Goldman Sachs issues report: Curing diseases is a bad business-model.

[DFW]

14. I have a first-hand example of that--anyone ever have lower back pain? Read on!

A couple of years ago, I had done something to my back, and I was suffering from such excrutiating lower back pain that I had sought out a chiropractor for the first time. I was going to him twice a week, and it wasn't helping much. A couple of months after this started, I was in London where a colleague from Brazil was present. He saw it took me about two minutes to sit down and get up, and he asked me what was wrong. I told him. He took out a film with a few pink pills and said, "here, take one of these before you go to bed tonight." I was desperate, so I did. I was ready to try anything at that point.

So, I took the pill before I carefully and painfully got into my hotel bed.

I woke up the next morning and out of habit slowly started getting up. I noticed it was easy. I also noticed EVERYTHING was easy. My back pain was not only diminished, it was GONE. Like *poof* vanished completely. I thought, oh shit, the pill must have contained some forbidden Amazonian herb and I'm gonna get addicted to them. But I was pain-free overnight, so I didn't care. When I saw my Brazilian colleague at breakfast, I asked how long until his pain killer wore off. He said I was asking the wrong question, as the pill wasn't a pain killer at all, but a muscle relaxer. Not only was I pain-free for the rest of the day, but I was pain-free, PERIOD. After one pill. He gave me the rest of the package (there were three more in there) just in case, but said I might not need them.

I had an appointment with the chiropractor the next week, which I almost canceled but I figured I'd go see what he said. When I got there, he asked how I was doing, and I said, great, pain-free. He said, yeah right. I insisted I was serious. He told me to lay down and started feeling up and down my back. He then asked, noting that all tension was, as I said, completely gone, how in the world did you do THAT? I said I took a Brazilian pill. He asked how many. I said one, and that was four days ago. He said he had never heard of anything like that before, and asked me to send him the ingredients on the package. They were in Portuguese, of course, but he said it didn't seem like anything overly exotic.

Now, I know there are dozens of pills sold in pharmacies all over Europe and the USA that are supposed to help with back pain, but they really don't do much, at least not for me. Here, on the other hand, is a pill sold all over Brazil that cures muscular back pain with one dose and no side effects. We have given them out to some of our friends in Germany, and they all said the same thing. They cost the equivalent of $1 each. No wonder the pharmaceutical industry in the USA and Europe doesn't want anyone in their markets having knowledge about this pill (much less access!). After all, if they are going to sell you medicine for back pain, they want to sell you a hundred pills for $250, not one pill for $1.