[BrokenEnso]

I've heard that argument many times, and I really find it hard to believe. Would the landscape of the market change? Absolutely, but saying that it would disappear seems like fiction.

So, my question for against your statement is, if IP laws changed, why do you think that drug regulations (and everything else that drives up cost-to-market) would remain the same?

[pfisch]

So....we shouldn't have animal and human trials of drugs before bringing them to market? Those are incredibly expensive regulations that I guess we could remove. Do you realize how many years it takes to bring a drug to market, and the kind of salary that the researchers require? Not even counting the hundreds of study participants for the various human trials. The last phase is massive involving multiple hospitals and thousands of hospital visits for the patients.

If another company could just start making that same drug as soon as it is proved safe and effective they could bypass over a decade of development costs that the other company ate(typically for many drugs since most fail so more like 4+ man-decades of development and trial costs). They could sell the drug for purely the manufacturing costs and have an equivalent product.

No one with capitalistic motivations would privately fund drug research in a market like this because it would make no sense.