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Researchers May Have Found Cause of Type 2 Diabetes
ozmanjusri writes "Scientists at Sydney's Garvan Institute have identified an enzyme called PKCepsilon as the active agent that blocks the production of insulin in diabetics. Insulin injections and implants try to control levels but do not address the reasons why insulin production is failing. This discovery may allow pharmaceutical companies to develop a drug to block the enzyme, allowing cells in the pancreas to function normally, though the team's leader, Trevor Biden, says 'What we've identified is a target that we can now latch onto to get therapy, but the journey from target to tablet of course is a long one ... It's probably going to take another 10 years at least to get something that's effective in humans.'"
Yes, but would they actually do that? There's a hell of a lot more money to be made by treating the symptoms, rather than curing the disease.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
"We need 5L of patent applications, stat! Can you imagine the dough we'll make when we lock up this discovery so that no one else can cure diabetes but us?"
Your body constantly works to maintain equilibrium of all functions. The is a reason Type 2 diabetes almost exclusively occurs in gluttonous people, and is virtually unknown in countries where food is comparatively expensive and scarce. This is because after years of consistent overeating, your body begins to believe that elevated levels of blood sugar is "normal" and there is no need to produce more insulin. This is no different than people who drugs or alcohol. Using drugs or alcohol long term results in your body assuming that is "normal" and it stops producing similar chemicals, which drugs mimic. When you stop using drugs or alcohol, withdrawal symptoms result until your body readjusts.
This particular enzyme is the way your body controls this behavior in regards to insulin, it is not the "cause".
I don't read or respond to AC posts
Seems like whenever the thought of "a Cure" or extremely important treatment comes up, its always 10 years away. When I first got type 1 diabetes they estimated that a cure would be ready in 10 years (This is 10 years ago), and my doctor also promptly told me that that is what they had said 10 years earlier. Every year now or so if I bother to try and keep up on whats new with diabetes, all I see is "d00dz 10 years till we got us a cure!". Diabetes, keeping funding and grants in pockets of people 10 years at a time, for the past 40 years.
I guess "being overweight and unhealthy" wasn't scientific enough.
On the one hand, I always like to see things cured. On the other hand, my fear of type II diabetes is one of those things that gets my ass out of bed in the morning, makes me walk to lunch, makes me have an apple instead of a twinky.
It like if they came up with a wonder pill that fixed all the bad cardiovascular problems you get from eating all the wrong stuff, a diet pill that keeps you from gaining any weight, and a cure for type II diabetes...I'm just not sure that would really be good for anyone. You should ahve to have some consequences.
I understand that there are those who get Type II through no fault of their own, and this makes me happy for them...But they're the minority, and I don't have as much sympathy for the rest.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
This is a serious health issue. When you consider that some forms of diabetes and obesity can be classed this way, it is clear to see that several billion people could die of malnutrition this century unless we begin some serious educational effort. Some scientific breakthroughs may save the climate, but your health is yours.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
people eat like shit and don't exercise. That's it. Pretty simple huh? Fiances father got diagnose with type 2 diabetes. Effecting him pretty badly for a year. Decides to eat healthy, drop weight, and exercise. Guess what happened? He is healthy now, no issues. You read tons of studies saying the same thing.
But that isn't profitable to companies....
Pump more money into big Pharma. Let's not spend money on health education and disease prevention, because that doesn't benefit big buissness. It only benefits the enitre population.
It's not from being a fat-ass, it's from being a victim of food! The food is leaping off the plate...
You do realize that there is a lot of money to be made in preventive medicines of which this would be one. I doubt that they could cure it but removing the need for insulin would be a major benefit to both consumer and drug companies. My mom receives her insulin via overnight shipment - the packaging weighs many multiples compared to what was shipped. If its delivered improperly someone else eats the cost... meaning you and me. If the pharms could elminate medicines that require special handling it saves them money too.
Besides, giving a choice between paying for insulin, needles, blood test kits, or just a pill I know which I would take. I'd also be thankful someone is making it then going all tinfoil over their supposed real goals of keeping me sick - sick people die and don't buy more drugs - get over that
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I found a cure for Type 2 diabetes (Oblig. [voice=Wilford Brimley]Di-a-bee-tus). My aunt had type 2 diabetes for most of her life. Then she started exercising, eating right and lost 120lbs. She hasn't been on the needle for over a year. She still checks her blood sugar regularly just in case.
What are they trying to do now that they found the cause? Call me insensitive, but if they do find a medicinal cure it would only serve to enable some people to keep living unhealthy lifestyles. I think now that they have found what causes type 2, they should see what causes juvenile diabetes and cure that.
The game.
Some forms of Cancer, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure, Strokes, and Oseoarthritis. Then we can all eat fast food 24 hours a day until we look like Jabba without any consequences.
Cant comment on main article anymore. -Dumb.
The insulin metabolic pathway is very old in terms of evolution and very pervasive. Dozens of genes have been identified regulating such. I dont thing there will be single-point cures.
As for the possible forms of the cure, it would most likely come as either a signaling molecule or a RNAi treatment.
The signaling molecule will work similarly to aspirin, as it would bind to the cells, but unlike aspirin, it would cause gene regulation to change, reducing the insulin inhibiting protein's rate of production. This has the benefit to the drug companies of requiring long term dosing requirements (hopefully to be used by the customer as a risk reducer until they change their own lifestyle), which would make it a profitable path that companies are likely to pursue. The main disadvantage of this approach is that it would require the identification of receptor sites that would trigger this effect (which may not exist) and then, if they did exist, the signal molecule would have to be determined, and a synthetic pathway found before it be produced on the needed scale.
The second alternative of RNAi treatment is showing real promise as a more permanent solution, as it would be able to eliminate or severely reduce production of the inhibitor protein. In a recent advance, David Bumcrot and Daniel Anderson of MIT announced that they had found away around reported toxic effects of RNAi, a major hurdle to this emerging technique. The use of a different type of RNAi made the difference, as Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN26235373 recently explained. This would also be profitable to drug companies even thought it would consist of only one, or at most a few, treatments, as it would likely be an expensive procedure. It would likely be applicable only to the most life-threatening cases due to the cost, but it does provide another possibility for a cure.
We are made wise not by the collection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future. -George Bernard Shaw
"Researchers May Have Found Cause of Type 2 Diabetes"
There is no reason, and looking for one is futile and unpatriotic! Type 2 Diabetes simply hate our freedom!
ultraparanoid.wordpress.com
Drug companies are in the business of making money for their stockholders. If they have a billion dollars to invest in research and they have to choose between a treatment for a disease that will make them ten billion dollars, and a cure for a disease that will make them 2 billion dollars, they have a moral obligation to their stockholders not to cure disease, but to treat disease.
The "lawsuit taxes" are an direct result of the constant development of treatments instead of cures. When you cure a disease, there might be risk during the course of the therapy, but the therapy will end when the disease is cured and the risk of side-effect also ends. When, instead, you are simply treating the symptoms of the disease, the risk of side-effect does not end; as long as you are undergoing therapy, you are exposed to its side effect. In fact, the risk of side-effect can be shown to increase with the longevity of the therapy.
So, your implication that lawsuits related to the effects of drugs are some sort of random externality being exploited by cynical lawyers is stupid. If they actually cured a disease, their risk to lawsuits would be much lower. Since the motivation is to produce therapies that don't cure, they're going to be making treatments, not cures. If they're in business to make money for their stockholders, they're going to be exposed to risk. Attempting to protect business from risk is never a good idea. Ask Adam Smith.
And, you ought to try doing your own thinking instead of repeating the ideas of the radical right wing. They'll be the first ones to clamor for 'open markets', 'free trade', yet they'll also ask for government regulation to help them with their supposedly 'free markets'.
Best regards.
It's not from being a fat-ass, it's from being a victim of food!
You may think you were only being funny there... but the sad truth is that the producers of fast food, processed foods, and the way they overwhelm American society with their marketing tactics -- we are indeed "victims" of food (from the makers of such "foods") to at least some degree.
(How fitting also, is that the captcha I had to type to post this is "humorous")
You disappoint me Slashdot, no "diabeetus" in the tags list?
The quality of the scientific articles and comments on slashdot are absolutely atrocious lately.
First of all, the article is factually incorrect on the basics of diabetes. Type 2 (NON insulin-dependent) diabetics do produce adequate levels of insulin! The problem is that adipose (fat) and muscle tissue, for unknown reasons, do NOT increase glucose transport in response, leaving an excess of the glucose in the blood. This effect is called "insulin resistance," because these cells are resistant to the effects of insulin. Insulin injections are used for Type 2 diabetics as a way of overwhelming the resistant transporters, but that should not be misconstrued as a failure of the insulin-producing beta cells of the liver. In fact, there's good evidence to believe that when these cells become overactive other pathologies can result.
Secondly, the cause of Type 2 diabetes is not so clear-cut. Of course, diet plays a role. Of course, exercise plays a role. But that is not mean that every person with type 2 diabetes is a lazy glutton or that diet and exercise are effective treatments for those who already have diabetes.
-Grym
Vaccinations are out of control these days; it's not that they're available, it's that they're required, and for fricking EVERYTHING.
When I was young, the Hepatitis-B vaccine was optional...you got it before you went to college, if you felt like you needed it. Now they're trying to run the whole course of hep B AND A on kids before they're 18 months old. The chicken pox vaccine, which DOESN'T provide a lifetime immunity is required for daycares and preschools...Having had chicken pox when I was 15, rather than 5, you want it over with EARLY. You don't want to forget your 15 year booster at 45 and get hit with it at the worst time in life.
HPV is a vaccine which I think is pretty useful. But I guarantee you the drug companies are going to start lobbying that all girls outta get it by like age 2, THINK OF THE PROFITS! UH, I MEAN CHILDREN!
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
> It's probably going to take another 10 years at least to get something that's effective in humans
This is where good old-fashioned capitalist greed comes in, and why socialized medicine is murderous.
I'll take a loan out for $100,000 to buy this drug. Let's get the show on the road, shall we? There's tens of billions of dollars to be made in fat old sedentary USA.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
No, it's really true. Type 2 diabetics NOT produce enough insulin. This is apparently an effect that occurs later in the disease progression and hence ordinary science articles only mention the insulin resistance aspect.
Here is a link to the real article,
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B7MFH-4PT7RDC-B&_user=10&_coverDate=10%2F03%2F2007&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=842a09e850c1253f0206f93a68320da0
The day isn't even over and the Slashdot Comment of the Day Award has been granted, to you. Congratulations! Comments like yours, rational, informative, interesting, well written and maybe even checked for spelling and grammar, are a reason to keep reading Slashdot. Thank you for contributing to Signal amidst the growing crap flood of Noise. I will make you a Friend, regardless of how many times your insightful comments have been flagged as Troll or Flamebait.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
In the last couple of days Slashdot has looked horrible. "Reply" buttons are missing (except for this weird floating comment box on the left hand-side of the screen.
The look of the comments reminded me of edlin or a really bad ncurses setup. Odd blocks of inverted text all over the place and very few actual comments are visible.
I have been reading Slash for a long time, and I am not a newb; but I can't figure out why it looks so wrong/broken. I'm tempted to use lynx just to read the site.
I am using Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20061201 Firefox/2.0.0.6 (Ubuntu-feisty). With the usual scripts: NoScript/Adblock.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
[scrubs geek] turk might be cured!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_H4Q9ex3ik about 35 seconds in... [/scrubs geek]
I was being half ironic, half serious. The more I read food labels the more I aim for basic whole foods that are as unprocessed as possible. A lot of people I know survive off of "health" food that is heavily processed. Many of them have trouble controlling their weight (which is why they aim for the "health" bars and supplements to begin with). OTOH, I knew someone who is giant huge, fat fat fat. The standard breakfast? Donuts nuked in the microwave and buttered. They then complain about their weight (over 300 lb, 5 feet, 4 inches tall) bleating about being a victim of their metabolism...
I was recently diagnosed with type 2
I went on a crash diet exercise program; it is hlping, don't know if it will cure me yet, but hoping
I talked to my doctor, and he said, you would be amazed at how many 300+ pound people get your diagnosis and ask for a pill
Now if it is true, as pointed out, that type II diabetes is unkown in "poorer" countrys,You could say people in the USA are lazy gluttinous slobs who just want a pill,
but
people are human: many of us really cna't handle the surfiet of food available in the us
Today I got donuts for the group (friday) at dunkin donuts here in boston you can get 12 dountus - virtually all fat and sugar, enoiugh calorys for a week, for less then 6 bucks !!! Many of us just have a lot of problems with this.
If you look around at suff like aircraft, or medical devices, or any industry where safety is thought about, the number 1 rule is
design so it can't happen
applying this, what is most important is increasing the cost or decreasing the availability of junk food and getting people out of their automobiles and walking
Ok. So Doctors are people too. People with consciences. If a Doctor comes up with a promising cure to Diabetes, there is no corporate ethos in the world that will stop him from developing it.
One of my professors is a radiologist. One day at a banquet, he was seated next to a woman who was DEAD certain that there was a very simple cure to cancer that had already been discovered and that people like him were keeping it hidden so that they could make boatloads of money. After holding his tongue for half an hour, he replied "My mother died of Cancer."
I know you're being unscientific, but I'd at least like some sources for your statements about unhealthy and overweight.
Because, you know, correlation does not always imply causation. Did it ever occur to you that diabetes might cause the weight gain, rather than the other way around? I know of several people who have developed diabetes in spite of the fact that their jobs involved rigorous physical activity, and in spite of the fact that they ate diets no different from the rest of the general population.
One of the problems in this country is that people assume overweight people are overweight simply because they eat too much food, when in reality, a person's size has a lot more to do with heredity than with their diet (assuming the diet is not nutritionally deficient). And some diseases, like heart disease and diabetes, heredity plays a much larger role than diet and exercise. For example, I know of physically fit people who had their first heart attack in their late thirties. I also know of a recent heart attack victim - at 58, who had eaten essentially a vegetarian diet for 15 years prior to the attack.
Sure, I suppose if one wanted to have a heart attack, eating nothing but lard and sugar would be a good start. But I have always been told that heredity plays the largest factor in determining heart disease and diabetes, with lifestyle and diet coming in second.
Incidentally, studies have shown that having two servings of alcohol a day are more effective at reducing the risk of heart attack than exercise (60% reduction, versus 42% for cardio exercise, and 23% for weight lifting). So it makes you wonder if those beer-swilling couch potatoes aren't actually doing themselves a favor.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
This is not the cause of type 2 diabetes. It's just a slightly earlier item in the chain of effects. The cause would explain why type 2 diabetics have more of this enzyme, or why they respond to it differently. I'd be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that when the true cause is discovered, it will be a lifestyle change and not a drug.
I have several type 2 diabetics in my family and so any drug developed from this discovery could be helpful, but I still feel medical science is a bit off track with this whole "make a drug to block a symptom" methodology.
My mother recently got her early-stage diabetes completely under control: blood glucose was floating from 180-200. Now with dietary changes that almost completely contradict the ADA's recommendations, she's always between 90-110. Thankfully we figured things out ourselves before putting her on meds, where the only path seems to be higher and higher insulin resistance over time. I'm not saying we understand why she has diabetes; why foods that are okay for me, and used to be okay for her, now cause her trouble. But we have kept it under control for months now.
I don't know... I just feel some disappointment with medical research in many areas.
Cheers.
While I agree with your characterization of alcohol/drug dependency, I feel that you are full of shit when it comes to understanding diabetes. And by the way, at 6 foot tall and 175 pounds, I really don't feel like my type 2 diabetes is caused by obesity -- it is obviously due more to genetic factors. Also, even women from countries where food is scare may suffer from gestational diabetes, it just usually goes undiagnosed.
I'd say that, far more than people realize, health problems can be nailed down to nutritional issues. I don't mean "too much fat" or that sort of thing. People suffer weird symptoms from specific vitamin deficiencies and the like.
For instance, I know one person who suffered from "hypothyroidism" for a long time and had to take T4 supplements. It turned out that her real problem was an iodine deficiency, that itself was likely caused by being on the birth control pill. Taking high doses of an iodine supplement cleared up the problem very quickly, and her thyroid began functioning properly again.
I know another patient who was inexplicably ill for many years. After an IgG panel blood test, it was determined that she had a food alergy to casein, the principal protein in milk and other dairy derivatives. This isn't the sort of IgE alergy that causes itching or anaphalaxis, but the IgG kind that takes days to set in, and the symptoms are less severe and can be flu-like. Part of the reason she never considered cutting out dairy was that she is not, in fact, lactose intolerant, so lactase ensyme didn't help. Eliminating dairy entirely solved her problem.
Just like the preceding case, I have an IgG reaction to soy protein. Imagine trying to avoid soy in the U.S. Soybean oil is the default "vegetable oil," soya lecithin is used as an emusifier in lots of foods, and soy protein isolate (not considered to be a food by the FDA) is added to lots of things that want to report having high protein content. Oh, and don't forget the estrogen analogues found in soy. Anyhow, challenging as it was, eliminating soy products resulted in a huge improvement to my energy level. (I suffer from chronic fatigue syndrome, and my nutritionist believes that it was caused by the soy alergy compromising my immune system.)
I know lots of people who have suffered from prolonged illness that was completely blown off by MDs that was then remedied very quickly by a nutritionist. And it frustrates me to no end how ignorant MDs are about nutritional effects and that they never refer people to nutritionists!
Ok, so what's my point? That in a lot of cases, I would not be surprised of there was some kind of food that people are sensitive to or which is eaten to excess that has compromised part of their metabolism. Taking insulin shots was a bandaid for diabetics. Taking something to inhibit PKCepsilon production is a BETTER bandaid, but it's still a bandaid. Someone's got to figure out the root cause.
Oh, did you know that a significant number of autism cases, when caught early enough, show remarkable improvement when wheat and dairy are removed from their diets? Many neurologists will tell you otherwise, but that's because they just don't study nutrition in school. The nutritionists know otherwise.
Oh, and BTW, I'm not against MDs. I just know their limitations. Got a broken bone, lyme disease, or a structural organ failure? Better go to an MD. But many of the little things that affect people's health are not in the "take this pill" or "let me operate" categories but rather in the "don't eat this" and "eat this instead" categories. The effect of environment and intake has a HUGE impact on the human body!
It's more complex than you make it out to be. By that yardstick, I could also say, AIDS is because "people fuck like shit and don't bother about fidelity/safe sex practices/monogamy. That's it. Pretty simple, huh?" You can substitute Hepatitis B or Chlamydia for AIDS if you want something more prevalent.
But you can see that applying reductionist principles to diabetes, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or even Some Computer Virus doesn't really help. Yes, in an ideal isolated system, that's the cause of your ailments. But if we can't even isolate a ones-and-zeroes construct like Microsoft Outlook from getting Some Computer Virus, what makes you think we'd fare any better trying to isolate diabetes?
Just as virus infections have a social context --it doesn't work when you tell people, "Just have safe sex, ok?" (or, for computer viruses, "Just have safe hex")-- it also doesn't work when you tell people, "Just eat less."
Research into obesity is showing that eating habits and hunger interact in all sorts of metabolic pathways that control appetite in the brain, behaviour, ability of the body to mobilize stored fat (and thus get enough energy without feeling hungry), etc., not to mention the stuff you already knew about the body physically needing to eat energy and nutrition, and the complex social interactions surrounding meals and food that have developed in every single culture.
So, yeah, diabetes can be aggravated by poor eating and exercise habits. But that argument is such a straw man that it can pose for a photo in the Pictorial Encyclopedia of Straw Man Arguments.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
In your wired interview, you said, "Over the years the site has developed something of a personality. There are certain subject matters that we're going to discuss and there are certain subjects we're not going to discuss. We're going to cover what's happening with Linux, who's building new technology and what companies are taking your right away to play with that technology. There aren't a lot of websites that are focuses. Everybody tries to be everything and no one does one thing that they're really good at." Would you agree that it is time for slashdot to find some new focal points, like systems biology, and bring them into the mainstream?
The OP accurately describes probably 95% or more of Type-2 diabetics.
The naysayers always bring this argument up, and you can see on its face how it would seem plausible to a pessimist but there is no evidence to back it up. If it was true there wouldn't be many cures at all. Instead some problems even very recently have been solved by simple vaccines, and the pharmaceutical companies behind them still sell the "cure". Moreover, there is never a whole lot of positive feeling towards people getting rich off disease but somebody has to MAKE the drugs and that costs LOTS of money.
Let's celebrate this with a German chocolate cake.
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
is overconsumption of refined carbohydrates. This causes an insulin overproduction and consequential insulin resistance and tiring of the pancreas. If type II diabetes were not caused by diet, then why does it respond so well to a low carbohydrate diet? All symptoms disappear. This indicates that it is not a permanent condition but one brought on by the sufferers own dietary habits. See the following: "the Cure for Diabetes" in Men's Health http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=health&category=other.diseases.ailments&conitem=4a935e4e40fae010VgnVCM20000012281eac____
This discovery may allow pharmaceutical companies to develop a drug to block the enzyme, allowing cells in the pancreas to function normally . . .
Suuuure . . . that the drug companies will sell you for the low, low price of three grand a month or so for the rest of your life, none of which your HMO will pay for because it's "experimental" (read: Too expensive). A few years from now we'll discover that it causes liver damage, too.
Why couldn't they just spend the resources to cure the underlying disease? Oh, I know, there's no money in that. If we were fighting polio today, there never would have been a vaccine for it. Instead, they would have introduced a drug that, if taken daily, prevents polio-induced paralysis about 70% of the time. And since it can causes both liver and kidney failure, regular tests are required. All of this can be yours for the low, low price of, again, about three grand a month.
Hey, this is what happens when medicine is first concerned about profit than about patient care and the public good. It's good for the economy and if you're against it, you're a terrorist.
Remember before they invented a cure for ulcers? People with ulcers were blamed for having "too much stress." Then they found out ulcers were caused by virii, end of blame.
Attention, Slashdot-reading philanthropists!!
When is somebody going to offer a massive cash prize for:
1. A cure for diabetes;
2. A method of testing one's blood sugar without consumable ($1/test) test strips.
The prize would have to be massive enough to incentivize claiming the prize as opposed to the huge economic disincentives going the other way (pushing insulin, selling test strips).
Now we just need someone to invent PKUnCepsilon.
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Since one of my best friends and my mother suffers from diabetes I try and keep my eye open for news on this kind of thing, while this is an interesting discovery there was this piece of news from back in December that seems even more promising:
http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=a042812e-492c-4f07-8245-8a598ab5d1bf&k=63970&p=1/
I really home that one or both of these discoveries lead to better treatments for people with this disease.
...but exercise is better. The single biggest cause of type 2 diabetes after genetic disposition is bad diet and lack of exercise. This is not judgement on those with type 2 (I have it), there is much that we're brought up to think is healthy food that actually isn't in the quantities we eat it, and the modern lifestyle is VASTLY lower exertion than a pre-industrial lifestyle.
At the lower end of seriousness, diabetes can be pretty much controlled without drugs, simply by eating a wide variety of fresh fruit and veg in appropriate quantities for your exercise level and increasing your daily exercise levels. I cycle or walk regularly and that with a sensible diet manages my blood sugar levels really well.
Mind you, if they know the enzyme that is the problem, we don't necessarily need a drug to block the enzyme. It may be better to look at what in the diet enhances production of this enzyme.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
Hey ImitationEnergy
So. Let's imagine for an instant that the medical community knows of an inexpensive cure to cancer and are keeping it hidden. Let's assume the entire medical community is terribly greedy and wants nothing for the world but for their own benefit.
Now, I myself as you may have noticed an an evil medical doctor (not really). Now, I want to get REALLY rich, so I'm going to take this cure for cancer and I'm going to develop it and patent it. THEN I can sell it, and everyone in the world with cancer will give ME money. Screw those other doctors, I don't care about them. I want money for ME.
The same thing goes with the miracle engine you propose. If it really works, then someone who isn't associated with the oil companies will make their fortune off of it. That's the beauty of competition. I'm going to produce the best thing I can and sell it to move money towards me and away from my competitors. I don't care about status quo, or about the pocket books of my competitors. I care about MY pocket book.
If there is a miracle cure for cancer, and there is some group of doctors who have this and aren't sharing it. You need either one moral doctor or one greedy doctor for the cure to become public. Only if the group consists entirely of loyal (and morally indifferent) people would you be able to keep the cure secret.