[s1artibartfast]

the US government intentionally gives away money with no strings attached for R&D. The explicit purpose of this funding is to help companies make products and profit. If the outcome you want is different, we need to look at different research vehicles.

This section of your WaPo article hits the nail on the head:

>“Without incentivizing some of these companies to stay attached to emerging disease, I think they will walk away, even after this one,” he said. “In this situation [filing for a government patent] would have caused more harm with Gilead and not been worth it. “The government’s job is to make sure industry is successful, and if industry is successful, then we all benefit from it.” “Although USAMRIID performed extensive and critical screening and testing for Gilead, testing a compound and finding that it is indeed an effective antiviral compound does not qualify USAMRIID as a joint inventor of the compound,” Leigh Callander, chief patent counsel for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, said in an email.