Talk about rewarding innovation…

we need to get rid of pattents in the drug industry.

drives up costs and restricts supply. (bad for consumers)

wastes needless money in research (since all the companies have to copy each other…. each one needs their own brand of anti-acid reflux medicine, each its own alergy medicine, each its own erection-pill, etc… how much of their research goes into such duplicate drugs? don’t know exactly, but it doesn’t seem insignifigant, given the numbers of repeat drugs)

less of a motivation for drug companies to hide the possible problems with their drugs (such as the infamous vioxx, where pfizer did all they could to prevent it being known that there was an increased risk of heart disease). if all drugs are generic and there is no patent, then no company has the need to hide its problems.

“but,” you say “without the motivation of patents, there will be no profits, and drug companies will go out of businiess.”

POPPYCOCK!
PISHPOSH!

obvoiously, there is profit in the manufacture of generic drugs, since there are companies which do this. they would not continue to do so if it were at a loss.

also, here is an interesting idea i have heard… instead of giving patents for exclusive production, we directly reward inovation. think of how the nobel prize committie works… then imagine that we create institutions to reward researchers for developing good drugs. several million for a cancer drug, flu drug, etc. put a time period between the approval of the drug and its being able to win a prize (to further separate wheat from chaf).

but formost, we must get ourselves out of the mindset that patents are the ONLY way to do things and still have research profitable.