I don't have a problem with the idea of patents. I just think we could be a whole lot more pragmatic about them. They're supposed to incentivize useful behavior.
While I don't disagree with your point, the company that bought the patent paid a lot of money for it from the company that developed it. Patents being exchangeable is not necessarily a bad thing.
How do you incentivize environmental research? How are we supposed to find solutions to climate change if they can't be patented?
Copyrights are just as bad as patents, and musicians/writers shouldn't make people pay for their music/books.
We should start giving money to causes we support, whether it's art, medical research, software projects, etc. It's a mistake to think we should only give money if we're forced to by law (through pricing something that's not scarce).
The government does frequently fund the discovery of new drugs. The problem is that the return on that investment is usually abysmal and the taxpayer ends up not only paying to fund the drug’s discovery, but also paying absurdly high prices to buy it from pharmaceutical companies who passed some or all of their risk onto taxpayers.
Of course. Most of basic science in the US is government funded. I'm wondering what the OP thinks about removing the barrier that they identified (private corps paying for the trial vs gov paying for the trial) and how that would affect their thinking.
The government is the whole reason the clinical trials are required before patients can be treated with a working drug. They are the cause of the problem, not the solution.
Reading the article has convinced me that drug patents in particular are a great idea. Isn't it wonderful that we live in a world where futuristic new treatments like this can be developed?
Yes it's true that people can't get the drug now, but at least someday it might be available.
Without patents, who would you find to work for free developing something like this?
> Isn't it wonderful that we live in a world where futuristic new treatments like this can be developed?
This futuristic new treatment can no longer be developed or produced by ANYONE in the world, without the consent of this company. Before the patent, anyone could. Do you think that's not a problem?
We'll incentivize researchers the same way we'll do with musicians and writers in a post-copyright society. People who think this disease is important will crowdfund the research, and those who want to receive experimental and personalized treatment will pay for it.
How do you think we should incentivize things like environmental research? Is our knowledge about climate change patentable? What if someone found a cure?
Anyone could, but nobody did, or would have without either a profit motive or massive state funding.
> Do you think that's not a problem?
Well it’s certainly not the most ideal thing you can imagine, but I don’t see a better way in a capitalist society to incentivize medical research. Do you?
> People who think this disease is important will crowdfund the research
I’m not aware of any crowdfunding campaign that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars.
> How do you think we should incentivize things like environmental research?
It should be funded by the state
> What if someone found a cure?
That’d be awesome. We should pay them incredibly handsomely for their work.
We don't need more laws. The problem is caused by the government. They're the one that enforce patents and regulate clinical trials. You think they should decide what "made available in reasonable ways" means? What could go wrong...
I see you arguing that things went just the way they should have all over this thread.
This point in particular is completely wrong. The two doctors who made the drug do not even hold the patent and basically gave it away for free to the company trying to distribute it.
So yes, if not for the patent this drug would definitely still exist, and probably be available to people who actually freaking need it.
> I see you arguing that things went just the way they should have all over this thread.
Actually, I never said that anywhere. I think what happened is basically a no-op. Without a profit motive, the drug would never have been developed, and therefore not available to anyone, and we'd be in the same boat we're in anyway.
What I do think is one of two things should happen: Either (1) we decide that the drug is worth it, in which case health systems should pay the owner of this drug fairly for their investment. Or (2) it's not worth it, in which case we're no worse off than we would have been without this company, other than the fact that they wasted a bunch of their money.
(As an aside, note that I said we should pay the owner, fairly for their invention, not the original developer who voluntarily gave up the rights. This is an important distinction as the ability to voluntarily transfer property rights is pretty central to the whole concept. Imagine if after you bought a car, anyone could take it, because you're not the original manufacturer. It's not hard to see the path from this society to one where nobody bothers making cars.)
> The two doctors who made the drug do not even hold the patent and basically gave it away for free to the company trying to distribute it.
Those two doctors did the least expensive part of the whole operation. The more expensive part was funded privately. If you want to fix this you can either have the government fund that expensive part, or you can have it done privately and pay the owners what they want.
> if not for the patent this drug would definitely still exist, and probably be available to people who actually freaking need it
Sure, maybe the doctors still would have done the research, but there would be no money either for the clinical trials, and so manufacturing and distributing the drug would be illegal.