pharmaceuticals and effectiveness

[Paul Hollingworth <PH@paulholl.demon.co.uk>]

Jonathan Siegel <JMSiegel.Info.Research@worldnet.att.net> writes
>Which is more profitable to produce?
>
>1. A drug that simply relieves sympoms, does nothing for the underlying
>condition, must be taken every day for the rest of a person's life, and
>ideally creates dependency, or
>
>2. A preventative that can be taken once and will prevent the disease
>forever?

Moving the topic away from profitability, Jonathan seems to be implying
that option 2 would be more effective. In another post, Myron reminded
of his "perversity principle":

        "If you try to increase productivity and cut costs
        by imposing quantitative constraints in one part of a system,
        you will only succeed in increasing your costs elsewhere in the
system."

In my view, the individual's state of 'health' is the product of a
system. The presence of a symptom is indicative of some 'dis-ease'
within the system. The dilemma of medicine is that (as in all dynamic
systems) cause and effect are seldom linear relationships.

For example, it is well known that sometimes, allopathic treatment of
one symptom (e.g.eczema) can create another (e.g. asthma). Is this a
cure?

Jonathan's type 1 drug suppresses the symptoms, type 2 prevents them
from occurring. But is it safe to assume that the type 2 drug would
prevent the disease? Or merely prevent the disease being expressed
through those symptoms? What might the effect of that be?


Does the perversity principle hold true here?

What is this telling us about drugs, from a systems point of view?

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Paul Hollingworth                       4GM Consulting  
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