Slashdot Mirror
Nobel Laureate Attacks Medical Intellectual Property
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.'"
the rest of the story, how 1% of the worlds population owns 90% of its wealth.
Of course you know that's an exaggeration, but just out of curiosity, why do you think that (small percentage) should NOT own (larger percentage) of the world's wealth? Personally, I'd rather live in that world where I can move as high as my talent can take me, than live in a world of enforced "equality" that really means transferring money from the doers to the takers.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Unfortunately I don't have any mod points either, having lost them because the last three days were boring.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.