inappropriate because the vast majority of these syndromes have a nonbacterial cause. Antibiotic treatment of sinusitis and pharyngitis is sometimes justified but should be limited to appropriate subsets of patients.
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