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Comment by olliesaunders | Hacker News Reader

The pharmaceuticals industry could never have grown so big without patents. That kind of drug research would have had to been done by publicly-funded bodies, such as universities. I kind of feel like this is an argument in favor of this article. It also explains why it will never happen. Now that we have big-pharma how are we doing to disassemble the thing that keeps it alive?

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Simple, recognize that pharaceuticals are a highly special case and develop a custom set of protections/incentives. There is already a mountain of custom regulation for that industry.

It's absurd to think that the same age-of-steam monopoly grant system that currently sorta benefits the pharmaceutical industry should also apply to software, websites, business methods, and exercising one's cat.

It's completely retarded. In the literal sense, i.e., holding progress back. End the retardedness now!

The reason I didn’t suggest this is that industry-specific law feels like a byproduct of the lobbyist culture that has lead to many of our current problems and pre-existence doesn’t justify its continued creation. But, overall, I think you’re right and this is the pragmatic solution.

Most medical research already happens in publicly-funded bodies, bit it is then spun-off and captured by big pharma.

Not to mention that as many have pointed out over and over again, the main expenses of drug companies are not research, but drug approval bureaucracy and marketing.

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