Actually they go there to get filthy rich. If pursuit of knowledge was their thing, they would take a grant and publish the results like any other scientist. Yet they opt for a mercenary status because they do not care if the results are someone's "private property". They are in it for the money and I am sure some of them expain it away to themselves at night when their conscience bothers them.
And for the most part, they are fairly successful
You must be kidding... oh wait.. you mean succesful at protecting the "brand name" companies from themselves, the public and from any competition? Claiming Canadian generics are "unsafe"? Demanding massive amounts of paperwork to prevent entry of cheaper alternatives into marketplace? Hiding evidence of side-effects when a "brand" is threatened? Yes they do fine job indeed for their masters.
keep a studio in business. A studio needs to make new movies to survive. Similarly, drug companies require new discoveries to survive.
Finally we get close to the truth, the drug companies operate just like the "studios" . Pushing useless crap on their "audience" and when the said useless crap wears off in a week and no amount of marketing dazzle props it alive anymore, they go for the next round of crap. And to do it, they only need to enslave every man, woman and child with ridiculous laws going contrary to common sense. If I were you, I would not mention any of the so called "contents industies" like music or movie ones in the same sentence as pharmaceutical companies. The fact that you claim that perfectly functional, slightly inferior product makes no money is dead giveway that these people are crooks of the highest order. If they were humanitarians you claim them to be, or even plain businessmen, they would market the older version to people who cant afford the "new and improved" one, but instead they'd rather have it made illegal to prevent the suckers... I mean the consumers, from getting their hands on one. Or perheaps a 3rd world country whose people cant afford any of the top priced "wonders". Instead they will graciously give a drop in the bucket of the country's needs as long as in return the country's laws are gutted to make sure noone can compete with them on the local market. Drug companies are some of the most despicable, vile and inhuman of the world's corporations.
No, the public funds go to nonprofit institutions such as universities, not to pharmaceutical companies
Dude, you should scroll back to the news story that started this whole conversation. Something about "public funding" for "private patent"?
And you, I am sad to see, have "Marx" written on your forehead.
Ah yes, anyone who claims that the allmighty Religion Of Capitalism (as opposed to the economic theory of Capitalism) has limits, is a Marxist. Go pray at the nearest Wallmart, the juju in your wallet is getting low.
That has more to do with the fact that western (and westernized) nations create a lot of very desirable media and software
It is well beyond me why it is "desireable", but then again, people will be marketing-dazzled-pop-culture sheep I guess no matter what you do. Phillosophically, they are right to have no "IP" laws. The "pirates" are doing exactly what went on for the last two millenia before "IP" laws were created. Freely exchange information and charge only for the delivery. And you know what? I think Chinese government is smart doing this. This will enable their industry to make leaps and bounds everywhere. Perheaps they will get greedy after they are already a super-power. But until then, the "free exchange" bit is what makes their factories boom and students learn with no $200 per schoolbook fees.
Since there is little copyright protection in China, there is little incentive to innovate and create
Right. There is no Chinese movies, no books and no software. As soon as you crawl from under that rock, take a trip to Bejing and you are in for a shock of your life.
Kinda shoots a huge f-ing hole in your theory, doesn't it?
Huh? This is precisely what I am talking about. NIH and other publicly funded institutions should be engaged in doing precisely that. The whole objection here is to allowing some singular, hand picked corporation to patent that publically founded research. Or was your father's research funded by NIH and then patented by some Pfizer? And you think its a good thing? Clarify please.
If it weren't for the capitalistic societies doing the research,
India? Not capitalistic? Hong Kong? Singapore? What are you talking about? Their economic condition is a function of history and politics and not capitalism. The "free" exchange of ideas part is only but small aspect of the whole equasion.
Don't you stop to wonder why their academia doesn't create drugs?
Sure. Many of the drug designers are from India and SE Asia. As soon as anyone has any knowledge, he/she is being snatched away to the West by the allmighty corporations. The fact that India/SE Asia are in that position is historical and at this point it will take decades for them to catch up. However there is nothing inherently inferior in their academic system, to the contrary, a lot of poeple educated there are in western bio-tech. If we allow these types of things to persist, soon there will be no academia anywhere, only private research and everything in our children's schoolbooks will be someone's "property".
Some people argue that merely the existence of trade implies capitalism.
That would imply that Capitalism is compatible with Feudalizm. To my knowledge, this would cause all proponents of Capitalism to scream bloody murder. Confusionpedia pages notwithstanding.
..have to stand in line for 3 years to see a doctor.
You listen to Rush Limbaugh too much. Yes, there are some delays for some procedures, but that beats the hell out of choosing between dying or selling all your worldly possesions including your kid's college money to surivive as it is the case in USA. What? 40% of population underinsured, 20% with no medical care whatsoever is a better system? Ah, yes, you can afford it and therefore it is the apex of medical care. Those brown skinned window washers are disposable anyhow. There is always more waiting at the border, no?
what you are advocating is a disgusting system of waste and abuse
No, what I am advocating is a system that functioned for the most part of the last two millenia and whose labours all of the current technology is based on: academic research.
Unless of course you believe that scientific progres was invented in the freedom loving USA, somewhere on a Texas ranch.
No, it is just plain unworkable, unfair and counter-productive.
I prefer a system that encourages them to share.
That's what academic system did for centuries. Sharing was the only way the game was played.
They are publishing how chemicals work, and how to make them, which is just as important.
You misunderstood. All they are publishing is the genetic sequence itself.
A company can own non-naturally occuring DNA, but they can't own the DNA in my body.
Oh dear. You really do not follow the implications. If the company makes its "proprietary" DNA availaible as part of a gene-maniuplation therapy, to say make infants immune from AIDS, then that "proprietary" sequence is now inside a child for whom the parents bought the "treatment" at conception. What if this child grows up and he impregnates a woman and passes the gene on? The Monsanto decision, clearly states that in that case, the semen of that man contains "private property" of a corporation and is subject to royalties. This may be in the future exepmt, or maybe not as there will be a chorus of appologists (like yourself) for these barron-robbers of information claiming that excluding payments for children would "stifle" progress in genetics.
Good thing IBM shared the info..
If they played it your way, there would be no compatibility between various brands of computers (as IBM would own the patent to "their" standard) and likely much slower version of computer revolution would occur.
You seem to believe that treating information as if it were physical property encourages sharing. I believe that it does the exact opposite as any attempts at "hoarding" it are bound to be far less successful (due to the nature of information) then litigation using perverted laws. All it takes is one disgruntled employee and the secret is blown. The most notorious of world's intelligence agencies seem to have trouble keeping secrets. There would be no danger of discoveries falling into some black hole. On the other hand a DMCA like law can wreak havoc on everyone using any sort of information processing equipment for decades, all the while the thieving of public resources goes on and attempts to use copyright on genes are becoming successful.
You mean there is no drugs sold in India/SE Asia? Oh my. No wonder there is no profit. Newsflash: If there is a market, there is a profit to be made. If the research was done at academia and freely available to manufacturers, perheaps their product wouldnt be so overpriced that they cant compete? Incidentally, the dudes who make the knockoffs, are making money while providing far better service to the people of India, ie. they get to get cured affordably, while in your approach they would be all dying because snickering Western drug makers would not stoop to lowering their prices for those dirty asians. No commercial software industry? I do not think "selling" software is a viable business but rather a con-game dependant on perversions of law. The FOSS movement is exposing this fallacy with increasing obviousness. Incidentally, there are many GPL'ed projects originating from SE Asia and India. If it all goes well, they will have locally customized software and Microsoft will get the shaft. Best of both worlds.
An unlikely-to-be-enacted proposal does not "planned to be" make.
Sure as hell someone is planning (or pereheaps scheming) it.
Economics applies to anything that is limited but widely wanted
In this case what is limited is not information but the state of it being public. The cure for cancer will be there if it is "discovered" by one company, 2, 100 or none at all. The information persists but its state of dissemination varies. Trouble is that iformation once available to one person, can be effortlessly duplicated and thus its "value" at that point is highly questionable. So the only thing that counts is the initial discovery. Which brings a problem: if company A discovered the thing and then completely independently companies B and C and D did, how come only A is the "owner"? All spent the same time and effort. Hm?
One of the things with information is that it is very difficult to come up with the first instance
Some if it is, majority is not. Vast bulk of the so-called "inventions" at the USPO are trivia meant to lock down paths of discovery for competitors. You put far too much credence in the company driven for-profit research and far too little in the for-knowledge-and-recognition accademic one.
The logical progression is that chemical xyz that works on certain DNA sequence is protected,
Really? Noone is making any new chemicals, merely generating new sequences which alter the ratios of existing chemicals in the cells. How do you suppose to protect that if not protecting the actual sequence? Do you not protect? Well then a company has a right to take you to court, because other sequences, like songs or software, are protected. You cant have it both ways. Courts apparently agree, granting Monsanto ownership to all offspring of "their" brand of canola.
No, it would be in the public by now anyways, that is the importance of limited protections.
Is 20 years gone already? My, time flies fast. So you mean we will be getting our first 286 12MHz clone any time soon? Boy, dont you love progress! Just think how slowly it would advance if it were not for the "intelectual property" law!
Huh? You're going to argue about the evils of capitalism by giving an example of a company and an industry that operate successfully within the medium of capitalism?
Who is arguing evils of capitalism? You? Certainly not me. What I am arguing is applicability of capitalism (or lack thereof) to information and that is a completely different thing. Capitalism depends on free markets and any attempts and "protecting" information lead to restrictions on those markets. That is the example I showed. The restriction was accidentally removed, leading to PC industry boom. I am not sure what are you objecting to here.
Very well. Sun is the energy source that makes life possible on Earth. I cant think of any object more valuable. Can you own it? Is it subject to Capitalism? How about vacuum? It sure is valuable in various manufacturing processes. Can you own it?
My definitions are just common sense. Capitalism is a socio-economic system, applicable to commerce and not a frigging religion! Although you would never know it the way people are educated. Capitalism, while quite effective, is just a human-devised system, which at the time of its creation in 19th century was impossible to immunize against oversights, like the "intellectual property".
if you make it so that people can't profit by sharing knowledge, they won't share it.
Really? How much stock did you buy in Pythagoras' ventures? You know the dude who discovered the constant Pi. How are your payments going to Aristotle? Plato? Newton? Planck? Bohr? Huh? Bought anything recently at the Einstein EMC2 enteprises? Scientists seek knowledge and recognition not profits. The very fact that you believe otherwise means you departed the camp of reason and went into the abyss of capitalism-as-religion.
You have received that memo that Marxism was an utter failure, right?
Marxism? Who is talking about Marx? Oh, yes I forgot, anyone who challenges the "Capitalism, the unfallable religion" dogma is a Marxist. Adam Smith would be probably sad seeing what you are doing with his work.
Oh, yes I do, I am having it both ways. If all the resources of private enterpises are put into one reasearch line, that in one fell swoop achieves both: removes top talent from the other lines of inquiry and makes most of the facilities unavailable for other research, plus leaves everybody else scrambling for remaining scraps.
...that allow them to avoid the scrutiny of the FDA
FDA exists as a feeble attempt to control abuses by the very drug companies you defend. One has only to take a look at FDA's behaviour when Canadian imported drugs are concerned to see who do they serve.
The pharmaceutical research directors I've met aren't scam artists; they're scientists who are primarily interested in making discoveries and helping people, and who are happy to have managed to find a way to do that and make a good living at the same time. That just turns out to be the kind of guy who is best at doing the sort of research that makes big profits for pharmaceutical companies..
Oh dear, I think you should avoid carrying a wallet in the presence of any semi-competent, silk-suit wearing con-man. You have a "mark" written on your forhead.
A little hint: how do you think a top ranking slimeball businessman looks like? All dirty and not being able to put two sentences without "Y'all" in them? Or perheaps, amiable, smiling, witty, educated "scientist" whose only hart-felt desire is to help people and never you mind 1.7billion in profit. That is 1.7billion made on backs of dying people. Medicine related companes are an age old refuge of the most fiendish of cons, and I guarantee you, they all, to the last of them, look cultured and amiable. I hear one Dr. Mendele, was quite a conversationalist, something about "advancing human understanding".
no amount of marketing will sell an obsolete drug
Err.. wait, how do drugs get "obsolete"? They stop working? Perheaps some anti-biotics do, but other types? A new, improved one is made, sure, but how many old ones cease to function? You know it is not like a "fashion" trend is present in drug use. Noone gets new "seasonal styles" or a color to match one's dress.
But it turns out to be the rule rather than the exception
Oh yes, that justifies all. We should all gamble public funds in corporate roulettes in hopes that some useful side-effects occur and when a windfall is made, the corporation naturally keeps the benefits. Rather then funding academic research and making corporations compete on manufacturing and delivery. That would make no sense. No, Sir. None at all.
Uh, that's in direct contradiction of reality. One has only to look at the unprecedented progress of the last hundred years in the Western world (particularly in the US) to see the benefits of capitalism
Sigh, here we go again. Cause. Effect. Commercial progress? Cause: capitalism aided by sicence. Scientific progress? Cause: free exchange of information enabling research aided by investment. Remove the "free exchange" part and you have no progress whatsoever. That is what is different about recent decades versus the past 200 years. The research field is becoming a maze of fences and walled-in compounds with guard dogs. Hence "the end of science as we know it".
The US patent system only gives you a relatively short window during which you can take advantage of your discovery before others can use it as well.
I dont know about you, but 20 year patents (currently planned to be extended to 40) and 90 year copyrights (currently planned to be extended to... eternity probably) do not constitute "short periods". Also all knowledge is incremental. The new gizmo "invented" by the scientist, depends on him knowing: physics (with its thousands of researchers who went before), chemistry (with its thousands of researchers who went before), mathematics, writing , usage of pens and clothes on his back. Nearly everything that he does was contributed to him by some long gone person, who did not have a patent on it. In essence he takes all that and locks down a particular use of it, a road, leading to his "invention" for 20 years. Regardless if there are perheaps 200 others just 1 day behind him in 200 other labs, travelling the same road, basing their work on the same thing and ending up with the same conclusions. The patent system is meant to create "winner-takes-all" mentality which will inevietably deprive us of freedom.
No it is not. At least not in the same terms as physical objects. Since it only has two states (known/unknown). The only economic barrier you can place is at the boundary of the two. With physical property, the boundary is set at the right to
control the physical object (car, house, etc). So yes, you can get paid to keep your mouth shut, but that is only a delaying tactics, because information can be independently discovered and also deduced from someone's elses actions (product) and the secret is out. "Owning" information on the other hand is like trying to "own" the Sun and then demand royalties for its "use".
Only 1 company would benifit, possibly for eternity, or until somebody else "discovers" the same thing.
No. Untill 1 month later a first reverse-engineered knock-off is out. And 3 months later untill the market is flooded with knockoffs all competing on price and quality. That is how PC revolution came about. IBM (mistakingly as it turns out) allowed the design information to be released free and the piece that was not (BIOS) was quickly duplicated. The rest is history. In your way of doing things we would be still paying for IBM ATs $10k a pop since IBM would be the only maker with the "Intellectual Property" for it. You are arguing the exact reverse of what you think you are. Free markets (free from frivolous protections like "Intellectual Property" laws) are the only way Capitalism can surivive and not turn into cronie-corporatism.
The concept of intellectual property isn't flawed (its worked well for 200 years)
The concept of "intellectual property" is fundamentally flawed, the only saving grace was that this was not apparent for the last 200 years whereby the only applications were books, art and specific industrial designs. But a logical progression of that approach is to treat DNA sequences as "property" and demand royalties on one's offspring, claim that radio waves beaming through your body from a satelite are not yours to decipher, that a schoolchild singing a song violates copyright etc etc etc. And it is only going to got worse, because the concepts of "information" (as in whiffs of electrons in someone's brain) and "private property" (as in a brick house) are mutually irreconcilable.
We are nowhere close to depleting the worldwide reserves of talented people interested in doing biomedical research. If you fund it, they will come.
Except that funding comes only of you do research in easilly marketable, high-profit drugs. You dont want to? No funding. That is how everyone is doing Viagras and other "lifestyle" drugs.
Do you really imagine that companies invest in marketing to throw money away? Marketing makes money, by increasing sales. That's why they do it. More sales means more money to invest in research.
I cant believe this is coming from someone in academia. As someone in business, let me tell you how it works: making more money, means more profit. Thats it. That is the entire point of the operation. If investing in marketing produces more profit, so it is done. If one can make a fake "drug" whereby the main ingredient is sugar and salt, and the "research" was conducted by someone else and the manufacturing can be done by a set of rented monkeys, plus the "drug" has highly-addictive properties, that constitutes a most desirable and optimal situation. Less money on research and manufacturing and more profit the better. Marketing is how you make it work. As somoeone in business I must also tell you that business is the least qualified of entities to be making decisions like that because, business, if it can get away with it, will kill people for money.
Because the fundamental vascular and biochemical mechanisms that make Viagra work turn out to be critical for understanding things like heart disease and stroke.
That is merely a lucky fluke. If Viagra produced nothing of the sort, it would still receive the attention it did.
but I should also point out that ever since corporations got involved, the number of discoveries has increased by probably more than an order of magnitude.
This is a red-herring since the pace of progress was related to the pace of exchange of information due to vastly improved communication technologies. Also the fact that researchers were lured into private enterprises with greater money, does not mean that they became more efficient, they merely moved from one place to another but the price of that is that the fruits of their labour are now "private property".
Auto manufacturers do substantially more than manufacture autos (fuel cell research etc.)
Thats their preoragative, I do not propose mandating it illegal. I merely suggest that if information was deprived of its "private property" status, such endavours would be by definition benefiting all, rather then one auto-maker (although they might still get a small advantage of being first to know).
$687,000 of that taxpayer money wasn't research, but Medicare for people to receive the drug
LOL. And do, pray tell, tell us where this money ended up?
Net cost to taxpayers...
$28,000+$687,000=$715,000
Considering Bristol-Meyers dropped 8.29 billion to create the drug
Yes and send a man to Mars while they were at it. Out of that 8.29 billoon I call 8.28 billon spent on everything related to all the other activities the company shares with all their other product lines + marketing. I know drug companies from personal experience. Thieves and liars have no better place to get together then most of their boards of directors.
otherwise all the important science they do wouldn't get out into the public.
How do you figure? If information is not considered "property" as it is clearly not fitting the bill, all research is "unprotected". That means that if a company makes something, reverse-engineering is immediate and leads to instant competition on price and quality.
I dont want to get in a long winded essay here, but it all comes down to the simple fact that "information" (as a result of research and many other things, like art) does not have the required attributes to be "personal property" (and thus to be subject to Capitalism). It can only be in two "states": known and unknown. Once it is known, it can be effortlessly replicated. Thus from the perspective of a company, the sensitive information can only be "known to us and the world" (information is public) or "known only to us" (information is secret). No other possible conditions exist. "Protecting" information via legal means is what leads to abuse and attempts at making it into a piece of property, like a car or a lot of land. Whereby noone else is allowed to "replicate" it. Ignoring the fact that very thought process constitutes "copying".
To make a long story short, corporations can try to "own" information but they will inevietably fail, the only thing to decide is if we will pay exoribitant social cost for that failure or not.
Most progress throughout history has been determined by self-interest, not selfless altruism
True but you made a fundamental mistake assuming that self-interest equates lust for profit. Most scientists over the centuries worked for recognition in their field instead. Unless you figure that the likes of Einstein were tycoons of multi-national corporations?
Capitalism is the foundation of society that makes anything possible. Without capitalism we'd be a bunch of hunter gatherers with no time to do scientific research because we'd be too busy finding food, and trying not to get killed.
You clearly have no idea what Capitalism is. What you described is any post-hunter-gatherer society, from Ancient Egypt onwards. Capitalism is a particular arrangement that did not come into existance until 19th century, where the greed of individuals is supposed to be cleverly funnelled into progress for all. And thanks to this poor understanding of its teachings it is that poeple attempt to apply Capitalism where it does not belong like in areas of research and information.
A drug such as Viagra doesn't "consume" private research funds.
You are quite naive, Sir. There is a finite amount of reserch facilities and personell available, not to mention top scientific talent. If you put them to work on viagras of the world, very few remain to do anything else.
...who can then invest the profits in other research projects
You mean in marketing? Yes, Pfizer does research but its research budget is but a fraction of its marketing budget. Just like most drug companies. The point is that Pfizer and the rest of them are ill equipped and have too many conflicts of interest to be allowed to be in charge of such critical thing like medical research.
Viagra is also relevant to finding treatments for less "frivolous"...
It is not frivolous for what it cures. It is frivolous for the amount of resources (from Pfizer and all the competitors in mad rush to replicate something like it) that it consumes when compared to the severity of the ills that it addresses. It is an example of profit motive being superior to anything else.
The alternative is that corporate funded research wouldn't be published hoping that nobody else discovers what they have done.
That is what the corporations would like you to believe. The truth is that the alternative is academia and public/foundation sponsored research. Corporate research is a relatively new phenomenon and one with staggering negative implications. Only people set to profit from it at the expense of the society at large would advocate it.
It is frivolous in terms of emphasis. The drug makers spend far more resources on viagra than on research into most other far more devastating illnesses combined, because market for viagra is a money making bonanza and a rare disease one is not. If you take the efforts by all the drug makers to come up with competing versions, the situation is more depressing yet. Drug companies spend vast sums on this and also on marketing and ads and at the same time would probably not make any new drugs were it not for academia doing research and then handing it to them. The entire system is a cestpool which will not be cleaned up untill patents on drugs are no more and the research is no longer done by drug makers but by academia only.
I think people with the cancer would rather have the cure.
They already have the cure.
Will you get it through your thick skull that the cure was paid for by taxpayers. They would have had the cure regardless. The only issue at hand is that the cure was then given as a gift to one company to make profits with, instead to all drug companies. And thus with the cure already available many people died because the price was too steep, even though their tax money was used to make it. You are advocating that the drug should be available to fewer people.
Is any of it getting to you through that thick coating of right-wing slime?
What number? More than in the other systems you dislike so much?
On par with other western countries and with far less social effects. How many exactly? Do your own fucking googling.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually they go there to get filthy rich. If pursuit of knowledge was their thing, they would take a grant and publish the results like any other scientist. Yet they opt for a mercenary status because they do not care if the results are someone's "private property". They are in it for the money and I am sure some of them expain it away to themselves at night when their conscience bothers them.
And for the most part, they are fairly successful
You must be kidding... oh wait.. you mean succesful at protecting the "brand name" companies from themselves, the public and from any competition? Claiming Canadian generics are "unsafe"? Demanding massive amounts of paperwork to prevent entry of cheaper alternatives into marketplace? Hiding evidence of side-effects when a "brand" is threatened? Yes they do fine job indeed for their masters.
keep a studio in business. A studio needs to make new movies to survive. Similarly, drug companies require new discoveries to survive.
Finally we get close to the truth, the drug companies operate just like the "studios" . Pushing useless crap on their "audience" and when the said useless crap wears off in a week and no amount of marketing dazzle props it alive anymore, they go for the next round of crap. And to do it, they only need to enslave every man, woman and child with ridiculous laws going contrary to common sense. If I were you, I would not mention any of the so called "contents industies" like music or movie ones in the same sentence as pharmaceutical companies. The fact that you claim that perfectly functional, slightly inferior product makes no money is dead giveway that these people are crooks of the highest order. If they were humanitarians you claim them to be, or even plain businessmen, they would market the older version to people who cant afford the "new and improved" one, but instead they'd rather have it made illegal to prevent the suckers... I mean the consumers, from getting their hands on one. Or perheaps a 3rd world country whose people cant afford any of the top priced "wonders". Instead they will graciously give a drop in the bucket of the country's needs as long as in return the country's laws are gutted to make sure noone can compete with them on the local market. Drug companies are some of the most despicable, vile and inhuman of the world's corporations.
No, the public funds go to nonprofit institutions such as universities, not to pharmaceutical companies
Dude, you should scroll back to the news story that started this whole conversation. Something about "public funding" for "private patent"?
Ah yes, anyone who claims that the allmighty Religion Of Capitalism (as opposed to the economic theory of Capitalism) has limits, is a Marxist. Go pray at the nearest Wallmart, the juju in your wallet is getting low.
It is well beyond me why it is "desireable", but then again, people will be marketing-dazzled-pop-culture sheep I guess no matter what you do. Phillosophically, they are right to have no "IP" laws. The "pirates" are doing exactly what went on for the last two millenia before "IP" laws were created. Freely exchange information and charge only for the delivery. And you know what? I think Chinese government is smart doing this. This will enable their industry to make leaps and bounds everywhere. Perheaps they will get greedy after they are already a super-power. But until then, the "free exchange" bit is what makes their factories boom and students learn with no $200 per schoolbook fees.
Since there is little copyright protection in China, there is little incentive to innovate and create
Right. There is no Chinese movies, no books and no software. As soon as you crawl from under that rock, take a trip to Bejing and you are in for a shock of your life.
Huh? This is precisely what I am talking about. NIH and other publicly funded institutions should be engaged in doing precisely that. The whole objection here is to allowing some singular, hand picked corporation to patent that publically founded research. Or was your father's research funded by NIH and then patented by some Pfizer? And you think its a good thing? Clarify please.
India? Not capitalistic? Hong Kong? Singapore? What are you talking about? Their economic condition is a function of history and politics and not capitalism. The "free" exchange of ideas part is only but small aspect of the whole equasion.
Don't you stop to wonder why their academia doesn't create drugs?
Sure. Many of the drug designers are from India and SE Asia. As soon as anyone has any knowledge, he/she is being snatched away to the West by the allmighty corporations. The fact that India/SE Asia are in that position is historical and at this point it will take decades for them to catch up. However there is nothing inherently inferior in their academic system, to the contrary, a lot of poeple educated there are in western bio-tech. If we allow these types of things to persist, soon there will be no academia anywhere, only private research and everything in our children's schoolbooks will be someone's "property".
That would imply that Capitalism is compatible with Feudalizm. To my knowledge, this would cause all proponents of Capitalism to scream bloody murder. Confusionpedia pages notwithstanding.
You listen to Rush Limbaugh too much. Yes, there are some delays for some procedures, but that beats the hell out of choosing between dying or selling all your worldly possesions including your kid's college money to surivive as it is the case in USA. What? 40% of population underinsured, 20% with no medical care whatsoever is a better system? Ah, yes, you can afford it and therefore it is the apex of medical care. Those brown skinned window washers are disposable anyhow. There is always more waiting at the border, no?
No, what I am advocating is a system that functioned for the most part of the last two millenia and whose labours all of the current technology is based on: academic research.
Unless of course you believe that scientific progres was invented in the freedom loving USA, somewhere on a Texas ranch.
No, it is just plain unworkable, unfair and counter-productive.
I prefer a system that encourages them to share.
That's what academic system did for centuries. Sharing was the only way the game was played.
They are publishing how chemicals work, and how to make them, which is just as important.
You misunderstood. All they are publishing is the genetic sequence itself.
A company can own non-naturally occuring DNA, but they can't own the DNA in my body.
Oh dear. You really do not follow the implications. If the company makes its "proprietary" DNA availaible as part of a gene-maniuplation therapy, to say make infants immune from AIDS, then that "proprietary" sequence is now inside a child for whom the parents bought the "treatment" at conception. What if this child grows up and he impregnates a woman and passes the gene on? The Monsanto decision, clearly states that in that case, the semen of that man contains "private property" of a corporation and is subject to royalties. This may be in the future exepmt, or maybe not as there will be a chorus of appologists (like yourself) for these barron-robbers of information claiming that excluding payments for children would "stifle" progress in genetics.
Good thing IBM shared the info..
If they played it your way, there would be no compatibility between various brands of computers (as IBM would own the patent to "their" standard) and likely much slower version of computer revolution would occur.
You seem to believe that treating information as if it were physical property encourages sharing. I believe that it does the exact opposite as any attempts at "hoarding" it are bound to be far less successful (due to the nature of information) then litigation using perverted laws. All it takes is one disgruntled employee and the secret is blown. The most notorious of world's intelligence agencies seem to have trouble keeping secrets. There would be no danger of discoveries falling into some black hole. On the other hand a DMCA like law can wreak havoc on everyone using any sort of information processing equipment for decades, all the while the thieving of public resources goes on and attempts to use copyright on genes are becoming successful.
You mean there is no drugs sold in India/SE Asia? Oh my. No wonder there is no profit. Newsflash: If there is a market, there is a profit to be made. If the research was done at academia and freely available to manufacturers, perheaps their product wouldnt be so overpriced that they cant compete? Incidentally, the dudes who make the knockoffs, are making money while providing far better service to the people of India, ie. they get to get cured affordably, while in your approach they would be all dying because snickering Western drug makers would not stoop to lowering their prices for those dirty asians. No commercial software industry? I do not think "selling" software is a viable business but rather a con-game dependant on perversions of law. The FOSS movement is exposing this fallacy with increasing obviousness. Incidentally, there are many GPL'ed projects originating from SE Asia and India. If it all goes well, they will have locally customized software and Microsoft will get the shaft. Best of both worlds.
An unlikely-to-be-enacted proposal does not "planned to be" make.
Sure as hell someone is planning (or pereheaps scheming) it.
In this case what is limited is not information but the state of it being public. The cure for cancer will be there if it is "discovered" by one company, 2, 100 or none at all. The information persists but its state of dissemination varies. Trouble is that iformation once available to one person, can be effortlessly duplicated and thus its "value" at that point is highly questionable. So the only thing that counts is the initial discovery. Which brings a problem: if company A discovered the thing and then completely independently companies B and C and D did, how come only A is the "owner"? All spent the same time and effort. Hm?
One of the things with information is that it is very difficult to come up with the first instance
Some if it is, majority is not. Vast bulk of the so-called "inventions" at the USPO are trivia meant to lock down paths of discovery for competitors. You put far too much credence in the company driven for-profit research and far too little in the for-knowledge-and-recognition accademic one.
The logical progression is that chemical xyz that works on certain DNA sequence is protected,
Really? Noone is making any new chemicals, merely generating new sequences which alter the ratios of existing chemicals in the cells. How do you suppose to protect that if not protecting the actual sequence? Do you not protect? Well then a company has a right to take you to court, because other sequences, like songs or software, are protected. You cant have it both ways. Courts apparently agree, granting Monsanto ownership to all offspring of "their" brand of canola.
No, it would be in the public by now anyways, that is the importance of limited protections.
Is 20 years gone already? My, time flies fast. So you mean we will be getting our first 286 12MHz clone any time soon? Boy, dont you love progress! Just think how slowly it would advance if it were not for the "intelectual property" law!
Who is arguing evils of capitalism? You? Certainly not me. What I am arguing is applicability of capitalism (or lack thereof) to information and that is a completely different thing. Capitalism depends on free markets and any attempts and "protecting" information lead to restrictions on those markets. That is the example I showed. The restriction was accidentally removed, leading to PC industry boom. I am not sure what are you objecting to here.
Very well. Sun is the energy source that makes life possible on Earth. I cant think of any object more valuable. Can you own it? Is it subject to Capitalism? How about vacuum? It sure is valuable in various manufacturing processes. Can you own it?
My definitions are just common sense. Capitalism is a socio-economic system, applicable to commerce and not a frigging religion! Although you would never know it the way people are educated. Capitalism, while quite effective, is just a human-devised system, which at the time of its creation in 19th century was impossible to immunize against oversights, like the "intellectual property".
if you make it so that people can't profit by sharing knowledge, they won't share it.
Really? How much stock did you buy in Pythagoras' ventures? You know the dude who discovered the constant Pi. How are your payments going to Aristotle? Plato? Newton? Planck? Bohr? Huh? Bought anything recently at the Einstein EMC2 enteprises? Scientists seek knowledge and recognition not profits. The very fact that you believe otherwise means you departed the camp of reason and went into the abyss of capitalism-as-religion.
You have received that memo that Marxism was an utter failure, right?
Marxism? Who is talking about Marx? Oh, yes I forgot, anyone who challenges the "Capitalism, the unfallable religion" dogma is a Marxist. Adam Smith would be probably sad seeing what you are doing with his work.
Oh, yes I do, I am having it both ways. If all the resources of private enterpises are put into one reasearch line, that in one fell swoop achieves both: removes top talent from the other lines of inquiry and makes most of the facilities unavailable for other research, plus leaves everybody else scrambling for remaining scraps.
FDA exists as a feeble attempt to control abuses by the very drug companies you defend. One has only to take a look at FDA's behaviour when Canadian imported drugs are concerned to see who do they serve.
The pharmaceutical research directors I've met aren't scam artists; they're scientists who are primarily interested in making discoveries and helping people, and who are happy to have managed to find a way to do that and make a good living at the same time. That just turns out to be the kind of guy who is best at doing the sort of research that makes big profits for pharmaceutical companies..
Oh dear, I think you should avoid carrying a wallet in the presence of any semi-competent, silk-suit wearing con-man. You have a "mark" written on your forhead.
A little hint: how do you think a top ranking slimeball businessman looks like? All dirty and not being able to put two sentences without "Y'all" in them? Or perheaps, amiable, smiling, witty, educated "scientist" whose only hart-felt desire is to help people and never you mind 1.7billion in profit. That is 1.7billion made on backs of dying people. Medicine related companes are an age old refuge of the most fiendish of cons, and I guarantee you, they all, to the last of them, look cultured and amiable. I hear one Dr. Mendele, was quite a conversationalist, something about "advancing human understanding".
no amount of marketing will sell an obsolete drug
Err.. wait, how do drugs get "obsolete"? They stop working? Perheaps some anti-biotics do, but other types? A new, improved one is made, sure, but how many old ones cease to function? You know it is not like a "fashion" trend is present in drug use. Noone gets new "seasonal styles" or a color to match one's dress.
But it turns out to be the rule rather than the exception
Oh yes, that justifies all. We should all gamble public funds in corporate roulettes in hopes that some useful side-effects occur and when a windfall is made, the corporation naturally keeps the benefits. Rather then funding academic research and making corporations compete on manufacturing and delivery. That would make no sense. No, Sir. None at all.
Sigh, here we go again. Cause. Effect. Commercial progress? Cause: capitalism aided by sicence. Scientific progress? Cause: free exchange of information enabling research aided by investment. Remove the "free exchange" part and you have no progress whatsoever. That is what is different about recent decades versus the past 200 years. The research field is becoming a maze of fences and walled-in compounds with guard dogs. Hence "the end of science as we know it".
The US patent system only gives you a relatively short window during which you can take advantage of your discovery before others can use it as well.
I dont know about you, but 20 year patents (currently planned to be extended to 40) and 90 year copyrights (currently planned to be extended to... eternity probably) do not constitute "short periods". Also all knowledge is incremental. The new gizmo "invented" by the scientist, depends on him knowing: physics (with its thousands of researchers who went before), chemistry (with its thousands of researchers who went before), mathematics, writing , usage of pens and clothes on his back. Nearly everything that he does was contributed to him by some long gone person, who did not have a patent on it. In essence he takes all that and locks down a particular use of it, a road, leading to his "invention" for 20 years. Regardless if there are perheaps 200 others just 1 day behind him in 200 other labs, travelling the same road, basing their work on the same thing and ending up with the same conclusions. The patent system is meant to create "winner-takes-all" mentality which will inevietably deprive us of freedom.
No it is not. At least not in the same terms as physical objects. Since it only has two states (known/unknown). The only economic barrier you can place is at the boundary of the two. With physical property, the boundary is set at the right to control the physical object (car, house, etc). So yes, you can get paid to keep your mouth shut, but that is only a delaying tactics, because information can be independently discovered and also deduced from someone's elses actions (product) and the secret is out. "Owning" information on the other hand is like trying to "own" the Sun and then demand royalties for its "use".
Only 1 company would benifit, possibly for eternity, or until somebody else "discovers" the same thing.
No. Untill 1 month later a first reverse-engineered knock-off is out. And 3 months later untill the market is flooded with knockoffs all competing on price and quality. That is how PC revolution came about. IBM (mistakingly as it turns out) allowed the design information to be released free and the piece that was not (BIOS) was quickly duplicated. The rest is history. In your way of doing things we would be still paying for IBM ATs $10k a pop since IBM would be the only maker with the "Intellectual Property" for it. You are arguing the exact reverse of what you think you are. Free markets (free from frivolous protections like "Intellectual Property" laws) are the only way Capitalism can surivive and not turn into cronie-corporatism.
The concept of intellectual property isn't flawed (its worked well for 200 years)
The concept of "intellectual property" is fundamentally flawed, the only saving grace was that this was not apparent for the last 200 years whereby the only applications were books, art and specific industrial designs. But a logical progression of that approach is to treat DNA sequences as "property" and demand royalties on one's offspring, claim that radio waves beaming through your body from a satelite are not yours to decipher, that a schoolchild singing a song violates copyright etc etc etc. And it is only going to got worse, because the concepts of "information" (as in whiffs of electrons in someone's brain) and "private property" (as in a brick house) are mutually irreconcilable.
Except that funding comes only of you do research in easilly marketable, high-profit drugs. You dont want to? No funding. That is how everyone is doing Viagras and other "lifestyle" drugs.
Do you really imagine that companies invest in marketing to throw money away? Marketing makes money, by increasing sales. That's why they do it. More sales means more money to invest in research.
I cant believe this is coming from someone in academia. As someone in business, let me tell you how it works: making more money, means more profit. Thats it. That is the entire point of the operation. If investing in marketing produces more profit, so it is done. If one can make a fake "drug" whereby the main ingredient is sugar and salt, and the "research" was conducted by someone else and the manufacturing can be done by a set of rented monkeys, plus the "drug" has highly-addictive properties, that constitutes a most desirable and optimal situation. Less money on research and manufacturing and more profit the better. Marketing is how you make it work. As somoeone in business I must also tell you that business is the least qualified of entities to be making decisions like that because, business, if it can get away with it, will kill people for money.
Because the fundamental vascular and biochemical mechanisms that make Viagra work turn out to be critical for understanding things like heart disease and stroke.
That is merely a lucky fluke. If Viagra produced nothing of the sort, it would still receive the attention it did.
This is a red-herring since the pace of progress was related to the pace of exchange of information due to vastly improved communication technologies. Also the fact that researchers were lured into private enterprises with greater money, does not mean that they became more efficient, they merely moved from one place to another but the price of that is that the fruits of their labour are now "private property".
Auto manufacturers do substantially more than manufacture autos (fuel cell research etc.)
Thats their preoragative, I do not propose mandating it illegal. I merely suggest that if information was deprived of its "private property" status, such endavours would be by definition benefiting all, rather then one auto-maker (although they might still get a small advantage of being first to know).
LOL. And do, pray tell, tell us where this money ended up?
Net cost to taxpayers...
$28,000+$687,000=$715,000
Considering Bristol-Meyers dropped 8.29 billion to create the drug
Yes and send a man to Mars while they were at it. Out of that 8.29 billoon I call 8.28 billon spent on everything related to all the other activities the company shares with all their other product lines + marketing. I know drug companies from personal experience. Thieves and liars have no better place to get together then most of their boards of directors.
How do you figure? If information is not considered "property" as it is clearly not fitting the bill, all research is "unprotected". That means that if a company makes something, reverse-engineering is immediate and leads to instant competition on price and quality.
I dont want to get in a long winded essay here, but it all comes down to the simple fact that "information" (as a result of research and many other things, like art) does not have the required attributes to be "personal property" (and thus to be subject to Capitalism). It can only be in two "states": known and unknown. Once it is known, it can be effortlessly replicated. Thus from the perspective of a company, the sensitive information can only be "known to us and the world" (information is public) or "known only to us" (information is secret). No other possible conditions exist. "Protecting" information via legal means is what leads to abuse and attempts at making it into a piece of property, like a car or a lot of land. Whereby noone else is allowed to "replicate" it. Ignoring the fact that very thought process constitutes "copying".
To make a long story short, corporations can try to "own" information but they will inevietably fail, the only thing to decide is if we will pay exoribitant social cost for that failure or not.
True but you made a fundamental mistake assuming that self-interest equates lust for profit. Most scientists over the centuries worked for recognition in their field instead. Unless you figure that the likes of Einstein were tycoons of multi-national corporations?
Capitalism is the foundation of society that makes anything possible. Without capitalism we'd be a bunch of hunter gatherers with no time to do scientific research because we'd be too busy finding food, and trying not to get killed.
You clearly have no idea what Capitalism is. What you described is any post-hunter-gatherer society, from Ancient Egypt onwards. Capitalism is a particular arrangement that did not come into existance until 19th century, where the greed of individuals is supposed to be cleverly funnelled into progress for all. And thanks to this poor understanding of its teachings it is that poeple attempt to apply Capitalism where it does not belong like in areas of research and information.
You are quite naive, Sir. There is a finite amount of reserch facilities and personell available, not to mention top scientific talent. If you put them to work on viagras of the world, very few remain to do anything else.
You mean in marketing? Yes, Pfizer does research but its research budget is but a fraction of its marketing budget. Just like most drug companies. The point is that Pfizer and the rest of them are ill equipped and have too many conflicts of interest to be allowed to be in charge of such critical thing like medical research.
Viagra is also relevant to finding treatments for less "frivolous"...
It is not frivolous for what it cures. It is frivolous for the amount of resources (from Pfizer and all the competitors in mad rush to replicate something like it) that it consumes when compared to the severity of the ills that it addresses. It is an example of profit motive being superior to anything else.
That is what the corporations would like you to believe. The truth is that the alternative is academia and public/foundation sponsored research. Corporate research is a relatively new phenomenon and one with staggering negative implications. Only people set to profit from it at the expense of the society at large would advocate it.
It is frivolous in terms of emphasis. The drug makers spend far more resources on viagra than on research into most other far more devastating illnesses combined, because market for viagra is a money making bonanza and a rare disease one is not. If you take the efforts by all the drug makers to come up with competing versions, the situation is more depressing yet. Drug companies spend vast sums on this and also on marketing and ads and at the same time would probably not make any new drugs were it not for academia doing research and then handing it to them. The entire system is a cestpool which will not be cleaned up untill patents on drugs are no more and the research is no longer done by drug makers but by academia only.
They already have the cure.
Will you get it through your thick skull that the cure was paid for by taxpayers. They would have had the cure regardless. The only issue at hand is that the cure was then given as a gift to one company to make profits with, instead to all drug companies. And thus with the cure already available many people died because the price was too steep, even though their tax money was used to make it. You are advocating that the drug should be available to fewer people.
Is any of it getting to you through that thick coating of right-wing slime?
What number? More than in the other systems you dislike so much?
On par with other western countries and with far less social effects. How many exactly? Do your own fucking googling.