Some months ago, the international media reported a big breakthrough in the cure of a particular nervous system disease. Light seemed to have been discovered at the end of a long and tortuous tunnel.

I tried to find out more as someone very dear to me suffers from this condition. The consultant told me that the experiments were still at a very early stage and that one should not raise high hopes as these could turn out to be false hopes. He told me that such news stories are not released not because of medical considerations but because of financial ones.

Companies needed periodic injections of publicity to keep their stock prices high and keep up with the competition. Is there anything better than a 'miracle' cure just round the corner to do that? The same consultant mentioned various examples of how this happens in the world of medicine.

I don't think many people who know me would give me nine out of 10 on any scale measuring naiveté, whereby 10 is the highest level. This notwithstanding, I was shocked, as I never thought such things could happen.

Perhaps I should not have been so shocked or surprised. A doctor friend of mine told me that large companies often pay all the expenses doctors incur to take part in conferences abroad. These occasions, he told me, are a flimsy excuse for a first-class all-expenses-paid holiday. The doctors are expected to prescribe the medicines advertised during these conferences, even though other less expensive and equally effective medicines are easily available. And many do just that.

When I was still a member of the Medical Council we were informed that some clinics and/or private hospitals were paying commission to doctors who send patients for tests or treatments there. The owner of a clinic told me that a doctor, who was not identified, asked him for commission every time he referred patients. The council sent a letter to all doctors reminding them that such practices are unethical. It could not do more as it did not have tangible proof it could use against particular individuals.

There is also abuse connected with the supply of medicines on an international level. A top Vatican official lamented that producing urgently needed medicines is no longer driven by traditional medical ethics, but by money. The lack of basic, life-saving medicines also means the world risks "a humanitarian and global health care disaster", said Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry.

In too many parts of the world, urgently needed pharmaceuticals are lacking, he said during a gathering of the International Congress of Catholic Pharmacists in Poznan, Poland.

"Often, for economic reasons, common diseases in developing countries are neglected because, even though they afflict and kill millions of people, they do not constitute a lucrative enough market," Mgr Zimowski said. He made an urgent appeal for the poorest people in the world to be given access to much-needed medicines.

The archbishop also highlighted the problem of counterfeit or fake drugs, antibiotics and vaccines, explaining that fake or diluted drugs can result in prolonged illness or death, and can lead to the development of drug-resistant bacteria.

It seems it is not just the more mundane aspects of our world that money makes go around, but medicines too.