[TimGebhardt]

The reason drugs are so expensive to develop is the FDA testing. So instead of patents the FDA can just enforce a rule to not allow generic drugs unless they've gone through the same rigorous testing process the original guy did.

This is probably something the FDA should do anyway. Generic drug makers can look at a drug's signature, but there are so many other variables that can affect how a drug performs (quality control of the factory, quality of ingredients, recipe, procedure, etc.) that the FDA should require generic makers to go through the same testing process because they're different drugs.

The generic drug makers will have less overall expenses to bring a new drug to market (because someone already figured out a particular protein sequence that works in XYZ manner), but the original inventor will have time to milk the market as the first-to-market, encouraging innovation, and we can still get rid of our awful mess of a patent system.

Generally if you've built up a whole system (like the patent system), and it's really only beneficial for a select few (pharma), then maybe it'd be better to design a different system just for them (like the one proposed above) and don't make everyone else suffer the consequences.

[pyre]

The FDA can also go overboard. Recently (~1.5 years ago) they seized 'birthing pools' as 'untested medical devices.' These are basically inflatable pools for women that want to have water births. To give some context, the operating table in a hospital does not qualify as a medical device (and therefore no FDA testing), but apparently inflatable pools that women give birth in require FDA testing.