3 ms·

How does that help? That just reduces the commercial incentive to pay for clinical trials and stuff even more. Phasing out patents doesn't work without an idea

How does that help? That just reduces the commercial incentive to pay for clinical trials and stuff even more. Phasing out patents doesn't work without an idea for an entirely, fundamentally new system of developing, testing, approving, manufacturing, and distributing drugs. I'm not saying that it's not possible to come up with a radically different system that is better than what we have now, but I am saying that kneecapping the system that we have now without any plan for a replacement definitely isn't going to help.

EGreg 6y ago
It helps because there are opportunities to create and boost systems of prizes instead of patents.
- vikramkr 6y ago
  Looks like you edited your comment with a lot of alternate systems, but all the examples you gave are ones that aren't expensive to develop. You have to prove drugs work and take a significant amount of risk that you don't take with software projects like those. And you've added this idea of a prize based system. Who gets the prize in a system without ownership of IP? Again, having a clear alternative before tearing down a system that produces things you want (e.g. new drugs to cure diseases) is kind of important. Just eliminating the system because there will be "opportunities" to figure out better ways of doing things later basically just means eliminating the system completely. Drug development is not a net negative to society. Having a new gene therapy to cure a deadly rare disease that costs way too much and isn't accessible is better than just not having that therapy at all.
  - EGreg 6y ago
    I do have a clear alternative I wrote about it 11 years ago http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=93 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=93 Costs under a capitalist system of private property and monopolies enforced by government are one thing. Under a system with no profit motive or restrictions on innovation, they are another. We already witness the cost to the US taxpayer. This a lot of money raised by walkathons and public universities and so on. The NIH develops many things and pharma licenses those patents and they don’t pay the public any direct royalties for them. And it devolves into handouts for the large corporations, whether it’s this or banks too big to fail or now with the Fed exceeding its mandate and just making sirect investments into the top corporations to prop up the stock market to restore people’s “confidence” in this system. You talk about cost? The societal cost of the current system is huge, AND the health outcomes and preparedness are far behind what they would be under a system with LESS enforcement private property on such levels. https://youtu.be/HIQk5B0il-A https://youtu.be/HIQk5B0il-A Disclaimer: I am a left-libertarian
    - jcranmer 6y ago
      Have you ever talked to, or even read the writings of, someone who actually does drug development? See for example https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/05/28/where-drugs-come-from-a-comprehensive-look https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/05/28/wh... (Derek Lowe does a lot of writing about this). The starting point to realize about drug development is that 90% of our drug candidates fail. And that's only considering candidates that make it to an initial drug filing, which is itself a tiny fraction of compounds considered internally.
      - EGreg 6y ago
        But these candidates are all competing! It’s like if Netscape was never open sourced, we would have closed source browser wars, all our explosion of wealth was BECAUSE of that happy accident. Once anyone is free to build on them, we could have a lot more drugs. Many drugs were repurposed, as well. Viagra was not designed for its current use case. Methamphetamines are strikingly similar to cocaine. Imagine how much innovation could be done if people were ALLOWED to do it!
        jcranmer 6y ago
        Anyone can do it! When you patent a drug, you patent a compound for the purpose it is being used for. If you use it for a different purpose, then you won't violate the patent. So why don't we see more repurposing of drugs? Because it's expensive to actually go through all of the clinical trials, especially the final Phase III trial (where 50% of drugs fail due to being ineffective).
        EGreg 6y ago
        Seriously? Have you read the doctrine of equivalents? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_equivalents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_equivalents And moreover, patented drugs are repurposed all the time and always by their original developers. Show me a counterexample!
        vikramkr 6y ago

EGreg 6y ago

It helps because there are opportunities to create and boost systems of prizes instead of patents.

vikramkr 6y ago
Looks like you edited your comment with a lot of alternate systems, but all the examples you gave are ones that aren't expensive to develop. You have to prove drugs work and take a significant amount of risk that you don't take with software projects like those. And you've added this idea of a prize based system. Who gets the prize in a system without ownership of IP? Again, having a clear alternative before tearing down a system that produces things you want (e.g. new drugs to cure diseases) is kind of important. Just eliminating the system because there will be "opportunities" to figure out better ways of doing things later basically just means eliminating the system completely. Drug development is not a net negative to society. Having a new gene therapy to cure a deadly rare disease that costs way too much and isn't accessible is better than just not having that therapy at all.
- EGreg 6y ago
  I do have a clear alternative I wrote about it 11 years ago http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=93 http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=93 Costs under a capitalist system of private property and monopolies enforced by government are one thing. Under a system with no profit motive or restrictions on innovation, they are another. We already witness the cost to the US taxpayer. This a lot of money raised by walkathons and public universities and so on. The NIH develops many things and pharma licenses those patents and they don’t pay the public any direct royalties for them. And it devolves into handouts for the large corporations, whether it’s this or banks too big to fail or now with the Fed exceeding its mandate and just making sirect investments into the top corporations to prop up the stock market to restore people’s “confidence” in this system. You talk about cost? The societal cost of the current system is huge, AND the health outcomes and preparedness are far behind what they would be under a system with LESS enforcement private property on such levels. https://youtu.be/HIQk5B0il-A https://youtu.be/HIQk5B0il-A Disclaimer: I am a left-libertarian
  - jcranmer 6y ago
    Have you ever talked to, or even read the writings of, someone who actually does drug development? See for example https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/05/28/where-drugs-come-from-a-comprehensive-look https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2019/05/28/wh... (Derek Lowe does a lot of writing about this). The starting point to realize about drug development is that 90% of our drug candidates fail. And that's only considering candidates that make it to an initial drug filing, which is itself a tiny fraction of compounds considered internally.
    - EGreg 6y ago
      But these candidates are all competing! It’s like if Netscape was never open sourced, we would have closed source browser wars, all our explosion of wealth was BECAUSE of that happy accident. Once anyone is free to build on them, we could have a lot more drugs. Many drugs were repurposed, as well. Viagra was not designed for its current use case. Methamphetamines are strikingly similar to cocaine. Imagine how much innovation could be done if people were ALLOWED to do it!
      - jcranmer 6y ago
        Anyone can do it! When you patent a drug, you patent a compound for the purpose it is being used for. If you use it for a different purpose, then you won't violate the patent. So why don't we see more repurposing of drugs? Because it's expensive to actually go through all of the clinical trials, especially the final Phase III trial (where 50% of drugs fail due to being ineffective).
        EGreg 6y ago
        Seriously? Have you read the doctrine of equivalents? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_equivalents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_equivalents And moreover, patented drugs are repurposed all the time and always by their original developers. Show me a counterexample!
        vikramkr 6y ago