Originally Posted by
Knighted
Uh, no. Please go back and re-read the post you're replying to. This whole discussion has been about the hypothetical scenario of patent protections being removed from drugs. The reason that undercutters (generic producers) do not drive big pharma out of business today is BECAUSE of patent protections which grant the typical company 7-12 years of relatively competition-free sales to recoup the enormous R&D expenditures that they put forth to develop a drug. Take that away, and R&D expenditures will dry up virtually overnight, and so will new drug development. That is the precise topic of discussion here.
Nonsense.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/...dical-research
Poorer countries encourage their drug companies to make cheaper generic alternatives to expensive branded ones or use other tools available at their disposal to help bring the price of medicines down to more affordable levels. But they face immense pressure from international institutions and multinational pharmaceutical corporations, even when generics and other options pursued are legitimate under international rules. For these multinationals, they’ve poured billions into some of these drugs and therefore want a patent system that will protect their investments for as long as possible.
For the developing and poorer countries, as remote as these issues may seem, patents and intellectual property rights issues can mean life or death. (For example, at the end of the 1990s, the pharmaceutical industry lobbied the US government to threaten sanctions on South Africa for trying to produce generic drugs to fight its growing AIDS problem. It took huge public outcry to get the case dropped some 2 years later.)
The establishment of the World Trade Organization … imposed US style intellectual property rights around the world. These rights were intended to reduce access to generic medicines and they succeeded.
Developing countries paid a high price for this agreement. But what have they received in return? Drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research, more on research on lifestyle drugs than on life saving drugs, and almost nothing on diseases that affect developing countries only. This is not surprising. Poor people cannot afford drugs, and drug companies make investments that yield the highest returns. The chief executive of Novartis, a drug company with a history of social responsibility, said “We have no model which would [meet] the need for new drugs in a sustainable way … You can’t expect for-profit organizations to do this on a large scale.”
— Joseph Stiglitz (former World Bank Chief Economist and Nobel Prize winner for economics), Scrooge and intellectual property rights, British Medical Journal, December 23, 2006, Volume 333, pp. 1279-1280
Few have challenged or even recognized the unfair tax upon the unfortunate created by vastly overpriced products and services. There is a consistent pattern; the greater the need, the greater the overcharge. Though the need of those with physical disabilities is great, they have limited power to defend themselves. The first efforts to develop mechanical aids for people with physical problems were undoubtedly undertaken with noble intentions. Typically no profit was involved and much labor and time was donated as generous people tried to help the unfortunate. However, those who knew the value of these aids when monopolized claimed patent rights, and those with disabilities now must pay those monopolists. Witness the hearing aids… Each is only a tiny amplifier, yet costs ten to twenty times as much as a radio, which is hundreds of times larger and much more complicated.
— J.W. Smith, The World’s Wasted Wealth 2, (Institute for Economic Democracy, 1994), p. 78.
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