I'm sorry you took offense to my comments, limewave, but to be honest I took a bit of offense to your friends'.
(Or I would have, were I still in the lab trying to work on such things.)

She says the money is in treating symptoms, not curing them. In one respect she's right. The bar is much higher for cures than for treatments. What defines a cure? Absence of symptoms or absence of the physiological marker for the disease - but, for how long? Forever? So if a patient has a relapse after 5 years, then it's not a cure? The devil is in the details.

Plus, how safe and tolerable is a "treatment" as opposed to a "cure"?

It's easy to be cynical about pharma - lawd knows I am, often!! - but sometimes when I boil it down to the basic problems and issues and realities, I can (grudgingly) realize that there are a lot of factors in play and it's not a big 'ol conspiracy.

I'm glad that you found an alternative that works for you.

And I'm sorry that your folks have had a difficult time with their prescriptions. It can get mind-boggling. But do you really know that no-one has bothered to investigate the origins of their problem(s)? That's painting with an awfully broad brush, isn't it?

Perhaps the dispensing physician or pharmacist are not giving you (or your folks) the kind of information you/they desire? Just wondering.