> many people would be unemployed
This isn't an argument at all. It's better for people to be unemployed than to be employed in an enterprise that makes everyone else worse off.
> and there would thus be no incentive to even develop new drugs
Of course there would. We had drug development before we had patents.
Are you hinting at a specific company? I don't think the people that got cured from metastatic cancer would agree that they would be better of without Merck and their PD-L1 antibodies.
To be clear I'm responding to ekianjo's > If we could kill patents altogether that would be a much nicer step. I'm also not in favor of patenting natural products, gene sequences and traditional cures.
I am in favor of establishing a system where a companies would have a solid return on investment while still having the drug available to everybody without damaging the incentive to invest billions to come up with only a handful of drugs. The problem is, the drug market is not a free market, an individual has no reasonable way of saying "I don't agree to your price and I will thus not use your product." ... as consumers have with normal products.
>Of course there would. We had drug development before we had patents. Perhaps I should say: There would be no efficient, lean very driven companies looking for drugs. Off course there may have been people who found drugs out of hobby of while being paid for by the state.
Of course they wouldn't; its the relatives of all those who could not afford the drug and died who would be all-in for this!
And you seem to believe that the Free Hand of Market does magically fix every problem. Not so. It is just a Hand after all, with no eyes and no brain.
Big companies have their own share of inefficiencies. Maybe is not as bad as in the public sector, but they are far from working at full capacity. And whatever advantage private sector has you have to offset against the potential for corporate malfeasance. With corrupt public officials at least you know they limit themselves to trying to get rich and providing good paying jobs for their friends. In the private sector you give executives the chance to do the same thing legally, and then they go on to weaponize the patent system and actively block any progress (in house AND from external competitors) that is perceived to threaten a revenue stream.
Ultimately the people that count, the intellectual powerhouses that carry the weight of everybody else, are the same ones that you've dismissed as hobbyist. They are the only ones that care about the drugs themselves, and they care enough to do it even if nobody pays them, as long as they are not busy trying not to starve to dead. They usually don't care where their paycheck comes from (grants, profits, venture capital, etc), and as long as all their needs and reasonable wants are provided for they continue to perform their magic.
We don't have that problem in the Netherlands so maybe that is what requires fixing. Here, if a drug is too expensive, nobody has access to it (only the ultra rich perhaps) and that creates an incentive to keep drugs affordable to certain extent.
Again I'm not saying the current system is optimal but cancelling the right to monetize your inventions at least until your investment has been earned back seems nothing but reasonable to me.
How is that? We've had patents for centuries; we've had drug development for maybe one century.
Really? Can you provide an example?
From what I understand patents started in the US shortly after formation of the country. The first drugs discovered didn't happen until the late 1800's.
In fact, the names of many of these drugs were "Dr. Smith's patented flu medication".
> Later in his life [before 200 BC], Qin Shi Huang feared death and desperately sought the fabled elixir of life, which would supposedly allow him to live forever. He was obsessed with acquiring immortality and fell prey to many who offered him supposed elixirs.
> The ostensible goals of alchemy are often given as the transmutation of common metals into gold (known as chrysopoeia), the creation of a panacea, and the discovery of a universal solvent.
(emphasis mine)
> Plant extracts, including willow bark and spiraea, of which salicylic acid was the active ingredient, had been known to help alleviate headaches, pains, and fevers since antiquity. The father of modern medicine, Hippocrates (circa 460 – 377 BC), left historical records describing the use of powder made from the bark and leaves of the willow tree to help these symptoms.
All of that is drug development. In the case of willow bark extract, it was successful drug development. But I'm not going to blame the people of 200 BC for being technically less adept than the people of today. If they'd had the knowledge and tools we have, they would have done their development from that base.
Snake oil was named "Dr. Smith's Patented Flu Medication" to give the impression that the government officially vouched for its effectiveness, not in gratitude to the patent system.
And moreover, there are other ways to protect your invention without using patents - such as trade secrets, manufacturing expertise, exclusive supplier agreements, and of course, ONGOING innovation (instead of inventing one thing and getting a rent out of it for 20 years).
Again: I understand the need for keeping medicines cheap but the removal of patents seems like an overkill with adverse effects.
> If they have no patent, they are forced to keep the price low enough so no one wants to compete. ... And no one feels like inventing a new drug that will immediately be copied and sold at a price near that of the raw materials (the only overhead is the factory) making it impossible to pay all the scientists who are working on the next drug.
Some people are allergic to the new inhalers (sulfates can irritate the airways), which led to the creation of a black market for the old ones, but that supply is bound to run out eventually.
With insurance, I pay about $40 for one of the new inhalers (If you're poor and don't have insurance, you get to die, I guess). Generally they make my breathing more constricted for a minute or two until the albuterol kicks in, so I try to avoid taking a hit from my inhaler unless I'm really having trouble. Nice. Fortunately, since I moved to a beach town on the coast of Florida last year, I haven't needed my inhaler very often. Unfortunately, I'm no longer willing to relocate for work (dirty, city air is the worst), now that I've found a place where the air isn't trying to kill me. :)
http://www.drugs.com/generic-approvals.html
I know people who have fought not to have generic or bio-similar drugs.
Anyway, can you provide references to validate your claim? Just because someone says something on the Internet doesn't make it true.