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Nobel Laureate Attacks Medical Intellectual Property

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the corporate-bottom-line-is-red dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, who was fired by the World Bank blasted drug patents in an editorial in the British Medical Journal titled 'Scrooge and intellectual property rights.' 'Knowledge is like a candle, when one candle lights another it does not diminish its light.' In medicine, patents cost lives. The US patent for turmeric didn't stimulate research, and restricted access by the Indian poor who actually discovered it hundreds of years ago. 'These rights were intended to reduce access to generic medicines and they succeeded.' Billions of people, who live on $2-3 a day, could no longer afford the drugs they needed. Drug companies spend more on advertising and marketing than on research. A few scientists beat the human genome project and patented breast cancer genes; so now the cost of testing women for breast cancer is 'enormous.'"

3 of 449 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Medical Industry by rjshields · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    2a. Why can an old guy take a drug to make his dick hard when I can't smoke a joint?
    Marijuana does nothing to oppress, instead it opens peoples' minds to think in new ways. Free thinkers are dangerous, so they keep us ignorant about its medicinal qualities and spread lies that it is more harmful than it really is. Give them alcohol to rot their minds and bodies, pornography to desensitize and viagra keep their dicks hard.

    People are also scared of things they don't understand. Unless you've had a toke yourself it's easy to believe the lies when you see some bum having a whitey.
    --
    In this world nothing is certain but death, taxes and flawed car analogies.
  2. Re:Patented Breast Cancer Genes? by fishbowl · · Score: 0, Flamebait


    >You assume the United States is the only one with a stupid government.

    Not at all. On the other hand, I presume that other nations have people who will stand up to tyranny -- USAn's are already defeated.

    --
    -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
  3. Re:Patented Breast Cancer Genes? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Maybe but the only real thing the US produces anymore is intellectual property. Without tough and intergrated copyright and IP laws, the US economy would tank. I'd like to think that the US is so interested in IP as an alternative to the creation and exportation of real materials and work output but the global market provides US companies with an advantage that the US consumers will never have again.

    Our kids or our grand kids will be walking to school up hill both ways just as our grandparents did. Face the truth and prepare for it or milk it out and enjoy it while it lasts.

    The story behind "The Running Man" could become a reality. I hope "Mad Max 2" does not.