Comment by kongolongo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kongolongo | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think this is only a half-truth. There certainly are examples of academic research being translated into lucrative products by industry (there are even prominent examples in software/systems engineering) but I think that many times the translation of academic research into a useable product is also a massive endeavor that deserves recognition in its own right.

I see this scenario described in medical research all the time with people saying that industry just leeches off of academic research and what people leave out conveniently is the vast amounts of money and research that goes into translating research into a real drug (billions spent on clinical trials to meet regulation, millions to billions spent on scaling manufacturing and synthesis of the drug to industrial volumes, drug delivery like pill design or injection methods)

Additionally many industries also do have well-paid research positions that "move the needle" on science and basic research. While they're more targeted at producing and supporting products instead of full liberty to exploring just for the sake of knowledge, it's not like there is a complete black and white poorly compensated academic research vs industry.

Fundamental: the patents produced by taxpayer-financed academic research have no business being exclusively licensed to some pharmaceutical corporation. As far as the cost of clinical trials being borne by those companies, well, let's get the FDA involved in the clinical trials.

Then the competition can come in, i.e. whoever can produce pure preparations of those drugs at the lowest cost will win the most market share. This means investing in top-of-the line manufacturing platforms (much of this is now outsourced to India, Mexico, etc. for drugs being sold in the USA) instead of squatting on the patents, blocking competition, and using monopoly status to jack up prices.

Yes, this would greatly reduce the profit margins and perhaps the stock prices of Big Pharma outfits, but the overall benefits would greatly outweight this. As a practical example, look how the best Covid vaccines (mRNA types) have been monopolized, leading to low rates of vaccination in Africa etc., even though that was technology developed with taxpayer funding at public universities.

No, if a Uni has developed some patents, and wants to 'exclusively license' them to a Pharma, that's probably a good application of that patent, they become much less worthwhile otherwise.

It's a misunderstanding of the market to suggest that somehow 'the FDA will lead the trials'. This is about as likely as a manned mission to Venus, it won't happen, and it shouldn't happen for good reason (cost vastly outweighs the benefits).

It's also a misunderstanding to suggest 'whoever can produce pure preparations of those drugs at the lowest cost will win the most market share'. The 'cost of manufacture' is most cases is not a material or relevant issue.

Your example of 'COVID' monopolization is completely upside down - companies didn't maximize their profit potential there, and may not have even developed such vaccines in a normal case, they were giving very special prices to places like 'Africa' - and none of this has anything to do with 'low uptake' in Africa.

Africa has 'low uptake' for the very same set of reasons they don't have electricity, or consistent electricity in many places.

Non-exclusive licensing is the far better option. This prevents monopolization and ridiculous price increases. As far as clinical trials by exclusive license holders, those have a rather poor record of producing reliable results over the long term in many cases (Vioxx of course, there are many others). The trials should really be independently run, not controlled by the very corporations that have a vested interest in seeing positive results so they can go to market.

As far as Covid-19 vaccines, there are actually many companies ready to go right to production if those patents are released to the public at this moment, and that would greatly increase supply, and that would benefit the whole world, instead of a handful of pharma CEOs and affiliated shareholders.

>As far as Covid-19 vaccines, there are actually many companies ready to go right to production if those patents are released to the public at this moment, and that would greatly increase supply, and that would benefit the whole world, instead of a handful of pharma CEOs and affiliated shareholders.

That's just conspiracy. Many companies have not been enforcing any patents related to covid vaccines. The reason why the developing world does not have high vaccine adoption is because of their infrastructure, not because of patent blocking.

It's a valid issue and dismissing it as 'conspiracy' only weakens your argument. For example:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/03/covid-vaccine-...

It really is not. No where in that article does it even hint at patents being a primary limiting factor for the availability of vaccines in developing countries.

Of course not all companies are going to release their patents, but the fact there are several that already have, means its not the main problem. mRNA vaccines require extreme temperature controls during transportation and that incurs much more of a prohibitive cost in those countries than any amount of patent royalties do, even if there were no waived patents.

There are cases of huge shipments of vaccine donations going to developing countries that then go unused or underutilized because they do not have the resources to transport and distribute them effectively. Look at the COVAX initiative. The countries that failed to get vaccine rates up even with huge donations of vaccines lacked the infrastructure to distribute them whether it was the temperature controls or not having enough syringes.

"in Benin, only 267 shots were being given each day, a pace so slow that 110,000 of the program’s AstraZeneca doses expired...The vaccine pileup illustrates one of the most serious but largely unrecognized problems facing the immunization program as it tries to recover from months of missteps and disappointments: difficulty getting doses from airport tarmacs into people’s arms."[1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/world/europe/covax-covid-...

- 'Non-exclusive' is a non-starter for most companies, there just won't be a license.

- Some type of independent trials might be possible, but there already is a lot of oversight. That's complicated.

- 'Releasing the patents'. I'm sure everyone in the world could release all of their patents for everything, and things would be good for about 2 years, but we'd likely never see another drug produced again, ever.

"companies didn't maximize their profit potential there" as said pharma companies enjoy the highest profits they ever have... The argument "well I didn't kill you" when you struck my face isn't a valid claim to mercy. I'm not one to go full pinko here, I'm just pointing out the obvious logical flaw.

>manufacturing platforms (much of this is now outsourced to India, Mexico, etc. for drugs being sold in the USA)

This completely trivializes and misses the fact that the manufacturing process itself can be patented.

>As a practical example, look how the best Covid vaccines (mRNA types) have been monopolized, leading to low rates of vaccination in Africa etc., even though that was technology developed with taxpayer funding at public universities.

That's just patently false, Moderna for example, has been waived patent infringement related to covid vaccines. The reason the developing world does not have high rates of vaccination is not because of patents but primarily because of their infrastructure.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com