If Randomized controlled trial is the only way to prove a new medicine is useful for patients, how many “white mice” are going to be sacrificed in order to support the research is successful? Dallas Buyers Club is a movie addressing this problem, BIG pharmaceutical companies control all the drugs that are being used in hospitals and clinics, they are the real drug dealers in the whole world. Why can’t people choose the medicine they want to use, even it is not approved in certain countries. I understand there are risks using drugs that are not approved or tested, because people don’t know the scientific evidence about the drugs.

That is the same case as using traditional herbal medicine, although there are plenty of practical evidences when our ancestors used those herbs thousand years ago, western doctors said it is not recognized, and some of them don’t recommend their patients to try. It is pretty unfair to say so, as the modern way to do research on medicines only existed 200 years ago, of course at that moment chemical components were easily derived, isolated and tested for certain diseases. However for those meds appeared before research methods existed, they were not prone to be tested scientifically, but PRACTICALLY! Moreover, they are NATURAL products which do less harm to our bodies with less side effects.

This movie portrays the cruelty of research doctors who don’t care about the lives of their patients, but concern more about the consequences of their research. I think they can calibrate a better measurement in order not to ignore the living qualities of their patients.

Although I don’t agree what the main actor did, to make a fortune out of patients’ misery, the way he fought for what he believed, the insistence of bringing alternative methods to help the sick is appreciated.

Anyway, it is a good movie to make us think about how to deal with mainstream healthcare system, should we trust them wholeheartedly? Or should we be our own doctor to take care of ourselves?

You can download the movie here!