History Main / WithholdingTheCure

* ''WebComic/SchlockMercenary'': The U.N.S. accidentally invented a cure for [[spoiler:age-induced death]] while experimenting with super-soldier genetics, but they kept the results a national secret for centuries, out of fear of being pressured by the public into freely distributing unstable military-grade augmentations as medical supplies. Their motivation rings hollow once Petey reverse-engineers and isolates the cure for public use in a matter of years.

* In ''Film/JohnnyMnemonic'', the world is in the grips of a pandemic, and an evil drug company that went through all the time and trouble to research, develop, and test a working cure for the pandemic doesn't want anybody to have it, and is chasing after the title character in order to suppress information on the cure that's locked in his NeuroVault. As long as the cure is suppressed, the evil drug company keeps making billions off "Paralon-B"--the watered-down cure--as "treating the disease is more profitable than curing it."
** The evil drug company even goes so far as to deny the cure to its own top executives, so at least they were consistent.

* The first season of ''Anime/GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex'' deals with this in the form of the Murai Vaccine, a cure for an otherwise-incurable disease called cyberbrain sclerosis, and the various conspiracies at work to keep the vaccine from being approved for the general public in favor of {{Nanomachine}}-based treatments - ''ineffective'' ones that nonetheless serve as excellent [[TestedOnHumans test cases]] for technologies that help JapanTakesOverTheWorld. One such is a subversion of the [[spoiler:EnhanceButton]]. Worst part? {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s and {{Corrupt Politician}}s use it freely in secrecy, saving themselves while using the citizenry as guinea pigs.
** This story arc is based on the Maruyama Vaccine, an actual series of events that occurred in Japan in the 1960-70's.

As you may know, this trope is one of the biggest [[ConspiracyTheories/HToN conspiracy theories]] in the world: the belief that "Big Pharma" has developed cures for AIDS, cancer[[note]]despite cancer not being a single disease but a ''type'' of disease[[/note]], the common cold, and so on, but would rather sell treatments that don't actually cure anything just to maximize profits. This assumes that all countries in the world use the American healthcare model, even though countries with socialized healthcare are very much interested in cures for chronic ailments to reduce the tax burden their systems create. Within the US, it assumes the people working within Big Pharma are simply saving these cures for themselves and their families, even though rich people die from cancer and other illnesses all the time. The people who push this theory the most are either not very knowledgeable about the subject, or they're trying to [[SnakeOilSalesman sell you something themselves]]. Also, hiding a cure would be HIDEOUSLY unprofitable, since A. that would create a huge chance for someone else to create a knock-off (to patent a cure, they would have to admit it), B. developing any drug is extremely expensive (not just developing, but necessarily testing it with large numbers of animal, and later human, test subjects), so why would anyone research and develop something they don't actually plan to market, and C. the benefits of fame and PR that would come from being "The company that cured cancer/AIDS/whatever!" would be immense. For the sake of [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment cautious editing]], no RealLife examples unless you have documentation of actual cure-withholding, not just speculation and people's perceptions.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

* A killer in ''{{Series/Bones}}'' modifies a virus which kills his employee who found out what he was doing. Arastoo sticks his finger on a needle embedded in a bone and is near death by the time Booth drags the killer into the lab. The guy initially refuses to give up the anti-serum because it’s as good as a confession. He reconsiders,though,when Brennan stabs him with a syringe that she says has the virus in it.
* {{Series/Continuum}}'s

** The third season has Kiera upset to find Liber8 are going after a company who will manufacture the cure to a deadly disease in the future. But in the course of the investigation, Kiera realizes that the company themselves developed the disease just so they could profit off selling the cure.

** Played with in one episode ("Blood Brothers"), when an attempt to create a safe and reliable KnockoutGas for crowd control results in drug that seems to boost body's ability to fight off any disease or toxin UpToEleven. The chimp that it's tested on is able to take several shots of cyanide without a problem. The scientist's brother is a CorruptCorporateExecutive, who immediately clamps down on the supposed panacea, claiming that it's likely to cause overcrowding, as people will no longer be dying at the same rate, while still breeding like rabbits. The scientist treats it as an attempt to make money, even though it's a clear case of JerkassHasAPoint (i.e. without PopulationControl, any such cure would be really bad for humanity). The exec brother then uses the drug on himself in order to treat his Parkinson's. However, at the end, it's discovered that the supposed "cure" is actually CastFromLifespan, draining the body of all resources, until the person (or the above-mentioned chimp) just drops dead in a matter of days, completely spent. The exec brother spends the rest of his life in a sterile life support chamber, unable to move, as his body is no longer able to sustain itself.

** ''Series/StarTrekEnterprise'': [[Wallbangers/StarTrekEnterprise "Dear Doctor"]]: Archer decides to let an entire species die from a disease that Phlox could cure so that another race on the planet could have an "evolutionary breakthrough."

* This trope is OlderThanSteam: The herbalist [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Culpeper Nicholas Culpeper]] attracted the ire of the College of Physicians as early as the 1650's by selling his book ''The Complete Herbal'' to the general public at a price the working man or woman could afford and translating some of their approved texts from Latin to English [[InformationWantsToBeFree so they could be read and understood by anyone]].

* An important late-game game mechanic in ''VideoGame/BigPharma'' - if you make a cure too good, it's rating will skyrocket, followed by its price... for a little bit, when it stops ''treating'' suffers and starts ''curing'' them, permanently reducing demand (and thus price) for the cure. One of the reasons "Female Contraceptive" is such a good cure to focus on is it's guaranteed never to be, uh, cured.

** Not so diabolically, after the [[PrecisionFStrike clusterfuck]] that was [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide Thalidomide]] being rushed to market without research about potential side effects, a lot of countries made strict laws about medical testing. So a potential cure must go through years and countless batteries of tests before it can even be approved for humans. And if they give the experimental drug to a person with a lethal disease and they die, that gets counted as a death caused from the drug. So that results in even more tests and more years to get to market.

** In the Season of Infamy DLC in ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamKnight'', [[spoiler:players can choose to let Ra's die by destroying the last Lazarus on earth.]]

As you may know, this trope is one of the biggest [[ConspiracyTheories/HToN conspiracy theories]] in the world: the belief that "Big Pharma" has developed cures for AIDS, cancer[[note]]despite cancer not being a single disease but a ''type'' of disease[[/note]], the common cold, and so on, but would rather sell treatments that don't actually cure anything just to maximize profits. This assumes that all countries in the world use the American healthcare model, even though countries with socialized healthcare are very much interested in cures for chronic ailments to reduce the tax burden their systems create. Within the US, it assumes the people working within Big Pharma are simply saving these cures for themselves and their families, even though rich people die from cancer and other illnesses all the time. The people who push this theory the most are either not very knowledgeable about the subject, or they're trying to [[SnakeOilSalesman sell you something themselves]]. Also, hiding a cure would be HIDEOUSLY unprofitable, since A. that would create a huge chance for someone else to create a knock-off (to patent a cure, they would have to admit it), B. developing any drug is extremely expensive (not just developing, but necessarily testing it with large numbers of animal, and later human, test subjects), so why would anyone research and develop something they don't actually plan to market, and C. the benefits of fame and PR that would come from being "The company that cured cancer/AIDS/whatever!" would be immense. For the sake of [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment cautious editing]], no RealLife examples unless you have documentation, aside from media reports on people's perceptions.

* In ''{{Film/Ultraviolet}}'', [[YouCanPanicNow demonizing]] [[OurVampiresAreDifferent hemophages]] as monsters instead of treating them as victims of disease enabled the Evil Drug Company has become the "Militant Medical Establishment" known as the [=ArchMinistry=]. Unfortunately, they did too good a job of hunting them and, by the time of the movie, needed a new threat to "protect" the world from -- a "human antigen", cultivated inside of a LivingMacGuffin. Once it's released, people will have to line up at [=ArchMinistry=] to get the cure or die. Cue GunKata.

* In {{Series/Continuum}}'s first season finale, [[CorruptCorporateExecutive the pharmaceutical industry executives]] Kagame targets in the season finale were meeting to do this, along with [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking price-fixing]].

* ''{{Series/Merlin 2008}}'' Uther does this when Merlin is poisoned, intent on teaching Arthur a lesson.

As you may know, this trope is one of the biggest [[ConspiracyTheories/HToN conspiracy theories]] in the world: the belief that "Big Pharma" has developed cures for AIDS, cancer[[note]]despite cancer not being a single disease but a ''type'' of disease[[/note]], the common cold, and so on, but would rather sell treatments that don't actually cure anything just to maximize profits. This assumes that all countries in the world use the American healthcare model, even though countries with socialized healthcare are very much interested in cures for chronic ailments to reduce the tax burden their systems create. Within the US, it assumes the people working within Big Pharma are simply saving these cures for themselves and their families, even though rich people die from cancer and other illnesses all the time. The people who push this theory the most are either not very knowledgeable about the subject, or they're trying to [[SnakeOilSalesman sell you something themselves]]. Also, hiding a cure would be HIDEOUSLY unprofitable, since A. that would create a huge chance for someone else to create a knock-off (to patent a cure, they would have to admit it), B. Developing any drug is extremely expensive (not just developing, but necessarily testing it with large numbers of animal, and later human, test subjects), so why would anyone research and develop something they don't actually plan to market, and C. the benefits of fame and PR that would come from being "The company that cured cancer/AIDS/whatever!" would be immense. For the sake of [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment cautious editing]], no RealLife examples unless you have documentation, aside from media reports on people's perceptions.

* An important late-game game mechanic in ''{{VideoGame/BigPharma}}'' - if you make a cure too good, it's rating will skyrocket, followed by its price... for a little bit, when it stops ''treating'' suffers and starts ''curing'' them, permanently reducing demand (and thus price) for the cure. One of the reasons "Female Contraceptive" is such a good cure to focus on is it's guaranteed never to be, uh, cured.

As you may know, this trope is one of the biggest [[ConspiracyTheories/HToN conspiracy theories]] in the world: the belief that "Big Pharma" has developed cures for AIDS, cancer[[note]]despite cancer not being a single disease but a ''type'' of disease[[/note]], the common cold, and so on, but would rather sell treatments that don't actually cure anything just to maximize profits. This assumes that all countries in the world use the American healthcare model, even though countries with socialized healthcare are very much interested in cures for chronic ailments to reduce the tax burden their systems create. Within the US, it assumes the people working within Big Pharma are simply saving these cures for themselves and their families, even though rich people die from cancer and other illnesses all the time. The people who push this theory the most are either not very knowledgeable about the subject, or they're trying to [[SnakeOilSalesman sell you something themselves]]. Also, hiding a cure would be HIDEOUSLY unprofitable, since A. that would create a huge chance for someone else to create a knock-off (to patent a cure, they would have to admit it), B. Developing any drug is extremely expensive (not just developing, but necessarily testing it with large numbers of animal, and later human, test subjects), so why would anyone research and develop something they don't actually plan to market, and C. the benefits of fame and PR that would come from being "The company that cured cancer!" would be immense. For the sake of [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment cautious editing]], no RealLife examples unless you have documentation, aside from media reports on people's perceptions.

As you may know, this trope is one of the biggest [[ConspiracyTheories/HToN conspiracy theories]] in the world: the belief that "Big Pharma" has developed cures for AIDS, cancer[[note]]despite cancer not being a single disease but a ''type'' of disease[[/note]], the common cold, and so on, but would rather sell treatments that don't actually cure anything just to maximize profits. This assumes that all countries in the world use the American healthcare model, even though countries with socialized healthcare are very much interested in cures for chronic ailments to reduce the tax burden their systems create. Within the US, it assumes the people working within Big Pharma are simply saving these cures for themselves and their families, even though rich people die from cancer and other illnesses all the time. The people who push this theory the most are either not very knowledgeable about the subject, or they're trying to [[SnakeOilSalesman sell you something themselves]]. Also, hiding a cure would be HIDEOUSLY unprofitable, since that would create a huge chance for someone else to create a knock-off. (And to patent a cure, they would have to admit it) For the sake of [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment cautious editing]], no RealLife examples unless you have documentation, aside from media reports on people's perceptions.

** Averted in another episode ("The New Breed"), where a scientist is perfectly willing to release his new [[{{Nanomachines}} nanite]]-based cure that would make cancer (or any other cell-related problem) a thing of the past, only to meet opposition from people claiming that he's playing God. On the other hand, he's only at the testing phase, and the "cure" isn't even close to being ready for distribution yet. A friend of his ends up injecting himself with nanites in order to cure his terminal-stage cancer, which works at first (even fixing his poor eyesight), but the untested nanites then start making "[[BodyHorror modifications]]" to his body, reacting to what they perceive are flaws (e.g. [[ApparentlyHumanMerfolk inability to breathe underwater]], [[EyesDoNotBelongThere limited vision]], and [[ShockAndAwe need for additional defense mechanisms]]). In the end, the scientist is forced to kill the poor sap (at his own request) and burns down his lab in the process, forever destroying the potential cure.

As you may know, this trope is one of the biggest [[ConspiracyTheories/HToN conspiracy theories]] in the world: the belief that "Big Pharma" has developed cures for AIDS, cancer[[note]]despite cancer not being a single disease but a ''type'' of disease[[/note]], the common cold, and so on, but would rather sell treatments that don't actually cure anything just to maximize profits. This assumes that all countries in the world use the American healthcare model, even though countries with socialized healthcare are very much interested in cures for chronic ailments to reduce the tax burden their systems create. Within the US, it assumes the people working within Big Pharma are simply saving these cures for themselves and their families, even though rich people die from cancer and other illnesses all the time. The people who push this theory the most are either not very knowledgeable about the subject, or they're trying to [[SnakeOilSalesman sell you something themselves]]. For the sake of [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment cautious editing]], no RealLife examples unless you have documentation, aside from media reports on people's perceptions.

** Wakanda (the home nation of the ComicBook/BlackPanther) has had the cures for [[{{Panacea}} pretty much everything]](along with free energy, spaceflight, etc.) for centuries but refuses to release them, at least when written by Creator/ReginaldHudlin. InUniverse, they justify this by [[http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xsk4mg_black-panther-motion-comic-episode-3_shortfilms claiming]] that they're not "ahead" of the world so much that everyone ''else'' has fallen ''behind''; basically, they're saying the rest of the world is doing this trope to ''themselves'' by not taking the long view, instead focusing their efforts on [[{{Realpolitik}} political advantage]] and [[CapitalismIsBad economic dominance]].

* In ''[[ComiciBook/RobinSeries Robin]]'' when the ComicBook/TeenTitans break into one of Lex Lutor's secret labs in order to steal a cure for what's currently killing Superboy Speedy asks them to keep an eye out for anything labeled "cure for AIDS" and everyone agrees to, noting that it would be in character for Lex to hide such a discovery since they're literally there to steal a cure Lex kept secret. Unfortunately the lab they're in has a distinct focus on Kryptonian and Coluan biology rather than human.

As you may know, this trope is one of the biggest [[ConspiracyTheories/HToN conspiracy theories]] in the world: the belief that "Big Pharma" has developed cures for AIDS, cancer[[note]]despite cancer not being a single disease but a ''type'' of disease[[/note]], the common cold, and so on, but would rather sell treatments that don't actually cure anything just to maximize profits. This assumes that all countries in the world use the American healthcare model, even though countries with socialized healthcare are very much interested in cures for chronic ailments to reduce the tax burden their systems create. Within the US, it assumes the people working within Big Pharma are simply saving these cures for themselves and their families, even though rich people die from cancer and other illnesses all the time. The people who push this theory the most are either not very knowledgeable about the subject, or they're trying to [[SnakeOilSalesman sell you something themselves]]. For the sake of [[RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment cautious editing]], no RealLife examples unless you have documentation, aside from media reports on people's perceptions.