Is the medical field suppressing cures for deadly diseases in order to make more money off of unfortunate and trusting patients?

Simply put? Of course not.

I know, I know... I can already here the "But Juan, the GOVERNMENT is trying to suppress the cure for Cancer/AIDS/Common Cold/Abnormal Flatulence because Greed/Illuminati/NWO!" Just save the conspiracy theories until after the article, okay? That way you wouldn't have to read or acknowledge them. Deal? Deal. Now before I begin, I am mainly going to focus on Cancers and AIDS since these are the ailments that conspiracy theorists bitch about the most.

Let's start off with cancer: if you couldn't figure it out, cancer is HARD to cure. And there may end up being multiple cures, if we do manage to find one. Mainly because, according to David Gorski of www.sciencebasedmedicine.org, there are literally hundreds of forms of cancer. He also states that "...cancer cells not only have mutations that result in dysregulated expression of oncogenes and tumor suppressors, but these changes result in the alteration of expression of hundreds of genes, and in different types of cancer it will be different batteries of genes and miRNAs that are messed up in different ways. In fact, in individual tumors, there will be different populations of cells with different sets of genes and miRNAs messed up in different ways. Even worse, as a tumor progresses, it tends to become more heterogeneous, meaning that the number of different populations of cells tends to increase." The least egg-headed way of saying this is is that due to the complexity of the genetic makeup of the cancer, not to mention the sheer number of types of cancers there are, it will be more than a while before we can find a cure for just ONE form of cancer, let alone all of them.

Now cancer is cancer. AIDS is a completely different animal to keep track of. HIV is a virus, so that in itself already proposes multiple problems. While a cancer is made up of an organism's cells, a virus is a small infectious agent that hijacks the living organism's cells. According to Roxanne Palmer of The Week, "In infected persons, HIV hacks the cells of the body with the help of an enzyme called reverse transcriptase, which allows it to create a DNA version of the viral genome after it invades the cell. The viral DNA strand becomes integrated into a host's genome, and the cell copies out the instructions in those genes, creating new copies of the virus that can burst forth and infect other cells... The AIDS virus is also hard to destroy because it tends to infect the very cells designed to destroy it: a kind of white blood cell called a CD4 lymphocyte. These types of cells can be activated to fight pathogens, but can also lie inactive. If infected, these dormant CD4 cells can maintain a hidden reservoir of HIV that can bring the infection roaring back to life even after a successful course of treatment; most drugs can't touch these reservoirs." So essentially, AIDS is hard to cure because not only does this disease take over cells quickly, it attacks the cells used to target the very disease.

And now we get to the fun part: the conspiracy. Now a meme circulating around the interwebs states that the government is hiding the cure for AIDS and the proof for this lies within a 1996 patent. Now those who subscribe to this particular conspiracy theory forget one thing: just because it is patented, doesn't mean that it works (in fact here is a small listing if interesting, yet failed patents if you are curious). It is possible that government may have patented a failed cure for AIDS virus and still hold it to this day, prompting these conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theorists also believe that the cure for cancer has also been suppressed by the government/Illuminati/NWO because - reasons. Now besides the explanations that I pointed out earlier as to why that's complete and utter bullshit, the Credible Hulk lists 10 reasons why hidden cancer cures wouldn't work. My personal favorite is the fact the any company who finds a cure for will profit MORE from it than they would for treatment as well as the fact that even if the hidden cures aren't patented, companies can make a ton of money of generic brand material and over the counter "natural" supplements already making more than 30 billion in sales. Quite interesting really.

Now what have we learned today, ladies and gentlemen? Quite simply, there is no massive conspiracy in regards to suppressing the cures of cancers or AIDS. The problem is that lack of scientific understanding is causing these conspiracy theories to take root into the minds of the gullible and the scientifically illiterate. In order for that to change, we must educate ourselves on these diseases and pay no heed to the "free thinkers" who cry "conspiracy!"