>> If we can develop drugs to target this process, this may be a way to prevent the process early in the development of the disease
Always gotta come up with a new drug. Why not just eat a diet with no added sugar?
Always gotta come up with a new drug. Why not just eat a diet with no added sugar?
These pharmaceutical companies are interested in one thing - making money, and therefore they need everyone to be a "customer" by taking one of their pills every day. This means even if there are simple (i.e. non patent-able) solutions to health problems, you won't see them pushing it - instead you'll see them ACTIVELY work to prevent it.
A good example is the recent case where these companies have spent $880 million in the last 10 years working against marijuana legalization, even though studies are showing that it can work as a good pain killer replacement for the more deadly opioids that they are eager to hand out.
See: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/4d69f4b41cbc475ca42f424524003...
If pharma develops a pill for this it's because people want to eat sugar. This will be the same for pills that eliminate hangovers (should they exist), why not just quit drinking?
Simple answer is that people want to do these things, and neither should be criminalized, nor should marijuana be criminalized. Eliminating the side-effects of these products will probably be dangerous (with even more side-effects, but different ones), but I guarantee that there will still be a market for them -- especially if people can eat and drink what they want and avoid obesity, even at the cost of other aspects of their health.
I really dislike pharma for attempting to continue criminalizing things like marijuana and kratom, but to apply the same logic to a pill that keeps people from gaining weight or avoiding diabetes while eating what they want is an entirely separate issue ethically and logically.