Get your money-grubbing hands off my D!
It's no secret that I'm a big fan of vitamin D. Nearly every week, I write to you about some new study showing how this miracle vitamin tackles yet another illness or condition.
Obviously, everyone should be taking a daily dose of vitamin D. (Dr. Wright points out that the sun is the best way to get it, but that adults and teens should take 4,000 International Units per day, and that infants and children should take 1,000 per day.)
Of course, some people can't leave well enough alone. Where we see an inexpensive way for all people to maintain their health, Big Pharma sees only dollar signs.
At the end of last month, biopharmaceutical company Rockwell Medical announced that it had scored an Abbreviated New Drug Application for injectable vitamin D (dubbed Calcitriol) for people with end-stage renal disease who are undergoing hemodialysis. That's right--they're taking our D and renaming it a "drug."
People with kidney disease aren't as able to convert nutritional vitamin D into active vitamin D, which leads to deficiency. Therefore, they're often prescribed vitamin D.
Of course, the folks at Rockwell are pretty excited about it--and aren't too shy about the reasons why. Their CEO came right out and said they're "excited to add another renal drug to [their] expanding pipeline of products," that this new "drug" will allow them to leverage "more profitable renal products," and that it will help them to "penetrate the vitamin D market effectively."
So, make no bones about it--it's all about money, money, money.
And of course, they're not the first to spin D as a drug. Call it Calcitriol, call it Rocaltrol, call it Calcijex...it's all nothing more than D3 and a few additives.
And if they can do it with D3, why not with all forms of vitamin D? Will the D supplements in our natural markets disappear as Big Pharma companies win patents for something that should not be patentable?
Considering how important vitamin D is to our health--and how crucial it is to keep it accessible for all people--this is a really big deal. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this story. In the meantime, continue to support the supplement companies that make your D.
Related articles of interest:
Printer-friendly versionAbout the author
Christine O'Brien writes the e-letter Health eTips for Dr. Wright's Nutrition and Healing.
You can sign up for the free eTips at www.wrightnewsletter.com.
Email this Article
Comments
Boomer12k
You can patent a process, or a processor for natural things. You can patent an "invention". I think it is a common myth that you can't patent natural things. You can patent a Formula of herbs that do a specific thing. The Chinese Patent Medicines are all natural herbal formulas, for instance.
When you take a natural thing and add something to it, you are making a formula. When you say, or prove that this is for a medical condition, then it is classified as a drug. In effect then when you take vitamin C for the common cold, or CHICKEN SOUP, you are taking it AS A DRUG!!! In this case the vitamin D, being added to a formulation and given a name, and given a specific medical condition to work on, would be classified as a drug, and as a formula, would be patentable. Not the Vitamin D itself maybe, but the processing, and formulation.
If nobody can make money off of a natural thing, why is the a multi-billion dollar herb industry for profit? Ever buy a bottle of just capsuled MYRRH? Or Goldenseal? It may not have a patent, but they make a ton of money off of it!!!!!! IT IS A MYTH, and it is MYTH BUSTED!!!! Or you would not have brand after brand of Orange Juice at the store.
When you write a book. You copyright it.
There is a doctor, tops in Brain Plasticity. He holds around 65 PATENTS on the BRAIN!!!! Something you should not be able to patent. But it is the knowledge, and intellectual property, (copyright), of his discoveries, and the formulated techniques that he uses in his learning series on the brain.
Taxol is a drug, from the Pacific Yew Tree used to fight some cancers. I am sure they patented the process for extraction, formulation with other things, a given the medical condition to work on, it was classified a drug. So it is a MYTH that drug companies cannot patent nature, or cannot make money off of nature. They do it all the time. That is the game they are into.
I too wish it were different, but that is the reality of the system.
Be well and happy. Hopefully this new drug with Vitamin D, will not KILL PEOPLE!
Steve
Anonymous
Is it any surprise that the FDA is set to make it almost impossible for supplement manufacturers to make a profit at almost the same time that several blockbuster drugs are set to go generic?
The reqquirements the FDA want to put in place for supplements are MORE stringent than that of drugs they approve.
If they wanted to add the requirement that the finished product MUST contain exactly what is states, that would be reasonable since I have read that some supplements do not contain what the bottle says it does.
Even prescription drugs such as synthroid have had problems with deterioration. The FDA has been on their case about it, too. Although probably not as severely as they would be on the case of a supplement manufacturer, huh?
Patenting something natural is what has allowed Monsanto to devise their Roundup resistant seeds the infect any nonGMO seed in the area and take over such as with canola.
Is your body Roundup resistant??? Mine isn't.
Anonymous
Now would be a good time to start finding natural sources and methods for obtaining the vitamins and supplements that might soon be patented. Rose hip anyone?
Post new comment