DOES CURING DISEASES CAUSE LOSSES? The Shocking Truth About Medicine Hello! "Is curing patients a sustainable business model?
" That was exactly the question Goldman Sachs, one of the world's largest investment banks, asked in 2018. Did you understand? A bank asking if curing people is profitable?
To me, this question is not only cold and cruel, but also terrible! And it reveals a logic that affects medical research, the price of medicines, and especially: who profits when you are sick. Today I'm going to show you: why the market sometimes prefers continuous treatments instead of cures, and why, even so, science is advancing so fast that it could change everything.
You will feel outraged, yes. But you will also have real hope, as you will see. But first, like the video, subscribe to the channel so you don't miss our health tips, and activate the bell to receive notifications.
And also spread this knowledge with your friends and family. By sharing, you will be helping more people. So share it!
And tell me: what do you think, is there an interest in not curing diseases? What part of Brazil or the world are you from? Write it below!
Let's go! In 2018, a Goldman Sachs report bluntly stated the problem of curing diseases. They said: "Therapies that cure immediately create a problem for companies' financial revenue model.
" In other words: if you cure the patient, they stop buying medicine. So that's terrible for the industry. And they gave a practical example: the company Gilead developed a drug that cures more than 90% of cases of Hepatitis C.
Cures! Doesn't treat, cures. And look, Hepatitis C is a type of hepatitis that causes cancer.
A drug that leaves the patient free of the disease, cured. Wow, how wonderful. And you know what happened?
Sales of this drug plummeted from $12 billion in 2015 to less than $4 billion in 2018. Why? Because there simply weren't enough sick people left to treat!
And also, by curing, you don't pass the disease on… In other words, if you have a product that works so well, that cures, it self-destructs. Do you understand the logic? Chronic treatment means you'll make money every month, and you can predict your profit tomorrow.
Cure? You give the medicine only once, and that money that would come every month disappears along with the cured patient. "Ah, André, but then are you saying it's a conspiracy?
That there are people hoping we stay sick? " No. It's not a conspiracy theory.
It's something worse: the cold logic of the market that transforms disease into a product. Companies respond to investors. Investors want predictable cash flow.
And when the spreadsheet shows that chronically ill patients yield more than cured patients, priorities change. Of course, there are doctors and researchers who work hard to find cures. But the system in which they operate has other incentives.
And you think: this Machiavellian machine will win. And let me explain why that's not true. If you know someone with a serious illness who is losing hope, pause this video and send it to that person now.
Because what I'm about to tell you can completely change how you, and they, see the future of medicine. This is the part that will give you hope. Science is light in the shadows.
I'm going to tell you a true story of a scientist who proved that a cure is possible. And he did it motivated by a personal tragedy. The face behind one of the greatest medical revolutions of the century is this guy: Dr Carl H.
June, an American immunologist. In the 1990s, his group was developing techniques to reactivate the body's defense cells. Initially, it was to try to treat HIV.
But in 1995, his life changed forever. His wife, Cindy June, was diagnosed with cancer. She went through all the conventional treatments, chemotherapy, surgery, but nothing worked.
Access to experimental therapies was very difficult at that time. And she passed away. But this loss transformed Carl's life mission.
On her deathbed, he vowed to himself and his wife that he would find a cure for cancer. He stopped seeing patients at the clinic and dedicated himself completely, body and soul, to developing therapies that could cure cancer, his greatest enemy. And that's how CAR-T was born, one of the most revolutionary technologies in modern medicine.
Let me explain it to you simply how it works. Carl June's idea was brilliant: you take the patient's own immune cells, teach them to recognize the tumor, and return them to the body to attack the cancer. It's like taking soldiers from your army, training them to recognize the enemy— their face, their smell, the clues that no one else can see—and sending them back to the battlefield.
These modified cells are called CAR-T, or cart cells, which stands for Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cells. He started researching on mice, and it worked. Then he scaled up until he received a large sum from the American NIH to treat about 100 patients.
However, something tragic happened. In 2008, what happened? Remember?
An absurd stock market crash in the US, due to the subprime mortgage bubble. Goldman Sachs, the one from the report that said: danger, don't cure! It was one of the central players in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, selling high-risk assets to investors while betting against those same assets, profiting from others' losses.
And what happened? The NIH had to cut the funding. From 100 patients, they released money for just over 10.
Do you know what that means in research? You don't have enough numbers to say something works. Only if you cure many of those patients.
And in 2010, 15 years ago, came the first proof that CAR-T therapy was truly revolutionary! Bill Ludwig had leukemia, a type of blood cancer. He underwent all types of chemotherapy.
All conventional treatments failed. His days were numbered. Dr Carl June, seeing the seriousness of the case, took Bill's immune cells, trained them in the laboratory to attack Bill's cancer, and reinjected them.
The result: when he received CAR-T therapy, complete remission. That is, a cure! Of a disease that seemed hopeless, with no other treatment options.
It was the first sign that this technology worked in adults who had no other treatment options available. He treated a second patient. Same thing.
He treated a third. Cure as well, a fourth, a fifth. Until, in 2012, came the case that brought worldwide attention.
Emily Whitehead was only 6 years old. And she had acute lymphoblastic leukemia, one of the most aggressive types of this blood cancer. She had already undergone chemotherapy several times, and the cancer always returned.
Doctors told her parents that there were no more options. Emily was dying. Her parents learned about the cures with CAR-T and decided to contact him.
Dr Carl June had already gone through this with his wife. And he had a daughter. Despite breaking protocols, he was testing on adults.
But the suffering of the parents convinced him. Emily received her own modified cells and initially it seemed to work. But a few days later, she developed a very serious reaction.
The modified cells were working, but working too much. Emily's body entered a cytokine storm, a massive inflammatory reaction that was destroying her internal organs. Very high fever, plummeting blood pressure, organs beginning to fail.
Emily was placed in an induced coma. The doctors didn't know what to do. Dr Carl June, seeing the girl's condition, began writing an apology email to the NIH, which was sponsoring the experiment.
There was no way out. His therapy was going to kill such a young child. And that's when a desperate idea came to his mind.
The ICU team had identified that a substance called IL-6 was surging in her body. That was what was causing all the inflammation. And by coincidence, as fate would have it, Carl June's daughter had rheumatoid arthritis.
And he knew there was a drug that blocked exactly that substance, IL-6. The drug was called Tocilizumab. It was used for arthritis.
Never tested in this situation. Never approved for this. There was no research.
No authorization. No guarantee. There was a 6-year-old girl dying.
The team met. The question was simple: "Do we take the risk or do we stand still? " They decided to take the risk.
They administered tocilizumab. And they waited. Hours later, the fever began to subside.
The blood pressure stabilized. And, exactly on her 7th birthday, Emily woke up. And when they did the tests, the cancer had disappeared.
Emily was cured. What a gift, huh? Before, she had suffered through 16 months of heavy and ineffective chemotherapy.
And you know what's even more impressive? She remains cured to this day. More than 12 years later.
Emily showed the world that a cure is not a utopia. It's a reality. Of the first 12 patients that Dr Carl June managed to treat with limited funds, 9, or 75%, achieved a complete cure, including 2 children.
This for terminal patients, with no other treatment options. Do you know how rare that is in medicine? It was something that shocked the scientific community.
"Ah, that's utopia. " Why don't they cure everyone, then? I'll tell you another case, which happened here in Brazil and was treated by the SUS (Brazilian public healthcare system).
Vamberto, 64 years old, was facing an extremely aggressive lymphoma that had already spread to his bones. The disease was in its terminal stage: he could no longer walk, he lived on maximum doses of morphine, and at the beginning of September, his body was practically covered in tumors. And there was nothing more that could be done.
All treatments had been exhausted. That's when he sought out the Hospital das Clínicas in Ribeirão Preto to try something that was still experimental in Brazil and unprecedented in Latin America, conducted by a team linked to USP (University of São Paulo): a gene therapy known as CAR-T Cell. The result was considered extraordinary.
After the treatment, he experienced rapid improvement. In October, Vamberto was discharged with a condition described as a cure, complete remission. Look at this PET scan before, the black is the tumor, and after, of the same patient.
Clear. At the time, he summed up his feelings with a powerful phrase: he wanted this not to be an exception, that more people had access to the same benefit. Unfortunately, however, he died shortly afterward following a domestic accident that caused severe head trauma, and he did not survive.
In other words, nothing to do with the therapy. I know you're going to ask me: "Ah, André, if it's already available here in Brazil, why isn't it being used worldwide? " Good question.
And that's where we return to the outrage. First: CAR-T therapy was approved by the FDA in 2017. This means it's official.
It's not an alternative, it's not experimental. The problem is the COST. It can reach $500,000 per treatment in the United States.
Why so expensive? Because each treatment is personalized. It uses the patient's own cells, modified in a laboratory, and returned to them.
It's not a pill that you mass-produce. It's precision medicine, tailor-made. Here in Brazil, they developed this same treatment for less than 500,000 reais.
Incredible! Brazilian technology, but for now, still very expensive. Progress exists.
But access and price still delay mass impact. However… here comes the good news. The science train is accelerating.
Artificial intelligence is shortening the time to discover new drugs. Manufacturing platforms are growing. New methods are reducing costs.
Take what happened in genetic analysis as a basis… Do you know how much the sequencing of human DNA cost in the genome project? 30 billion dollars. 30 billion… That was in the 90s-2000s.
Today, to sequence your DNA… yours… how much does it cost? A thousand dollars, there are cases up to 500. 30 billion to 500 dollars in 35 years.
There is already research with CAR-T for solid tumors, not just leukemias. They are testing for pancreatic, lung, and breast cancer. And other genetic and cellular therapies are emerging that can cure diseases that were once death sentences.
The greedy may delay. But stop? They won't stop.
So what can you do today? First: Information. Demand transparency about prices and.
. . Access to treatment.
Ask your doctor: is there a new, better medication for this? I clearly see that many doctors don't even mention medication because it's expensive, very expensive. A patient who was being treated in São Paulo by a famous doctor came to my office because of my videos.
The treatment was absolutely correct, perfect. But the tests weren't 100%. There were one or two loose wires.
And during the consultation, he told me he had several farms. I asked him: why aren't you taking the PCSK9 inhibitor, Repatha or Sybrava? He said that nobody had mentioned it.
It's expensive, 6,000 reais every 6 months, that is, the price of an Ozempic. But for a person who has several farms across Brazil, has undergone revascularization, has stents, for him, this is relatively little, and the doctor should have given him the option. "Look, if you want to buy it, we have it.
If you don't want to, we'll keep the treatment as it is, more or less. " Three months later he comes back to me, with a huge smile on his face. "Look at my test results, doctor.
" My LDL is better than expected. My Lp(a) is a normal value! The injection is working!
Why not? One injection every six months. Now, unfortunately, it has to come out of pocket… Even so, I try.
Last week, a patient of mine needed this medication that reduces cholesterol very potently . Due to 60% plaque buildup in several arteries. Clear indication.
High risk. Strong evidence. Either he uses the medication, or in less than a year he'll need open-heart surgery.
I wasted my time writing reports, filling out forms justifying the obvious. And do you know what the health insurance company replied? And that's the reality: sometimes, the doctor becomes a hostage.
He has to maintain the treatment more or less. So when I talk about "barriers to access," it's not theory. This is also my daily life.
But let's get to the good part, the new discoveries. Speaking of injections, in South Africa, where 20% of the adult population has HIV – it's true, 1 in 5 adults have HIV. And it's the largest antiretroviral program in the world.
They're testing an injectable drug, an injection given twice a year, that's almost 100% effective in preventing HIV. Because prevention, folks, is better than cure. Preventing a disease from happening is better than trying to treat it, than trying to cure it.
Another one: a tuberculosis vaccine, currently being tested, that's effective against all forms of TB, unlike the BCG vaccine. Malaria vaccine. It's almost ready.
CRIPR. don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, let it lay eggs forever. Science is making it very clear that this goose is dying.
Diseases will be cured. Diabetes? There are already cases of cures in China, creating Langerhans islands in the laboratory, implanting them in the patient and controlling blood sugar.
CAR-T cell therapy for solid tumors is happening. CRISPR to lower cholesterol, not with one injection every six months, but with one injection in a lifetime. Medicine is becoming more specific, more personalized.
What is your disease? What is your genetic defect, your mutation? This is called precision medicine, individualized medicine.
It's expensive, yes. But it's more effective than any other therapy. That's why we have to support public research and policies that encourage cures instead of just recurring treatments.
To conclude: science doesn't stop. And many cures are coming. The train of science is at high speed.
Anyone who dares to get in its way will be run over by history. And here comes the irony of history. Remember the Goldman Sachs report that opened this video?
The one that asked if curing patients was a sustainable business model? Well, do you know how much the CAR-T therapy market moves today? More than 4 billion dollars a year.
And it's growing 30% annually. In 2017, when it was approved, it was zero. Today, more than 80,000 patients worldwide have already received this therapy.
The market has discovered that cures also make money. That saving lives can be profitable. That science, when it advances, creates new markets.
Greed tried to stop it. But science won. It's so powerful that it bends the market.
Emily Whitehead was a hopeless 6-year-old girl. Today she is a healed adult woman, living her life. Smiling.
If that doesn't give hope, I don't know what does. Now I need your help. If this video touched you, if you know someone who needs to hear this, share it.
Send it to the family group. Send it to that friend who is going through a difficult time. Because information saves lives.
And it brings hope too! And what will be the next video you watch? Based on what we talked about today, I leave these recommendations: 10 Warning Signs of Colon Cancer That You Can Never Ignore - because, as I said, prevention is better than cure.
10 Worst Habits for Your Brain (and how to avoid Alzheimer's and Dementia) My name is André Wambier, cardiologist, and this is Cardiodf. com. br.
