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Withholding the Cure: Difference between revisions
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Good news! There is finally a cure for that horrible disease. Too bad the cure is owned by [[Peace and Love Incorporated]], who refuse to distribute it because they believe they can squeeze more money out of people who remain sick, or by the evil overlord who ''wants'' the people to die off so he can move in and occupy the land.
'''Withholding the Cure''' is when the cure really works and it is what people really need, but someone is keeping it from people for their own selfish reasons.
Compare and contrast [[Manufacturing Victims]], which involves therapists keeping their patients in therapy. Then there's withholding medication to keep people in therapy, or withholding therapy to keep people on medication, both of which can be [[Truth in Television]]: In [[Real Life]], some people need medication, some need therapy, some need a combination of both, and many need neither.
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** Doctor Doom apparently has a good method of treating burn victims, which he's withholding because he's ... well ... ''Doom''. He was talked into using it once to save Storm, though.
** In ''[[Doctor Strange]]: The Oath'', Doc retrieves a magical elixir that has the power to "erase what troubles the mind of man," hoping it can save Wong's life. It turns out to be the [[Cure for Cancer]] (and everything else), which causes a corrupt pharmaceuticals company to send an assassin to shoot Strange and steal the elixir.
** C-list character Cardiac became a vigilante / superhero when his brother died because of corporations using this policy.
* ''[[The Invisibles]]'' has, as one of its many conspiracy subplots, the agents of the Conspiracy being in full possession of the AIDS vaccine... which they engineered before they released AIDS into the world, so that they could chart its influence among "target populations."
== [[Film]] ==
* In ''[[Johnny Mnemonic]]'', the world is in the grips of a pandemic, and an Evil Drug Company is chasing the title character to regain a cure locked in his [[Neuro Vault]]. As long as the cure is suppressed, the Evil Drug Company keeps making billions off the watered-down cure, Paralon-B. "Treating the disease is more profitable than curing it!" Cue gunfights.
** The Evil Drug Company even went so far as to deny the cure to its own top executives. So at least they were consistent.
* In ''[[Mission: Impossible]] 2'', a good scientist spliced countless influenza viruses together into a super-influenza as part of the process of creating a universal cure for influenza. That worked out perfectly, and would have been worth billions. Unfortunately, he didn't realize he was working for an Evil Drug Company. They realized that his superflu would be worth ''hundreds of billions'' to the right buyer, and that a superflu outbreak would make a universal cure worth '''trillions'''. Cue gunfights.
* In one movie which may or may not share its name with ''[[Phase IV]]'', investigation on some mysterious murders leads to the discovery that a laboratory had discovered a cure for AIDS, but decided to murder everyone involved to keep selling existing treatments.
* In ''[[Ultraviolet (film)|Ultraviolet]]'', [[You Can Panic Now|demonizing]] [[Our Vampires Are Different|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 [[MacGuffin Girl|MacGuffin Boy]]. Once it's released, people will have to line up at ArchMinistry to get the cure or die. Cue ''[[Gun Kata]]''.
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* In ''[[Abarat]]'', Christopher Carrion withheld a cure for a beast boy's condition (his name escapes me) in return for the boy's unwavering loyalty.
* Opal Koboi in [[Artemis Fowl]] does this.
* [[Oryx and Crake|Crake]] pulls this one on ''the entire world'', creating a wildly contagious hemorrhagic virus which he then implanted in supplement pills. He had the cure (and had indeed ensured that at least one person was immune to the virus) but had no plans to distribute it, since his [[Evil Plan]] hinged on most or all of the human race dying.
* In ''[[Ixia and Sitia|Poison Study]]'', Yelena is poisoned early on with something called Butterfly's Dust that will kill her if she doesn't get a daily dose of the antidote from her keeper. {{spoiler|This turns out to be made up, though.}}
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* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "Dalek", the villain brags about having discovered a cure for the common cold—which he isn't going to give to anyone, as it gets him more money if he just sells the existing medication.
* There was an episode of ''[[Barney Miller]]'' where the perp was a research scientist who had destroyed the property of his former employers because they refused to let him research the cure for [some disease] on the grounds that it wasn't fatal and there were too few sufferers for a cure to be profitable. Barney managed to talk his former boss into dropping charges and rehiring the guy, partly with the argument that by the time the cure was developed there may be an epidemic, "with any luck."
* Played with in an episode of ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]''. A race contracted a plague and believes they need continued treatments provided by another race to stay alive. Dr. Crusher, however, discovers that the plague has been cured, and it's only the withdrawal symptoms of the treatment that make them think they still need it. The other race are very aware of this and continue to exploit them, as their economy depends on it. While the [[Alien Non-Interference Clause|Prime Directive]] forbids [[The Captain|Picard]] from revealing the truth to the wronged race, he finds a way to correct the situation by refusing repairs to their few remaining ships. Without the ships, they will have no way to get the cure and will eventually realize they're not actually sick.
* Not to mention that notorious time in [[Enterprise]] when Archer decided to let an entire species die from a disease he had the cure for so that another race would have an "evolutionary breakthrough".
* ''[[Merlin (TV series)|Merlin]]'' Uther does this when Merlin is poisoned, intent on teaching Arthur a lesson.
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[[Category:Dirty Social Tricks]]
[[Category:Plots]]
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