I know a lot of diabetics are paranoid over the drug industry. The diabetic press is real bad about encouraging this paranoia — and might be the source. I know that a lot of articles question if the reason there isn’t a cure is that the drug companies are afraid they will lose market share on insulin, etc.
As I see it, it’s not the drug industry, but the trial lawyers.
Company X comes out with a new drug call it Y. It goes through the FDA pipeline — which is about a 10 year process.
They release Y to the public, and a small subset of the population has a side effect that they missed in clinical testing.
Then Company X gets sued, having to pay out a lot of money, and now Y isn’t profitable.
This actually happened to me. The only drug that has controlled my gastric relux is propulsid. Several doctors decided to prescription to populations that were not covered by the package directions and they got sick (I think heart related complications). The manufacturer wanted to avoid the lawsuits, so they pulled it off the market and all related medications have also been pulled. As a result, I no longer have access to that drug or any of the related drugs, and we can’t seem to control my GERD.