We hear a lot of rumors from people about big pharma conspiracies and how they make more money off treatments than they would off cures.  These statements couldn’t be further off the mark.

After 20 years, a patent on a medication expires.  Generics flood the market.  People get a full month’s worth of pills for $4… and most likely, not even from the original maker.  Any money that “could” have been made is gone.  Pennies per pill, if the original manufacturer is even lucky enough to keep the customers.

But what would happen if they did find a cure?   Let’s look at that.  HSV is a double-stranded DNA virus.  Anyone who figures out how to disable one dsDNA virus is already well on their way to disabling them all.  So, how many are there?

Here’s a partial list: all the double-stranded DNA viruses which affect humans:

Further, with a bit of modification, the same knowledge gained could potentially cure all of these:

…and those are just the most prevalent dsDNA plant viruses within the United States alone.

One other fact which seems to escape the minds of conspiracy theorists is that viruses are the fastest-evolving critters on earth.  Where animal evolution takes many thousands of years and bacterial evolution takes decades and centuries, viral evolution can be measures in months, days and weeks.  A “cure” will, without question, require the creation of newer and newer cures.  The odds of completely stopping that train are dismally small.  We’re just trying to keep up and hopefully stay a step or two ahead.  Pharma will continue to make money on all of them, forever.

What good is a cure, then?

For consumers, the answer is easy. You won’t have the virus or the resulting disease anymore.  For now, anyway.  There’s no guarantee that any cure would be truly permanent.  You may run across a new and improved strain later on and need another cure.  Viruses evolve.  Much more quickly than anything else.

What’s in a cure for big pharma?

Well, for starters, a cure will instantly knock out all competition – possibly worldwide – for the life of your patent.  That means you’ve cornered every dollar on the market for each virus you’ve cured, for at least 14 years.  Plus, you’ll make a LOT more money in a much shorter period of time.

How much more?  Well, a $1,000 cure will net you the the same amount of money as 40 years of generic antivirals.  That is, assuming those 40 years of antivirals are even purchased from you.  There are many, many drug makers on the market and there’s no reason whatsoever to believe people will continue to buy your drug when they can get exactly the same thing in generic for less, or from any other maker at the same low price.

Further, you would have all of that money now – to reinvest – as opposed to all the risk associated with losing customers to others, inflation, the watering down of the dollar and, of course, the ever-present possibility of your competitor beating you to a cure and cornering the market.

Suffice to say that there’s a very strong race for cures… and anyone who can effectively dismantle a Double-Stranded DNA virus is going to be very, very, ridiculously rich.  Far more so than they could possibly get by treating people.  They could buy their competitors with a check.  That kind of rich.

The conspiracy theorists think that “people aren’t seeing the bigger picture”… and they’re absolutely right: the picture is actually much, much larger than the conspiracists appear to grasp.

The key to unfathomable wealth is not in the treatment; it is in the cure.