I mean it is... They could literally have a cure that they can sell to millions of people around the world, as well as millions more who will contract diabetes in the future.

I don't understand this conspiracy and companies don't want cures. I can understand scepticism around pharmaceutical companies for all the awful shit they've done, but it doesn't mean that scientists and researchers will never be able to produce cures.

[–] Asafum@feddit.nl 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I don't exactly subscribe to the conspiracy but I can understand it as it's related to "planned obsolescence." Companies don't want to sell you a quality product that will last "forever" they want to sell you something that's just good enough to work for a bit, but will absolutely break or be replaced very soon so you become a repeat customer as opposed to a one time customer.

The same logic applies here with the medication, why would they sell something once even if there were new future customers, if they could instead have everyone on a "subscription" of sorts?

The conspiracy exists because we see it play out in every other facet of our society/economy. Everything is becoming a subscription, you don't own anything, every product a corporation makes is almost complete garbage, etc... I'm not sure I believe it 100% but I wouldn't in the slightest bit be surprised to find out that actually was the case.

[–] pingveno@lemmy.ml 4 points 7 months ago

There is no grand secret conspiracy. Why? The more people involved in a conspiracy, the more likely it will leak out. A conspiracy between two people may never get it, a conspiracy between a hundred people will have someone slip up in a few years at most, but an international conspiracy involving millions of people with disparate interests wouldn't stay secret for a second.

What we're seeing isn't a conspiracy as such. It's a conversation happening in the open about "business models" and "revenue streams". It's also based on customer expectations. There are definitely markets out there for the repairable, buy it for life goods, but there's just not nearly as big as the customer who upgrades their phone every two years. But obviously that's going to be different for diabetes. Reliably being able to repair pancreatic cells would be huge. If the companies selling insulin tried to internally stifle research to avoid cannibalizing their insulin business, other companies have an enormous incentive to take a crack at it.

[–] Valmond@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

Yeah and there are other parts of the world where researchers search for stuff like this too. If it works it will being fame and money to the inventors and then the drug exists and can ve sold.

[–] matcha_addict@lemy.lol 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Pharma investors have a solid position and are already racking big profits from the continuous model of insulin treatments. A cure would be a detriment to their profits, so it's not something they're interested in funding.

No investor nowadays thinks a one-time-payment product is worthwhile. We're already way past that.

This isn't to mention that if you were an investor who decided you wanted to go ahainst that, that the other mega corporations (with more funds than most of those 5% individuals) wouldn't engage in anti competitive practices to shut you down. Many companies had good products but still ultimately failed. I mean hell, the boeing events have shown us the lengths a corporation is willing to go to protect its profits, and that's just what we heard of.

Unfortunately capitalism does not allow innovation to flourish like many of us were taught to believe.

[–] NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 7 months ago

Does this logic apply in China?