What Is Open Source Pharma (and Why Should You Care)?

Andy Updegrove writes: Humanity today is almost completely dependent on huge pharmaceutical companies to create the drugs we need. But these companies focus exclusively on drugs that can be sold at high prices to large populations — in other words, to patients in developed nations. This means that those who live in the emerging world that suffer from the remaining 'neglected diseases,' like Malaria and drug resistant TB, have no one to depend on for relief except huge charities, like the Gates Foundation. They also have no way to afford many of the patented drugs that do exist. But there is another way, modeled on open source software development, which relies on crowd sourced knowledge, highly distributed, volunteer efforts, and advanced open source tools. That methodology is called Open Source Pharma, and it has the potential to dramatically drive down drug development while saving millions of lives every year.

Comments

Re:There's more to it than developing the drugs.

[ArmoredDragon]

Reasons for government to do all drug research: #1-drug companies do research for profit only, unprofitable drugs don't get developed no matter how many lives it would save. #2-high cost and risk of developing new drugs. #3-developing a cure is less profitable than a treatment, so corporations would only make the treatment. The drug companies should only do production and distribution.

Ok I'll need you to take off your rose tinted government issue glasses for a minute. Consider the fact that the US has a smaller GDP than the combined EU, and the EU governments take in more taxes than the US government.

Now ask yourself, why is it that the world's most advanced medications always come from for profit corporations in the US, and nowhere else? Why is it that the US is by far the most popular destination for medical tourism, even though in the US, hospitals are owned by private, for profit corporations?

Clearly because government run medicine is so much better, right?