"...it can be argued that caloric restriction ... has the potential to accelerate the healing process..."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25881054

"...fasting ... has the potential to differentially protect normal and cancer cells against chemotherapy..."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815756/

"...Autophagy is sometimes referred to as cellular “cleansing”, and our observations provide an attractive neuronal parallel to the organismal benefits that, historically, are perceived to derive from fasting."

"...short-term food restriction induces a dramatic upregulation of autophagy in cortical and Purkinje neurons. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration that food restriction leads to in vivo neuronal autophagy."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3106288/

The day Big Pharma finds a way to profit from patients not consuming anything but water for 10 to 40 days and getting rid of diseases that used to require lifelong drug regimen, the research flood gates will open. But ain't gonna happen in my lifetime. There's no money in fasting, and no one can patent it.

Regardless of whether or not this is true (and really it seems to me to be a bit more malicious than large groups of people are consistently capable of), this isn't a super useful way of looking at it. Rather than speculate on why things are the way they are (especially if in this case it's pretty much unsolvable without really big changes), shouldn't we look to solve the problems this is causing (which by and large involves "merely" collecting large amounts of data, which is much less difficult and much more attainable in the short term)?

I don't know about "curing" but it can be surprisingly effective for systemic inflammation. I think it's one of the most promising areas for autoimmune research.

https://news.usc.edu/63669/fasting-triggers-stem-cell-regene...

Yes, there is a hospital in South Africa that is successfully using water fasting in autoimmune disease. I'll pull some documentation and post.

Didn't you see all those posts on facebook? Middle-aged women appearently are really heavy medical researcher.