Patents Choking Off Medical Research

pq writes "The New Republic has an insightful article talking about the "absence of truly innovative drugs in current drug company pipelines. And the explanation for that might well come from the supposed fount of American innovation: our patent system." Apparently they are trapped in a situation where "it's much easier to argue that `patents support innovation' than to try to explain that some patents are good for innovation while others are bad." A long read, but unlike the latest copy-protected mp3 player, this is definitely stuff that matters!"

Comments

Re:Pharmasuticals have a hard sell

[gowen]

Pharmaceuticals have a hard sell.
Pharmasuticals have a hard spell.

Re:We've gone as far as we can go

[WetCat]

Corporations aren't like people. If you leave a guy alone to do his job, he generally does it and even finds a better, more eficient way to do it than you taught him. If you leave a corporation alone to fulfill its mission statement, it tends to get lazier and lazier and do less and less

Am I a corporation? My performance alone is EXACTLY like the second behavor!