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by hinterlands 334 days ago
The Chinese medicinal herb you're thinking about is sweet wormwood, from which we isolated artemisinin. Artemisinin isn't a suppressed secret. It's one of the major treatments for malaria and it netted its discoverer a Nobel prize.

The drug the article is talking about contains artemisinin in combination with another substance.

We know how to deal with malaria, so this isn't some story of Big Pharma hiding the truth. The disease used to be endemic in the US and in Europe. Better treatments save lives, but eradication hinges on economic and political factors... which are in turn not helped by malaria.
1 comments
begueradj 334 days ago
> "We know how to deal with malaria, so this isn't some story of Big Pharma hiding the truth. The disease used to be endemic in the US and in Europe"

Malaria is still a public health concern in Africa. And that's where Bill Gates does not want to see that plant exported to Africa because, unlike the Big Pharma products, it is a cheap solution.

I do not think we are talking about the same plant because "sweet wormwood" exists in Africa (a variant of it). Unfortunately I can't find the documentary I saw some years ago about this. It was done by few French investigation journalists.

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tfourb 334 days ago
Having lived in several African countries and studied Sino-African relations I can say with certainty, that both Chinese and Africans couldn’t give less of a shit about what Bill Gates wants if there is a product that Chinese people want to sell and Africans want to buy.
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begueradj 334 days ago
No, that's not how trade functions. You can't sell what you want, where you want.

Trade is subject to lobbyism (to say the least)

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tfourb 333 days ago
Sure, but the US or US-based businessmen are hardly the only actors lobbying and if you look at the trade balances of basically all African countries, Chinese interests are far more successful in exploiting African markets than US concerns. Add to this that several African countries have basically no diplomatic relationship and/or are openly hostile to the US and it makes no sense at all that they would forego a cheap and self-sufficient remedy to malaria (if it existed), just to please big Pharma.
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switknee 334 days ago
TFA is literally about a wormwood related drug being used to treat babies in africa.
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