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The original discoverer of Insulin refused to collect patents on the drug due to the vital role the drug played in saving lives. He would be ashamed of this.
@freemo That's indeed shameful.
And it's an essential, life saving drug. Huge profit motive, and the companies are getting away with it.
@design_RG I'm not sure the companies are to blame, the profit ultimately is what pays for the drug research in the first place. If they didnt have the potential to make a large profit they probably wouldnt put the risk into developing hte drugs in the first place.
Sadly I dont have an easy solution for this other than to have drug research driven more by charity and govt funding.
@freemo Insulin has been around for many years, I am assuming this product hasn't changed its composition over these 10 years? And yet the price sky rocketed.
American trade negotiators have demanded higher patent protection as part of some of their agreements negotiations. UK people are already expecting some of that when they get to the table with US after a Brexit.
There needs to be profit enough to refund big upfront costs in R&D, and especially the testing phase and approval.
Excessive profiting is non-ethical though.
@design_RG @freemo this topic has a lot to do with patents and Congress continuing to allow them. There's good info out there on what is causing a lot of these issues.
If we moderate the medical market we're evil socialist demon monsters. People are dying, but corporate profits sure aren't!
Its very complex. if we just did away with patents and did nothing else to address the problem you would quickly find new drug discoveries would become non existant. The problem is just way more complex than that. Patents just look like its a solution in much the same way that free moneyh looks like the solution to poverty. Neither really work because they fail to address the complexity of the problem
@freemo @design_RG absolutely. But like media copyright laws, we need reform to common sense laws that protect the people before the corporations.
I'm all for reform, but i think the problem for muich of the world is we can not get to a good end through incremental change.. the changes that need to be made are harmful in isolation but beneficial when done together, and they exist across many disciplines (for example in this case welfare reform would have to happen simultaniously with healthcare reform)
@freemo @design_RG if you trust The Verge (science) as a news source, they had a recent video discussing insulin the briefly speaks about the patent case. (On mobile, timestamp 2:35)
I am by no means an expert, this video explained a few topics in layman.
