[hnnh44]

I'm inclined to believe this as well. It's so hard to get a statistically significant effect and approval for drugs that are worth billions of dollars, that there's simply little incentive to study and promote "natural" alternatives.

Maybe moving to a city with better drinking water is the best move for a small subset of the population. There's no sinister cabal trying to hide this, there's just no incentive for anyone figure this out for you in an individual basis.

I could see pharma working the other way though. If you could identify a location with a population who exhibit a deficiency and your drug is more effective there, there's an incentive to better promote it there. I don't think the industry is sophisticated enough at this point to accurately track this though, as individual patient response is difficult to measure and report on.

Source: dated someone that did marketing for one if the top 5 pharmas.