How Profit-Driven Medicine Failed a Generation's Health
Born in rural America with multiple congenital conditions. Environmental exposure risks and Western diet set the stage for decades of struggle ahead.
Significant neuropsychiatric symptoms develop. At age 14, diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder and Bipolar I with mixed states.
Heavy psychiatric pharmacology: mood stabilizers (lithium, valproate), antipsychotics (risperidone, olanzapine), sedating antidepressants, beta blockers. The medications are powerful—but come with real, cumulative costs.
Hypothyroidism. Hypercalcemia. Hypertension. Severe kidney infection. Recurring kidney stones. Liver steatosis and fibrosis (MASH). Each treated as isolated—never as systemic failure.
Symptom patterns traceable back nearly a decade, finally named: hyperuricemia and gout. The solution? Two of the oldest, cheapest drugs: colchicine and allopurinol.
After decades of expensive, patent-protected drugs and predictable organ damage, stabilization finally comes from ancient, pennies-per-dose medications. This was not unfortunate. This was systemic.
Powerful psychiatric medications with known risks: thyroid dysfunction, metabolic disruption, kidney stress, tremors, weight gain.
Second-generation antipsychotics. Side effects include metabolic syndrome, weight gain, diabetes risk, hyperlipidemia, hormonal disruption.
Sedating antidepressants added to the regimen. Can contribute to emotional blunting, weight changes, and further metabolic strain.
Prescribed to manage emerging hypertension and anxiety symptoms—treating downstream effects rather than root causes.
Needed to counter hypothyroidism induced by years of mood stabilizers. Treating the side effects of other treatments.
Finally: two of the oldest, cheapest drugs in existence. Colchicine (ancient Greek) and allopurinol (1960s). Stabilization at pennies per dose—after decades of profit.
The medical economy incentivizes treating symptoms as they emerge rather than preventing disease upstream. Each new symptom becomes a new prescription, a new specialist visit, a new revenue stream. Prevention doesn't generate profit—management does.
Pharmaceutical companies don't maximize human health—they maximize shareholder value. Research follows ROI curves, not suffering curves. Patent-protected drugs generate profit. Off-patent interventions languish, no matter how effective.
Health insurers don't earn revenue by eliminating illness—they earn it by managing billable care. Chronic disease becomes not a failure but a feature: stable, predictable, infinitely renewable. This is why Medicare for All faces such resistance—it challenges the very architecture of a medical economy that relies on chronic disease dependence.
Energy metabolism produces purines
Cell signaling & inflammation
Oxidative stress & vascular injury
Kidney damage & systemic inflammation
For decades, researchers have understood that purine metabolism plays a profound role in human physiology. Xanthine oxidase—the enzyme targeted by allopurinol—contributes to oxidative stress, vascular injury, kidney damage, and systemic inflammation.
Evidence linking uric acid and xanthine oxidase activity to cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, metabolic dysfunction, and inflammatory processes has existed for years. Yet clinically, allopurinol remains "the gout drug you give middle-aged men when things get bad enough."
Why? Because the pathway doesn't lend itself to blockbuster drug economics. Cheap molecules, off-patent therapies, preventative framing—these are structurally disadvantaged in a marketplace that rewards lifelong dependence on high-margin pharmaceuticals.
"If we want medicine worthy of human dignity, we must realign incentives so that curing disease, preventing metabolic collapse, and supporting foundational biological health are not economic liabilities but central priorities."We Can Do Better
My trajectory is not inevitable. It was constructed by a system that treats human beings as revenue streams, chronic illness as a stable business model, and broad-impact foundational biology as an afterthought unless it can be packaged profitably. What is constructed can be rebuilt.