What the ‘ARV defendants’ don’t want you to know about ARVs – part 8
October 28, 2008
Biography – Raxit J. Jariwalla, PhD
October 28, 2008

What the ‘ARV defendants’ don’t want you to know about ARVs – part 9

The pharma industry is biased against micronutrients

The impact of nutritional support and vitamin and micronutrient supplementation in the treatment of HIV and AIDS is a seriously under-investigated area. Repeated calls have been made for more studies in this area. Although micronutrients are not a cure for AIDS, in the absence of an effective cure or vaccine and in the face of the extreme toxicity of ARVs, they are an effective and affordable way to delay progression towards and even reverse the symptoms of the AIDS disease and to improve the quality of life of AIDS patients.

The pharmaceutical industry is biased against micronutrients because they can’t be patented. Instead, therefore, it concentrates upon producing patented chemical drugs, the global sales for which reached $712 billion dollars in 2007 – a figure that even exceeds the vast amount approved by the U.S. government to bail-out the debt-ridden American financial system!

The continued absence of these studies into these areas is explained largely on the basis that pharmaceutical companies fund most medical studies. Pharmaceutical companies have little or no incentive to fund investigations into the effect of vitamins and micronutrients on the treatment of HIV/AIDS because there is no financial return for doing so because the research will not lead to any patentable drug, which can be exploited for massive profit. Instead, pharmaceutical companies sell and promote ARVs (despite the fact that the drugs are required to carry a clear statement that they are not a cure) giving the misleading impression that they are “life-saving” and “life prolonging”.

Clearly, the most authoritative scientific research is that which has been validated by a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled study (“DBRPC”), with a rigorously designed protocol and which has been open to scrutiny (and further testing) through publication in a peer-reviewed journal. However, such studies are, by their nature, very expensive. In the mainstream, they are funded only by pharmaceutical companies, which have a sufficient financial interest in validating the efficacy of a drug to justify the research and development costs (which in turn they hope to recoup through exploitation of any resulting patented drug). However, drugs or theories are only usually tested by DBRPCs if there is some pre-existing research suggesting that a theory is worthy of further investigation or a drug is worthy of further trials. Prior to this stage, clinical studies remain essential and very valuable stages in identifying new theories.

It is clinically proven that micronutrients can delay the onset as well as reverse the course of AIDS. While micronutrients are not a definite cure for all forms of immune deficiencies, they should form an essential part of public health strategies to successfully fight immune deficiencies, including AIDS. The immediate implementation of these findings by national governments as well as the WHO and other international organizations will save millions of lives – and it provides valuable time for the international research community to find a lasting solution to end AIDS.