5 ms·

Your point is of course correct within the confines of the current market system. Is the current system moral though? I would argue it isn't. The system is desi

by junto 12y ago

Your point is of course correct within the confines of the current market system. Is the current system moral though? I would argue it isn't. The system is designed to bolster the rich's coffers (countries) and getting rich people healthy, whilst poor countries are unable to pay. These countries can't afford to pay for such investment. The capital imbalance is just huge. Here's my take on this: any drug that is developed by country A has to sell that drug at a rate related to countries B's GDP ratio to A, or allow an open generic license to country B. Thus, should a firm decide to charge $1000 a pill in the US, they have to charge a proportionate and fairer amount to a country like Bangladesh. Whether better access to health services and drugs, many of these third world countries would start to move out of the more that they are currently in. Of course there a huge numbers of variables but I as a share holder would prefer not to see children dying of diseases that could be prevented if it wasn't expensive. Naturally firms like Gilead are going to use market economics to determine the correct price for each country anyway. Something is better than nothing right? Generics are more a solution for long running patents, which I'm personally against when it comes to drug development.

melling 12y ago
You aren't offering any solution to other countries contributing to the development of new medicines. India developed their Mars mission for $74 million dollars. That's a fraction of the US cost. Why can't they develop new medicines for a fraction of the cost? The idea is to increase research at a global level, and have everyone contribute.
- schiffern 12y ago
  >The idea is… Whose idea is that? Who profits from its promotion? Let's not forget that rights to ideas are inventions, not natural rights. >It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. >It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. >It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the actions of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. >Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. >Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices. >Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1813 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....
- zanny 12y ago
  I don't think there is an ethical financial model to fund drug research. It kind of has to be philanthropy to not deny the sick live saving treatment, especially since those most likely to be chronically ill are also more likely to be poor. The only way I could see it working would be to have states guarantee a return to investors at some fixed rate of the cost to discover a new drug, and then buy the rights from them and release them public domain so anyone can manufacture it. But any kind of system like that, involving money taken through violent taxation and put through a bureaucratic blender of national politics, is bound for exploitation. I doubt that in an IP free world all drug research would stop. Those with a vested interest and the charitable could and would fund their own research. One thing to consider is that modern drug research is not directed towards that which is hard or needed, but that which is profitable and wanted. That is why we see a half dozen erection drugs each year yet there has to be viral marketing campaigns for ALS research.
  - melling 12y ago
    India has the 10th largest GDP in the world. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nom... They will soon have the largest population, if the don't already. It's middle class isn't as large as the U.S., but it's growing quickly. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_India http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_India Why wouldn't they want to invest into research to cure common diseases?
    - zanny 12y ago
      Because those most likely to be infected are those with the least political influence. Globally, the rich are much less likely to get sick, because they live in much more sanitary environments, expose themselves to infection less, and have consistent top tier healthcare to prevent infection. Thus the people who need it least are those who both have the money to potentially fund it themselves and the social power to make representatives care.
- cmdkeen 12y ago
  Then you're essentially outsourcing medical testing to poorer countries with corruption problems. Many of the massive costs of developing drugs come in the massive trials required to get Western approval - running those trials abroad, but to a standard required to get FDA approval probably won't save that much money. Drug development being guided by market forces works, government bodies tend to have a very poor record when it comes to picking winners, even worse at an international level. Global medical coordination's problems can be seen in the WHO's current problems. Drug companies want to maximise their profit. They understand the basics of economics, the supply / demand curve, and that selling lots in poorer countries is better than selling much less at a higher price. The problem is what the earlier poster posited - that those drugs don't stay in India, or patients travel to there, at which point the economics become much riskier. Given this site is full of people aware of how the VC process works they seem remarkably unable to apply the same logic to to drug development. Vast amounts of money are invested across many possible drugs, at each stage vicious winnowing occurs in order to receive later tranches of funding. In order to drive that winnowing there needs to be a payoff at the other end, and the payoff needs to be massive in order to justify the many other drugs looked into that don't pan out.
adventured 12y ago
Your premise of morality is based on the notion that one person has the right to the produce of another person. Your theory, boiled down to its core, rests on the complete invalidation of property rights, all rights of ownership. That in some cases - decided by some random people, bureaucrats of course - you have no right to what you create, that it is to be owned by someone else, because they have a need. I argue that your system is responsible for most of the brutality of the 20th century; yours is the notion that violence makes right. That using guns to confiscate property is proper. The market system is the only moral system, it's the only one that doesn't hold some people to be the slaves of other people, with endless claims of need held over their heads, and their property expropriated by way of force. Your theory posits that my wealth is owed to anyone else that is poorer than I am. Because my wealth could go to significantly improve their life in countless ways. Whether I have $50,000 or $50 million to my name makes no difference when we're talking about the bottom 15% of the world's poor. Whether I own a drug, or own cash, there is absolutely no difference, the claim is the same: I'm rich, and I have no right to my property, because there is someone poorer that has a need. I don't owe anyone the coat off my back, and that principle goes the same for America inherently owing a poor country anything; and if I choose to give someone my coat, it should be solely up to me. The only moral system when dealing with such poverty is one of voluntary charity. Anything else is a crime against humanity, for there's nothing more disgusting than 'charity' at the point of a gun.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  > The only moral system when dealing with such poverty is one of voluntary charity. Anything else is a crime against humanity, for there's nothing more disgusting than 'charity' at the point of a gun. Objectivism in a nutshell: It is more moral to let an innocent child die in pain than to require someone to help them. And just like Rand, you'll fight like a demon to suppress public assistance until it's your neck on the line, and then suddenly it's Social Security and Medicare on the sly, like a homophobic preacher hooking up blowjobs in men's rooms.
refurb 12y ago
Here's my take on this: any drug that is developed by country A has to sell that drug at a rate related to countries B's GDP ratio to A, or allow an open generic license to country B. That's exactly what Gilead is doing! They out-licensed Sovaldi to 4-5 generic manufacturers in India. The price in India will be $900, 1.1% of the price in the US.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  It's kind of them to make sure that, despite the vast differences in income between India and the US, it's equally out of reach to poor people in both countries.

by junto 12y ago

melling 12y ago

You aren't offering any solution to other countries contributing to the development of new medicines. India developed their Mars mission for $74 million dollars. That's a fraction of the US cost. Why can't they develop new medicines for a fraction of the cost? The idea is to increase research at a global level, and have everyone contribute.

schiffern 12y ago
>The idea is… Whose idea is that? Who profits from its promotion? Let's not forget that rights to ideas are inventions, not natural rights. >It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs. But while it is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all, it would be singular to admit a natural and even an hereditary right to inventors. >It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject, that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common, is the property for the moment of him who occupies it, but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. >It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the actions of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. >Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. >Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from anybody. Accordingly, it is a fact, as far as I am informed, that England was, until we copied her, the only country on earth which ever, by a general law, gave a legal right to the exclusive use of an idea. In some other countries it is sometimes done, in a great case, and by a special and personal act, but, generally speaking, other nations have thought that these monopolies produce more embarrassment than advantage to society; and it may be observed that the nations which refuse monopolies of invention, are as fruitful as England in new and useful devices. >Considering the exclusive right to invention as given not of natural right, but for the benefit of society, I know well the difficulty of drawing a line between the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent, and those which are not. As a member of the patent board for several years, while the law authorized a board to grant or refuse patents, I saw with what slow progress a system of general rules could be matured. -- Thomas Jefferson, 1813 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12....
zanny 12y ago
I don't think there is an ethical financial model to fund drug research. It kind of has to be philanthropy to not deny the sick live saving treatment, especially since those most likely to be chronically ill are also more likely to be poor. The only way I could see it working would be to have states guarantee a return to investors at some fixed rate of the cost to discover a new drug, and then buy the rights from them and release them public domain so anyone can manufacture it. But any kind of system like that, involving money taken through violent taxation and put through a bureaucratic blender of national politics, is bound for exploitation. I doubt that in an IP free world all drug research would stop. Those with a vested interest and the charitable could and would fund their own research. One thing to consider is that modern drug research is not directed towards that which is hard or needed, but that which is profitable and wanted. That is why we see a half dozen erection drugs each year yet there has to be viral marketing campaigns for ALS research.
- melling 12y ago
  India has the 10th largest GDP in the world. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nom... They will soon have the largest population, if the don't already. It's middle class isn't as large as the U.S., but it's growing quickly. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_India http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_of_living_in_India Why wouldn't they want to invest into research to cure common diseases?
  - zanny 12y ago
    Because those most likely to be infected are those with the least political influence. Globally, the rich are much less likely to get sick, because they live in much more sanitary environments, expose themselves to infection less, and have consistent top tier healthcare to prevent infection. Thus the people who need it least are those who both have the money to potentially fund it themselves and the social power to make representatives care.
cmdkeen 12y ago
Then you're essentially outsourcing medical testing to poorer countries with corruption problems. Many of the massive costs of developing drugs come in the massive trials required to get Western approval - running those trials abroad, but to a standard required to get FDA approval probably won't save that much money. Drug development being guided by market forces works, government bodies tend to have a very poor record when it comes to picking winners, even worse at an international level. Global medical coordination's problems can be seen in the WHO's current problems. Drug companies want to maximise their profit. They understand the basics of economics, the supply / demand curve, and that selling lots in poorer countries is better than selling much less at a higher price. The problem is what the earlier poster posited - that those drugs don't stay in India, or patients travel to there, at which point the economics become much riskier. Given this site is full of people aware of how the VC process works they seem remarkably unable to apply the same logic to to drug development. Vast amounts of money are invested across many possible drugs, at each stage vicious winnowing occurs in order to receive later tranches of funding. In order to drive that winnowing there needs to be a payoff at the other end, and the payoff needs to be massive in order to justify the many other drugs looked into that don't pan out.

adventured 12y ago

Your premise of morality is based on the notion that one person has the right to the produce of another person. Your theory, boiled down to its core, rests on the complete invalidation of property rights, all rights of ownership. That in some cases - decided by some random people, bureaucrats of course - you have no right to what you create, that it is to be owned by someone else, because they have a need. I argue that your system is responsible for most of the brutality of the 20th century; yours is the notion that violence makes right. That using guns to confiscate property is proper. The market system is the only moral system, it's the only one that doesn't hold some people to be the slaves of other people, with endless claims of need held over their heads, and their property expropriated by way of force. Your theory posits that my wealth is owed to anyone else that is poorer than I am. Because my wealth could go to significantly improve their life in countless ways. Whether I have $50,000 or $50 million to my name makes no difference when we're talking about the bottom 15% of the world's poor. Whether I own a drug, or own cash, there is absolutely no difference, the claim is the same: I'm rich, and I have no right to my property, because there is someone poorer that has a need. I don't owe anyone the coat off my back, and that principle goes the same for America inherently owing a poor country anything; and if I choose to give someone my coat, it should be solely up to me. The only moral system when dealing with such poverty is one of voluntary charity. Anything else is a crime against humanity, for there's nothing more disgusting than 'charity' at the point of a gun.

PhasmaFelis 12y ago
> The only moral system when dealing with such poverty is one of voluntary charity. Anything else is a crime against humanity, for there's nothing more disgusting than 'charity' at the point of a gun. Objectivism in a nutshell: It is more moral to let an innocent child die in pain than to require someone to help them. And just like Rand, you'll fight like a demon to suppress public assistance until it's your neck on the line, and then suddenly it's Social Security and Medicare on the sly, like a homophobic preacher hooking up blowjobs in men's rooms.

refurb 12y ago

Here's my take on this: any drug that is developed by country A has to sell that drug at a rate related to countries B's GDP ratio to A, or allow an open generic license to country B. That's exactly what Gilead is doing! They out-licensed Sovaldi to 4-5 generic manufacturers in India. The price in India will be $900, 1.1% of the price in the US.

PhasmaFelis 12y ago
It's kind of them to make sure that, despite the vast differences in income between India and the US, it's equally out of reach to poor people in both countries.