My understanding from reading the Reuters articles published on several websites now (I am not privy to licensing agreements between the ARC and JnJ) is that JnJ allows the Red Cross to use their trademark (the cross) free of charge and has only taken issue with the red cross in turn taking JnJ's trademark (the cross) and both licensing it to JnJ competitors and selling competing medical supply kits with the cross. Again it sounds as if the ARC is actually in the wrong here but it really cannot be determined unless you have access to all of the documentation between the two companies. My best guess is that the ARC will continue to use the red cross (JnJ's mark) and will stop licensing its use and probably selling competing medical kits with the cross. If you are interested you can go to the US PTO's website and search for trademark with serial number 76617076. That is the mark JnJ is contending that the Red Cross is licensing to third parties even though they do not own it.
Trademarks don't work that way. Firstly the Red Cross acknowldeged JnJ's trademark to the cross logo for certain commcercial medical products in 1895. That alone more or less ruins their case. Secondly before you get angry and JnJ for being monsters, remember that (in the US) if you don't defend your trademark you lose it. Finally even if you hate corporate America I hope that you can acknowledge that it is equally sleazy for a non-profit organization to hide behind its humanitarian efforts to blatantly violate previous agreements that it has signed and to license something that they do not have the registered trademark for. I think people should take a step back and wait for the case to work its way out, but at face value it appears that the Red Cross is very much in the wrong, and JnJ is in the right (legally).
I truly wish people would cease posting this ignorant rubbish, and actually focus in closer to the real problems.
"Making the US healthcare industry and supporting industries a private, for profit enterprise was an epic disaster"
-Right, tell that to the tens of millions of people that this healthcare industry has saved. Also look to the difference in life expectancies now vs. 100 years ago. If you still have problems with this take a look at waiting lines for surgeries / operations in nationalized health care states such as Canada and England.
"Profit shouldn't even be part of this discussion"
-Are you really serious? People need food to live, should grocers not make a profit? What about doctors? Many people require cars to travel to work and to buy necesities such as food / water, should the automobile manufacturers not make a profit? Saying that profit shouldn't occur is nothing short of an amazingly stupid comment.
"1) what holds the best promise for helping people 2) how do we produce it safely and 3) how do we produce it inexpensively."
-I hate to break this to you, but these three questions are always asked in the biotech / pharma industry before a new target is identified and a new exploratory research target is launched. Do you know why??? Because that way they can make the MOST MONEY and help the MOST PEOPLE.
"Don't give them the excuse of needing to make up research costs to have high prices."
-Again it appears that your ignorance has no bounds. Go to R&D systems website, or Jackson Labs, take a look at what twenty five micrograms, yes thousandths of a gram of antibodies cost. Anywhere from a couple hundred to nearly ten thousand dollars!! But yes, those research costs are nothing more than a figment of their ever working imaginations, an excuse to charge more.
"Fund all medical research Federally"
-Not if you want to keep any of your paycheck after taxes, the costs are a bit too high for the federal government to cover. At least they are in today's climate with a "war" in Iraq and a load of other spending taking place.
"I have heard the arguments before that medical research moves faster because of the profit motive, but I don't believe it and would have to see hard evidence to believe it."
-What sort of hard evidence do you want? It is rather obvious. In any type of research mistakes are made. With scientific reagents as expensive as they are, a well-funded company can afford to try riskier experiments, and make more mistakes because they can always buy more reagents. I could go on and on about this but I will leave that for another post.
"Medical research is like anything else - individuals are motivated by a paycheck and perhaps the chances to help people/do interesting work. COMPANIES are motivated by profits"
-I actually agree with you on this point, but you have to remember that it is the corporations that provide those paychecks, and hence they are the ones that must make the tough decisions about which targets to investigate and which to hold off on.
Patenting genes is also a LOT more complicated than this article made it out to be. There is a lot involved in the entire process. I don't know where I stand on this issue because I am quite ignorant of everything involved.
In conclusion there are a LOT of problems with the current healthcare industry in the United States, but I strongly disagree with your ascertations to the cause. The pharmaceutical / biotech companies do spend more money than they probably need to, and probably will begin scaling back (many are already) in the near future. Doctors charge absurd fees for visits and for routine procedures, and bad ones overbill HMOs. Insurance companies reject claims frequently in an attempt to avoid paying out what they should be. Even the FDA costs an absurd amount of money to navigate through, fueled in part just "because they can". The system is a racket. Doctors are in on it, Insurance companies, the FDA, and the pharma industry. Pointing the finger strictly at research both screams ignorance, spreads ignorance, and does absolutely nothing to help others see that the true problem is quit holistic and will take quite a bit of doing to repair.
Firstly, that argument is overrated. If you have ever worked at or contracted with one of the large pharmaceutical companies, or if you owned stock in any of them, or even if you did some research on your own, you would see that they all (particularly pfizer) have relatively large pipelines of NOVEL drugs, not the "me too" variety. These boys do spend an awful lot on marketing, but so does Detroit, so does IBM, that is the price of business. Do you really somehow think it is fair to not permit one industry to advertise, simply because you want their product a lot? And yes, drugs are important, but you are not entitled to receiving drugs (not in our current society anyway), you need to work and earn money for what you want or for any perceived needs that you have. It really sucks that drugs cost so much, nobody is going to argue with you on that but they are only one piece of the healthcare problem. Maybe you should ask your doctor the next time you go to his office why he charges you $1500 per MRI or $300 per X-Ray? No matter what he answers the truth is simply that "he can". The patent system works well for pharmaceuticals, it works well for mechanical inventions, it does NOT work well for software creations, but do not condemn the entire system because of a small piece of failure.
End Rant
AC's are so cute and aren't they. What you meant was "Rule, meet exception". Go meet those who don't fall into quite so high a socioeconomic class as you do (i.e. those who don't have computers and can't post on Slashdot). You might be amazed at the scores of people who work hard (probably harder than you) 60-80 hour weeks and still can't cover their bills. Those such as you who choose to show no compassion to others are, in my experience, the first to put their hands out when they need a little help themselves. Unmonitored free distribution of money and resources is a terrible idea, compassionate and selective distribution of said money and resources may be the difference between someone living and dying, or having a chance to succeed in the world. Just go meet those you condemn, before condemning them.
I dislike comments such as these because they are not fair to the pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies can be cold-hearted, conceited, self-centered, and money-driven, which in no way differentiates them from any other corporation on this planet. Furthermore several of the giant pharmaceutical companies rank amongst the most charitable in the country (see a recent BusinessWeek for the list, the criteria used by Businessweek was not great but got the point across that a few of them donate a LOT). Moreover with your particular case of citing AIDS drugs, Merck - the company recently villified for their problems with Vioxx, donates AIDS drugs to poor African nations at cost, meaning they don't make back any of the many millions they have put into R&D for their AIDS drugs (mostly vaccines). Merck also has a program, where they will provide for free any of their drugs prescribed to patient's on Medicare who have gone over their drug limit. I just like to point out that pharmaceutical comapnies are no worse than any other companies, and in some instances are a good bit better.
Slashdot Mirror
My understanding from reading the Reuters articles published on several websites now (I am not privy to licensing agreements between the ARC and JnJ) is that JnJ allows the Red Cross to use their trademark (the cross) free of charge and has only taken issue with the red cross in turn taking JnJ's trademark (the cross) and both licensing it to JnJ competitors and selling competing medical supply kits with the cross. Again it sounds as if the ARC is actually in the wrong here but it really cannot be determined unless you have access to all of the documentation between the two companies. My best guess is that the ARC will continue to use the red cross (JnJ's mark) and will stop licensing its use and probably selling competing medical kits with the cross. If you are interested you can go to the US PTO's website and search for trademark with serial number 76617076. That is the mark JnJ is contending that the Red Cross is licensing to third parties even though they do not own it.
Trademarks don't work that way. Firstly the Red Cross acknowldeged JnJ's trademark to the cross logo for certain commcercial medical products in 1895. That alone more or less ruins their case. Secondly before you get angry and JnJ for being monsters, remember that (in the US) if you don't defend your trademark you lose it. Finally even if you hate corporate America I hope that you can acknowledge that it is equally sleazy for a non-profit organization to hide behind its humanitarian efforts to blatantly violate previous agreements that it has signed and to license something that they do not have the registered trademark for. I think people should take a step back and wait for the case to work its way out, but at face value it appears that the Red Cross is very much in the wrong, and JnJ is in the right (legally).
I truly wish people would cease posting this ignorant rubbish, and actually focus in closer to the real problems. "Making the US healthcare industry and supporting industries a private, for profit enterprise was an epic disaster" -Right, tell that to the tens of millions of people that this healthcare industry has saved. Also look to the difference in life expectancies now vs. 100 years ago. If you still have problems with this take a look at waiting lines for surgeries / operations in nationalized health care states such as Canada and England. "Profit shouldn't even be part of this discussion" -Are you really serious? People need food to live, should grocers not make a profit? What about doctors? Many people require cars to travel to work and to buy necesities such as food / water, should the automobile manufacturers not make a profit? Saying that profit shouldn't occur is nothing short of an amazingly stupid comment. "1) what holds the best promise for helping people 2) how do we produce it safely and 3) how do we produce it inexpensively." -I hate to break this to you, but these three questions are always asked in the biotech / pharma industry before a new target is identified and a new exploratory research target is launched. Do you know why??? Because that way they can make the MOST MONEY and help the MOST PEOPLE. "Don't give them the excuse of needing to make up research costs to have high prices." -Again it appears that your ignorance has no bounds. Go to R&D systems website, or Jackson Labs, take a look at what twenty five micrograms, yes thousandths of a gram of antibodies cost. Anywhere from a couple hundred to nearly ten thousand dollars!! But yes, those research costs are nothing more than a figment of their ever working imaginations, an excuse to charge more. "Fund all medical research Federally" -Not if you want to keep any of your paycheck after taxes, the costs are a bit too high for the federal government to cover. At least they are in today's climate with a "war" in Iraq and a load of other spending taking place. "I have heard the arguments before that medical research moves faster because of the profit motive, but I don't believe it and would have to see hard evidence to believe it." -What sort of hard evidence do you want? It is rather obvious. In any type of research mistakes are made. With scientific reagents as expensive as they are, a well-funded company can afford to try riskier experiments, and make more mistakes because they can always buy more reagents. I could go on and on about this but I will leave that for another post. "Medical research is like anything else - individuals are motivated by a paycheck and perhaps the chances to help people/do interesting work. COMPANIES are motivated by profits" -I actually agree with you on this point, but you have to remember that it is the corporations that provide those paychecks, and hence they are the ones that must make the tough decisions about which targets to investigate and which to hold off on. Patenting genes is also a LOT more complicated than this article made it out to be. There is a lot involved in the entire process. I don't know where I stand on this issue because I am quite ignorant of everything involved. In conclusion there are a LOT of problems with the current healthcare industry in the United States, but I strongly disagree with your ascertations to the cause. The pharmaceutical / biotech companies do spend more money than they probably need to, and probably will begin scaling back (many are already) in the near future. Doctors charge absurd fees for visits and for routine procedures, and bad ones overbill HMOs. Insurance companies reject claims frequently in an attempt to avoid paying out what they should be. Even the FDA costs an absurd amount of money to navigate through, fueled in part just "because they can". The system is a racket. Doctors are in on it, Insurance companies, the FDA, and the pharma industry. Pointing the finger strictly at research both screams ignorance, spreads ignorance, and does absolutely nothing to help others see that the true problem is quit holistic and will take quite a bit of doing to repair.
Firstly, that argument is overrated. If you have ever worked at or contracted with one of the large pharmaceutical companies, or if you owned stock in any of them, or even if you did some research on your own, you would see that they all (particularly pfizer) have relatively large pipelines of NOVEL drugs, not the "me too" variety. These boys do spend an awful lot on marketing, but so does Detroit, so does IBM, that is the price of business. Do you really somehow think it is fair to not permit one industry to advertise, simply because you want their product a lot? And yes, drugs are important, but you are not entitled to receiving drugs (not in our current society anyway), you need to work and earn money for what you want or for any perceived needs that you have. It really sucks that drugs cost so much, nobody is going to argue with you on that but they are only one piece of the healthcare problem. Maybe you should ask your doctor the next time you go to his office why he charges you $1500 per MRI or $300 per X-Ray? No matter what he answers the truth is simply that "he can". The patent system works well for pharmaceuticals, it works well for mechanical inventions, it does NOT work well for software creations, but do not condemn the entire system because of a small piece of failure. End Rant
AC's are so cute and aren't they. What you meant was "Rule, meet exception". Go meet those who don't fall into quite so high a socioeconomic class as you do (i.e. those who don't have computers and can't post on Slashdot). You might be amazed at the scores of people who work hard (probably harder than you) 60-80 hour weeks and still can't cover their bills. Those such as you who choose to show no compassion to others are, in my experience, the first to put their hands out when they need a little help themselves. Unmonitored free distribution of money and resources is a terrible idea, compassionate and selective distribution of said money and resources may be the difference between someone living and dying, or having a chance to succeed in the world. Just go meet those you condemn, before condemning them.
I dislike comments such as these because they are not fair to the pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical companies can be cold-hearted, conceited, self-centered, and money-driven, which in no way differentiates them from any other corporation on this planet. Furthermore several of the giant pharmaceutical companies rank amongst the most charitable in the country (see a recent BusinessWeek for the list, the criteria used by Businessweek was not great but got the point across that a few of them donate a LOT). Moreover with your particular case of citing AIDS drugs, Merck - the company recently villified for their problems with Vioxx, donates AIDS drugs to poor African nations at cost, meaning they don't make back any of the many millions they have put into R&D for their AIDS drugs (mostly vaccines). Merck also has a program, where they will provide for free any of their drugs prescribed to patient's on Medicare who have gone over their drug limit. I just like to point out that pharmaceutical comapnies are no worse than any other companies, and in some instances are a good bit better.