If it was discovered that a cure for cancer was so simple and cheap......(rest in details)

Totally under wraps. They would have too much to lose.

Personally if there was no financial gain, I think they would sit on it as long as they could, but I have never trusted large corporations.
Thanks @ZEPHYRA I think so as well.

Big Pharma would, by its very nature, have nothing to do with it.

Well all we have to do is look at what the tobacco industry did to hush up the fact that quitting smoking (or preventing kids from starting) would save countless lives.

Is there any reason to think that big Pharma would be any more beneficient than the tobacco industry if their profits are at risk?

I think the answer is self evident. They would fight tooth and nail to suppress info.that would be inimical to their bottom line. No big surprise there.

And now Exxon doing the science in the 70’s that indicated climate problems and yet sitting on it and eventually hiding it.

Does anyone remember what we assumed was an urban legend about someone inventing a car that ran on hydrogen which was derived from water that the science was bought up and buried by the fossil fuel industry?

@rojo Reminds me of what I thought was another urban legend of the Seventies…the Pogue Carburetor!

Biodiesel is not even an urban legend but has not made much traction. Gee, I wonder why?

Every once in a while you also encounter someone saving tons of money by using the DIY approach of using WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) but the same WVO can be chemically converted to Biodiesel.

I would assume it’s a lot cheaper and easier than even electricity since the main requirement for it’s use is a diesel engine and there are plenty enough vehicles already out there with diesel engines.

Everytime I hear them talking about cheap, clean and renewable sources of energy I think “what’s more ubiquitous in the land which lives on fried foods than used fryer oil ?” it’s certainly readily available everywhere. Plus the main impediment to using diesel engines (the heavy black smoke and awful smell) is eliminated and replaced by the delicious smell of french fries as you go rolling down the highway :)

But that’s not something the big oil companies can easily control so it languishes in obscurity.

If I didn’t live in a Northern climate but somewhere with warmer temps for most of the year, I would buy myself a diesel vehicle and DIY and save a ton of money.

@Yetanotheruser Thanks, your link eventually led me to this‘s_water_fuel_cell about a water fuel cell powered car and so, in a roundabout way, answered my inquiry!

@Buttonstc Willie Nelson’s tour bus has been powered by reclaimed frying oil for a number of years.

They’d keep it under wraps. After all, if it ain’t fixed, don’t break it!

@YAU

You’re right and he’s not the only performer who does.

I don’t remember whether there are any currently up and running, but he also plans to set up a whole network of Biodiesel stations beginning in Texas.

Obviously Biodiesel is easier to use because you don’t need to install a warming element the way you do for WVO.

As a matter of fact, Mike Rowe profiled a guy who does how own chemical conversion to Biodiesel on his previous show, Dirty Jobs.

I’m just not that much of a chemist or I’d be running on Biodiesel :)

But obviously the big oil companies have a vested interest in preventing the govt. from backing any efforts similar to Willie. If that were not hue case, we’d have made much greater strides (similar to Brazil which plants huge fields of switchgrass to convert to Biodiesel).

There’s not much good reason for the US to not do likewise, or just convert all that fryer grease which businesses now pay another company to remove.

And all this gum-flapping about cheap sources of renewable energy is just a bunch of noise to disguise the fact that it already exists.

After all, when Rudolph Diesel developed his first engine and demoed it at the World’s Fair, what was he using for fuel ? Vegetable oil, of course. Not WVO, but vegetable oil all the same.

But big oil prefers to keep that salient fact buried in the murky past ;)

The pharmacy companies would try to keep the information from coming out, but it would eventually be known. Considering the fame that would come from such a discovery, some organization would be willing to kick in the cash to prove that the method works.