4 ms·

Without patent protection, there's very little financial incentive to invent new pharmaceuticals. Anything you come up with could be copied and produced for pe

Without patent protection, there's very little financial incentive to invent new pharmaceuticals. Anything you come up with could be copied and produced for pennies on the dollars by any number of companies. Of course, the cost to produce most medicines is quite low. So you have to invest a high fixed cost in R&D, at great risk of failure, and in the end you don't recoup any of that cost. When patents expire, you'll see many generics come onto the market at reduced costs, and cost to consumer goes down. Some other system could probably work, but free market R&D would fail without protections to profit from creations. I suspect trying to replace the free market system with some quasi-public one would not produce as many innovations.

js8 5y ago
In the case of the pandemic, people have other incentives than financial. I don't agree, it seems to me that almost nobody who innovates does it for money, people do it for fame, curiosity, desire to fix a problem. (All progress depends on unreasonable men.) Rather, it's people who organize innovators who do it for money, and the question if they need to be renumerated in patents is legitimate.
- johncolanduoni 5y ago
  The innovators in pharmaceutical research need large amounts of money to run the studies to show safety and effectiveness of their inventions, to say nothing of the even more hit or miss discovery process. It’s conceivable we could pay for that in a different manner than patents and high US drug prices, but that cost can’t just be handwaved away.
schwank 5y ago
"When patents expire, you'll see many generics come onto the market at reduced costs, and cost to consumer goes down." This assertion is simply not true. A prime example - Insulin is 100 years old. Those who need it are paying sky high prices due to corporate greed, and many simply can't afford it. No competition, no affordable option. People are dying due to this greed.
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  Hmm, this article seems to disagree. "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Semglee, a biosimilar form of insulin." "As a generic, it can be automatically swapped for the price brand-name versions to help patients save money." https://www.verywellhealth.com/fda-allows-generic-swap-for-brand-name-insulin-5195729 https://www.verywellhealth.com/fda-allows-generic-swap-for-b...
- johncolanduoni 5y ago
  You’ve picked one large-molecule therapeutic which has significant variations between different products and much higher production costs. The vast majority of drugs are nothing like it, and they follow the pattern of a dramatic drop in price once generics can be legally sold.
stale2002 5y ago
> Without patent protection, there's very little financial incentive to invent new pharmaceuticals. Of course there is. The government would have paid a company a whole bunch of money to do it, for COVID.
- adam_arthur 5y ago
  And those companies with the capability to do it wouldn't have existed. There needs to be a mechanism to profit from the R&D. Point blank. It doesn't have to be through patents... We can create a new system if a better one is devised. But fundamentally, nobody will invest billions of dollars into a venture that is guaranteed not to be profitable. The alternative is fully public funded research.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > The alternative is fully public funded research. So then you agree with me completely that these companies would have existed and would have researched the covid vaccine, because literally as I just said before, the government offered a bunch of money for it, which is "public funded research". Glad you agree with me entirely, but I guess also just wanted to restate my argument slightly, for no reason.
    - adam_arthur 5y ago
      I don't agree at all. If the patent system didn't exist, there would be no companies with the capability to develop the vaccine. Because there's no profit motive. The government would be willing to fund a vaccine, but there would be no capability to create it. What is difficult to understand about that? Do you think we could create a new vaccine within a year if there were no companies with multi billion dollar R&D teams? Could we build iOS or Android if there were no software developers?
      - stale2002 5y ago
        You literally just said that the alternative is public funding.

js8 5y ago

In the case of the pandemic, people have other incentives than financial. I don't agree, it seems to me that almost nobody who innovates does it for money, people do it for fame, curiosity, desire to fix a problem. (All progress depends on unreasonable men.) Rather, it's people who organize innovators who do it for money, and the question if they need to be renumerated in patents is legitimate.

johncolanduoni 5y ago
The innovators in pharmaceutical research need large amounts of money to run the studies to show safety and effectiveness of their inventions, to say nothing of the even more hit or miss discovery process. It’s conceivable we could pay for that in a different manner than patents and high US drug prices, but that cost can’t just be handwaved away.

schwank 5y ago

"When patents expire, you'll see many generics come onto the market at reduced costs, and cost to consumer goes down." This assertion is simply not true. A prime example - Insulin is 100 years old. Those who need it are paying sky high prices due to corporate greed, and many simply can't afford it. No competition, no affordable option. People are dying due to this greed.

adam_arthur 5y ago
Hmm, this article seems to disagree. "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Semglee, a biosimilar form of insulin." "As a generic, it can be automatically swapped for the price brand-name versions to help patients save money." https://www.verywellhealth.com/fda-allows-generic-swap-for-brand-name-insulin-5195729 https://www.verywellhealth.com/fda-allows-generic-swap-for-b...
johncolanduoni 5y ago
You’ve picked one large-molecule therapeutic which has significant variations between different products and much higher production costs. The vast majority of drugs are nothing like it, and they follow the pattern of a dramatic drop in price once generics can be legally sold.

stale2002 5y ago

> Without patent protection, there's very little financial incentive to invent new pharmaceuticals. Of course there is. The government would have paid a company a whole bunch of money to do it, for COVID.

adam_arthur 5y ago
And those companies with the capability to do it wouldn't have existed. There needs to be a mechanism to profit from the R&D. Point blank. It doesn't have to be through patents... We can create a new system if a better one is devised. But fundamentally, nobody will invest billions of dollars into a venture that is guaranteed not to be profitable. The alternative is fully public funded research.
- stale2002 5y ago
  > The alternative is fully public funded research. So then you agree with me completely that these companies would have existed and would have researched the covid vaccine, because literally as I just said before, the government offered a bunch of money for it, which is "public funded research". Glad you agree with me entirely, but I guess also just wanted to restate my argument slightly, for no reason.
  - adam_arthur 5y ago
    I don't agree at all. If the patent system didn't exist, there would be no companies with the capability to develop the vaccine. Because there's no profit motive. The government would be willing to fund a vaccine, but there would be no capability to create it. What is difficult to understand about that? Do you think we could create a new vaccine within a year if there were no companies with multi billion dollar R&D teams? Could we build iOS or Android if there were no software developers?
    - stale2002 5y ago
      You literally just said that the alternative is public funding.