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The patent system reminds me of an airplane going down, but whenever I read statements like "Medical Patents Must Die" I remember that nobody has a solution to
by vladd 15y ago
The patent system reminds me of an airplane going down, but whenever I read statements like "Medical Patents Must Die" I remember that nobody has a solution to make it fly again. The captain might be wrong, but the first officer doesn't know how to fix it (which is a fundamental step of communicating concerns inside the cockpit - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management#Communication http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_resource_management#Commun... ).
We don't know enough about the human body, the human genome, the diseases around us and their cure. Those things take huge amount of money to research and huge one-time payments that have no certainty at the end of the research tunnel. When a cure is found, no person alone can reimburse its cost. Abolishing patents via a blanket rule would make all medical capital fly out of the window and the only research performed would be the one in government-sponsored laboratories. If that's the solution we want to agree upon, be upfront and state it clearly, otherwise let's not destroy what works without better alternatives.
- hypersoar 15y agoThe article is not talking about drug patents. It is talking about a current case which will decide whether or not to allow patents on medical treatment, even when the patents on the drugs have expired. The patent in question in the case regards a method for adjusting the dose of a drug. Medicine has done without these patents until now. Ars Technica had an article about this the other day, which I thought was more compelling than the linked post: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/oblivious-supreme-court-poised-to-legalize-medical-patents.ars http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/12/oblivious-su...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- zeeed 15y agoAs much as I understand your argumentation from your first post, the author has a point. Whatever reasons about money, investment or other perfectly valid reason you bring up while advocating medical patents: No one on earth should be KEPT FROM SAVING SOMEONE ELSE'S LIFE. That always trumps any endeavor to make a company or ultimately a single person richer.
- vladd 15y ago>> No one on earth should be KEPT FROM SAVING SOMEONE ELSE'S LIFE. That always trumps any endeavor to make a company or ultimately a single person richer. It's not about richness, it's about resource allocation. What you're describing is idealistic but not at all applicable in real life. There are always situations and treatments that might prolong a person's life with X% for Y USD. What if X=0.01%, Y=500'000 USD (i.e. some highly advanced chemo sessions), and the person is 100 years old? What if you could fund with the same 500'000 USD a study that has a 10% probability to improve the cure rate of the treatment by 10%? You need to establish some boundaries and to allocate the resources according to those thresholds; leaving aside the emotionality of those decisions, at the end of the day the society needs to decide how it splits 1 billion in building new bridges, doing medical research or applying existing solutions to marginal patients. It doesn't matter if the government or the free market makes those decisions, but saying "no one" is unrealistic.
- zeeed 15y agoIn your example the treatment simply becomes too expensive with a slim chance of success. The relevant situation is one where a treatment is readily available (no assumptions about cost are being made) but covered by a patent, thus keeping the doc from using it because someone legally (= on paper) keeps the doc from using the treatment method. And yes, patents are about money and property rights and richness. Not about treatment cost.
- davidw 15y agoIf you read his latest book, he's actually pretty much in favor of pharma patents, but what's discussed in this article is not a pharma patent. The whole thing seems to be a bit far from "Hacker News" though. What's the link - the patent system?