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Comment by cleandreams | Hacker News Reader

Vitamin D is under studied because it cannot be patented (my doctor told me).

Your doctor is talking nonsense. There's mountains of studies on things that can't be patented. We don't have studies on much of anything wrt COVID-19. And most of the energy has gone to hydroxychloroquine whose patent expired long ago.

but these studies are all relatively underfunded and underpowered relative to the stringent approval process for new prescription drugs, so I think the point stands.

Vitamin D doesn't require FDA approval. It's already rated as GRAS and is prescribed for known benefits.

There was an article here just three days ago suggesting that vitamin D could very well be not a supplement to, but rather a marker of, good health. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23086211

This is almost certainly true, at least in part. Fasting is another such intervention.

The patent system is probably an overall benefit, but as with everything else, it can't be better in each and every case.

Why don't governments fund the research though?

They do: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/10/6665455...

https://www.lifeextension.com/featured-articles/2010/12/fede...

It's just that not everyone likes the results... If a doctor's cognitive bias leans towards "alternative medicine", for example, they don't want to accept certain findings, so they ignore them.

The real complaint those people have is "there's not enough (government-funded) studies about [remedy] that fit my preconceived convictions". At least that's my suspicion - I could be wrong of course.

I've heard the same thing. No economic incentives compared to making a custom drug.

You've heard nonsense. There's tons of studies and clinical trials about the use of vitamin D. Here's an article listing just a few: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/322619

Every time you "hear" something about a topic that's important (e.g. in this case: health), just don't take anyone's word for it (doctors are people, too and have their cognitive biases and non-fact based opinions).

It's not that hard to look this stuff up and just do a quick check in relevant publications or sites like research.net - https://www.researchgate.net/search/publication?q=vitamin%20... - to get a more accurate picture.

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