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Comment by DanBlake | Hacker News Reader

Im curious what is stopping some other countries (even micro-nations) from instituting a policy that forfeits all patents on medication.

Lets say you take the country of Saint Lucia- Could they not spur the economy (among the lowest in the world by GDP) by saying any company can manufacture any existing drug and sell it? I feel like the medical tourism for that could be extreme, especially since there is still many treatments india still does respect the patent for.

If the country put it in their constitution that all drugs should be a human right, could a legal action be taken against the country itself? I imagine the only recourse would be the pharma companies trying to force legislation in other countries to bring sanctions, but I think that would be a hard sell.

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WTO, American sanctions, American coups, CIA, to name a few. Also India actually manufacturers these drugs, and most of them should be generic because they have been around for a long time. Small nations would not be able to manufacture them the same way India does.

Seconded.

Also Saint Lucia doesn't have the clout as India when it comes to global trade.

Is India that clouted?

In some cases, yes. You've to realize that each country in the WTO picks which battles to fight and which one's to let go.

For example, when Novartis lost the case, in Indian supreme courts, to ban the production of Gleevec (a Cancer drug) by Indian generic makers, they could've taken the arbitration to the WTO. However, this would mean terrible PR for both Novartis and US. Instead, PhRMA (a trade group for big pharma) and Novartis decided to let this one lie.

However, the US did recently challenge India's decision to force LCR (local content requirement) in it's push to use more solar energy in the country. USA, which is one of the biggest exporters of solar panels to India, successfully fought this decision.

I feel, in the end, the WTO is like any other court where two big conglomerates go head-to-head. Each one does not want to piss off the other to a great extent. And settlements are preferred over outright fights.

"Im curious what is stopping some other countries (even micro-nations) from instituting a policy that forfeits all patents on medication."

Simple answer: The US will invade that country in no time, or give millions or billions of dollars to support those against the Government in the country to instability the country.

They do it with Syria(they gave hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons to "moderate rebels" to start a war against Assad, Saudi Arabia gave billions or Ukraine(they gave 6 billion dollars to opposition), that are reasonable big countries. They can wipe out any small country that dare to go against US national interest.

With India, South Africa there was death threats, and killings,lots of money under the table and blackmailing of people in Government and finally economic sanctions.

If someone puts something on a paper it does not matter unless that someone has the means to protect what is in the paper.

Native Indians had the right to own the American land because it was the land of their fathers and grandfathers but the white man had repetition rifles and railroads.

Trade treaties. Saint Lucia wants to trade with bigger countries. Those countries may not want to trade back if Saint Lucia goes out of their way to reproduce intellectual property.

Could legal action be taken? If Saint Lucia signed a treaty that defined rules for such an action.

Also, selling a drug for any price smells an awful lot like capitalism. Some folks would rather the government set prices. Hey, I wonder what happens if a company sells bad drugs that hurts people? The government should impose regulations. Hrm I bet that would drive costs up. Maybe drug companies need some financial incentives to help cover those costs? .... Wait a second!

I dunno about legal action but I could sure imagine individual pharma companies (and other primarily IP-related industries with heavy R&D costs) deciding not to sell products there ever again.

because you need leverage to pull it off - just like refusing to sign the Paris Climate Treaty or the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

India has a long history of Non Alignment and trade blockades going back 50 years.... but most importantly has huge economic leverage right now, only second to China (in Asia).

In fact, my personal bet is on Iran to be able to do something like this - they have a sizeable youth and good education systems... as well as a long history of leverage against the west . If only they get rid of their religious constitution.

> If only they get rid of their religious constitution

Apply that to any situation in any country in the middle east.

Such a country wouldn't get admission to the WTO and would have a very hard time trading with the other countries in it.

It would also amount to state endorsed IP theft.

Theft is such a strong word. If you control the language, you control the world.

to nitpick, that is exactly what you are doing.

rhetoric goes both ways. or to put it another way, fighting fire with fire.

> Such a country wouldn't get admission to the WTO

As opposed to what we do when we invade and bomb/drone other countries? As opposed to what we did when we engineer coups in resource rich countries? Come on. Let me guess, you're buying into the idea that generics hurt RnD. Let me assure you, having worked briefly in a pharma RnD lab, the bulk of big pharmas expenditures are on marketing and bribes, NOT RnD. Here's a recent headline: http://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/02/22/novartis-south-...

You'll find similar bribery cases with GSK, Pfizer, etc.

>> Such a country wouldn't get admission to the WTO

> As opposed to what we do when we invade and bomb/drone other countries?

I don't think the parent supports the action, but merely stating the likely outcome, realpolitik and all. S/he is answering gp's question: "What is stopping some other countries (even micro-nations) from instituting a policy that forfeits all patents on medication"

The answer, in short, is leverage: smaller countries can be pressured into not even considering it - because of the consequences. India can do this because it is better able to withstand the hypothetical political pressure.

This only works for countries that create no drugs, so they can benefit from companies in other countries spending the billions required to create new drugs, without any spending.

Not to mention that every single Pharma company would stop all R&D investment in about 5 seconds.

Would you invest your own money in a Pharma company if there were no drug patents?

Maybe we shouldn't let Pharma companies do the R&D and then pay for it via expensive heathcare. Maybe we should take the money and directly fund research and make the results free for everyone.

"Take the money directly"

Whose money? The investor's?

"Maybe we should take the money and directly fund research and make the results free for everyone."

And that would be more efficient than letting companies compete for funding from investors?

This sort of logic does not really work for drugs or even for science. Business processes like management, cost cutting, harassment, implicit and explicit threats, don't really produce better or more accurate results. Or lead to cures or drugs faster. Usually you have a single star scientist with his team working his ass off to get to an understanding or cure, and he or she is not usually doing it for money. Business does not really work with science, it corrupts science and forces an unnatural order on it which we pay for as a society.

Which sort of logic? I'm not defending that only pharma companies should do R&D, I'm defending that we shouldn't restrict R&D to government.

And on your point, do governments distort science less than business?

Well in the name of freedom anyone can and should be able to do science. And anyone may legitimately come up with a cure. But seldom do we see that happen. Instead we usually see incremental progress on existing knowledge, which is then used to do regulatory capture of some given drug. Do governments distort science less, well they don't partake in this sort of scientific charade as profit motivated corporations do. They also don't have any incentive to push drugs for massive profit that they know don't work that well or cause certain side-effects.

But politicians have massive other incentives: supporting their ideology, religious beliefs, power structures, etc.

Between someone motivated purely by profit, and a politician, I trust the profit-driven person far more. Their intentions are completely clear unlike a politician's.

When it comes to supporting science they have only two choices, to fund it or not to fund it. So distortions would only come from them not funding something. The other stuff, I don't know how it applies to science funding. In case of not funding, I think there is enough spectrum of thought between liberals and conservatives to cover funding most causes if possible.

No, there's the decision of what to fund, and who to fund in each field. You could easily fund a group with anti-GMO views, or fund a group with pro-GMO views.

It gets even trickier when you add global warming, abortion, mental health, etc. into the options.

You're going to have to prove that dramatic claim.

I say that business works extraordinarily well with science and is superior to eg government research by a great margin. As proven by Bell Labs, IBM research, Xerox PARC, Microsoft research, Google, Lockheed, Apple, Shockley, Intel, Fairchild, Samsung, Cisco, Texas Instruments, Boeing, Pfizer, Merck, Amgen, Gilead, Genentech, Standard Oil (one of the first highly successful commercial research labs), and thousands of other corporations. Even if those companies didn't always capitalize on their research, they produced tremendous science. The technology lead the US has enjoyed for most of a century proves this fact, as it is heavily (not solely) derived from the scientific output of its corporations.

The US became by far the world leader on pharma and biotech specifically because a business, profit-seeking approach to those industries produces a dramatically greater outcome in terms of innovation.

If that weren't the case, the US would be dead last in pharma and biotech over the last 50 years, given its market approach.

It works well to commercialize existing knowledge, or take some existing knowledge that is 80% complete and then do the other 20%. Business is good as capturing value, not at creating it. In terms of technology it's much the same, the people who created the knowledge often did not benefit from it... someone else did. The ones who did benefit were scientists first in usually a university environment who then sought to commercialize their inventions and formed corporations to do that. Businesses often do not discover these things they commercialized, and maybe it's right to say that some things may not have been as profitable if not for business. And maybe some things would not have been properly commercialized.

Again, you'll need some very good sources to back that up. There are far too many bold and controversial claims, until then, that's just like, your opinion man.

The money health insurance currently pays to pharma companies. It might not be more efficient than the current model (but maybe it is, I'm not very knowledgeable about the current process), but I think it would be fairer.

It might also have the side effect that we'd get more drugs that are currently not produced because it wouldn't profitable (eg antibiotics) and fewer drugs with dubious efficacy that are very profitable (eg anti-depressants).

That's a good point, more relevant to the US than RoW, but still a good point. The main issue is that you run into a chicken/egg problem: to lower the cost the government needs to develop alternative drugs, but won't have the money to do so unless you lower the cost.

"It [is] fallacious to assume that only the cost of R&D is reflected in the price of a drug. The hidden cost of marketing is a great contributor to figures quoted."

https://www.kent.ac.uk/law/ip/resources/ip_dissertations/200...

I never assumed that, but someone has to pay for the cost of R&D, please explain who would pay the 200 billion dollars in annual pharma R&D that companies invest when all countries outlaw patents.

Taxpayers?

> Would you invest your own money in a Pharma company if there were no drug patents?

India does not disagree with drug patents, from the article: "Successive governments have taken a view that patents should be granted only for major innovations, not updates to existing compounds."

Pharma companies are notorious for extending patents (in perpetuity) by adding small 'updates' to existing compounds when the patent nears expiry. This is rather similar to Disney's strategy: get copyright period extended right before Mickey Mouse is about to enter the public domain.

Sure, I'm all for patent and copyright reform, but that's not what OP is suggesting.

And in one way or another someone has to pay for R&D.

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