3 ms·

Or simply revoke the patent for these antivenoms so that companies that don't have the same opportunity costs can enter the niche. I think it would solve a lot

• brg 17y ago
  As much as you may be against software patents, there can be no current patent restriction on the production of coral-snake antivenom if it was approved in 1967. The problem described in the article is simply that so few bites occur, the effort to make antivenom is not interesting to anyone with the skills or equipment to make it. This includes individual pharmacists, university scientists, and corporations; all of who can but do not provide antivenom.
  • Gormo 17y ago
    That's a good point; I didn't make the connection with the 1967 date and focused on the article referencing that one company as the only source of antivenom. Is it possible for pharmacists to synthesize anti-venom on demand? Coral snake bites may be rare, but if you were, for example, the operator of an Everglades tour group, your probability of encountering a bite might be a bit higher, and the antivenom would be good to keep around.
    • sigstoat 17y ago
      you'd probably want an organic synthesis chemist, not a pharmacist. and you wouldn't have time for him to have the appropriate glassware fabricated, and synthesis equipment setup. so he'd have to leave a room with it all step up properly. ...which sounds like the sort of thing you might do if you were just manufacturing it.
      • brg 17y ago
        Perhaps originally I should have said pharmacologist, but even in retrospect your term of a specialized chemist seems more correct.