Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a devastating autoimmune disease in which the body’s immune system attacks the myelin sheaths protecting brain cells. Because early symptoms are vague, people can have the disease for years and know that something is wrong but be unable to articulate it. As the disease progresses, sufferers can lose eye or ear function, memory and the ability to walk or stand.
Therefore, the release of any drug for treating this debilitating disease should be heralded as a medical miracle. Such is the case with the immunosuppressing drug Gilenya, marketed in the US by Novartis AG for $4000 per monthly supply; a price for which most people suffering with MS would gladly take on massive debt.
However, the price is truly unjustified given that the fungus from which it is derived, the cordyceps mushroom, can be purchased for a tenth of the price. Unlike Gilenya, which was first synthesized in 1992, Eastern medical practitioners have used cordyceps for over five hundred years. Unfortunately, while the FDA is more than happy to greenlight the expensive Gilenya, it is illegal for sellers of cordyceps to mention its ability to treat MS.
FDA buffets false treatments and stifles truth
Even more appalling is that the FDA found several side effects of Gilenya, notably lymphoma, pnuemonia, difficulty breathing and a slowed heart rate which may be fatal. On the other hand, cordyceps not only lack these side effects, but have also been shown to protect the heart, aid respiratory function, reduce inflammation and fight tumors.
The FDA also silences the makers of vitamin supplements from mentioning the proven benefits minerals such as magnesium (controls muscle spasms), calcium (guards against muscular atrophy) and intravenous vitamin b12 (helps to repair damaged brain tissue) can offer to MS patients. Yet the FDA has no trouble whatsoever approving the drug Copaxone, even though it shows absolutely zero effectiveness in treating MS.
Big Pharma pushes dogma at the expense of public health
This double standard exists because the FDA is merely Big Pharma’s governmental arm. They are not interested in safeguarding the public health, but in extorting the nation’s vulnerable citizens on behalf of Big Pharma. The FDA could easily study and approve cordyceps and several other natural remedies, but has refused time and time again due to the supposed difficulty in standardizing plants and herbs. This is, of course, false. The cordyceps mushroom in particular, which grows on insects, can be laboratory grown by introducing spores to a controlled insect colony, and subsequently tested for chemical makeup. The only reason the FDA won’t do this is because the profit margin is significantly lower for natural remedies versus highly processed and refined pharmaceuticals.
Natural remedies also have the “problem” of being impossible to patent, and therefore monopolize. Big Pharma will not accept competition, and so through the FDA they denounce any medicine they do not control as unscientific quackery. This is in the face of millennia of practice in Eastern medicine, as well as modern, independent clinical study. When “science” disregards factual evidence that doesn’t fit with conventional thinking, it’s not science at all, but dogma. As history has always shown, when dogma rules, the people always suffer.
Sources:
http://www.nhs.uk/medicine-guides/pages/MedicineSideEffects.aspx?condition=Multiple%20sclerosis%20and%20other%20demyelinating%20conditions&medicine=Fingolimod%20hydrochloride&preparation=
http://shen-nong.com/eng/herbal/cordyceps.html
http://www.itmonline.org/arts/ms&tcm.htm
http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD004678/the-use-of-glatiramer-acetate-copaxone-r-in-people-with-multiple-sclerosis
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_12/b4220023617603.htm
