> In the pharmaceutical sector, they rise the price of medicine.
In the pharmaceutical sector they make new drug discovery economically possible. Were it not for patents we would not have a tenth of the new drugs and treatments available to us today. Marketing costs (an unreasonable expenditure IMHO) and testing costs are completely outrageous and there are so many promising drugs that wash out in stage two or stage three trials that companies need the assured profits of a success to compensate for the risks and costs.
There are many fields that would probably be improved by limiting patents or shortening their lifespan, but in pharmaceuticals the lifespan of patents probably needs to be upped five or ten years...
You may be right, but I seriously doubt it. If I recall correctly, Rick Falkvinge said that research represents 15% of the costs of pharmaceutical firms, and that 2/3 of it (10% of the total) are actually dedicated to the patent system. That leaves 85% for the rest, which is mostly marketing (couldn't they cut that down?).
Now, what kind of drugs pharmaceutical companies will do research on? Cure for rare illnesses? Cure for illnesses widespread in poor countries? This is good for their image, but not their wallet. Far more lucrative are cosmetics, and widely useful medicine in developed countries. Just see the ads, they are likely to match their sells.
I may be wrong on each point, but if I'm right, pharmaceutical companies could reduce their costs down to a third of what it is now, while remaining just as useful. Get rid of patents, and the costs could go down further.
Now if pharmaceutical companies really can't survive in the current world without patents, this still isn't a reason not to ditch them. Specifically, nothing prevents direct state intervention (like spending some of the taxpayers' money). If you are against that, remember this is already happening (at least in the EU), and that patents are a quite intrusive form of state intervention.
You and Rick are incorrect. The pure research part is, as stated, a small part of the costs, but 2/3 of that amount is not dedicated to patent applications, and of the remainder the bulk of it is taken up by the costs of testing. Marketing is a large part of the costs, but it is not the largest component.
I made another point: that the bulk of pharmaceutical business may not be really useful, or at least not critical (cosmetics and such). Did you say I am wrong on this point as well?
Anyway, I am quite ignorant. Do you have any references I could read so I have a better understanding of the problem? Thank you.
> I made another point: that the bulk of pharmaceutical business may not be really useful, or at least not critical (cosmetics and such). Did you say I am wrong on this point as well?
Cosmetics? What cosmetics does Abbott make?
To the extent that the argument has any connection to reality, it's a combintation of irrelevant and wrong.
If you don't want to pay the costs of "cosmetics", don't buy them.
To the extent that there's any cross-subsidization in Pharma, it goes from the "non-essential but popular" to the critical. In other words, you've got it backwards.
It is also worth noting that a lot of what we consider "non-essential" did not start out that way. Pfizer did not discover Viagra because they were looking to help aging baby boomers get wood; it started out as a treatment for angina (hypertension kills millions...) and it was not until phase one trials that it was discovered that one of the side-effects of sildenafil was to encourage erections. Along the route to trying to cure a deadly disease a blockbuster non-essential drug was discovered.
My bad. I currently know enough to be wary of even pharmaceutical patents (I think they should disappear, eventually), but still not enough to seriously back my claims. I know this is dangerous, I should have known better.
Anyway, I stumbled upon a better source than myself: http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.ht... (a case against intellectual monopoly). Chapter 9 is particularly relevant here. If you have any counter-argument, I would be glad to hear them.
> That leaves 85% for the rest, which is mostly marketing (couldn't they cut that down?).
Marketing includes giving away free/discounted drugs, telling doctors when a drug works, and telling people that the problem that they have might be curable.
In the pharmaceutical sector they make new drug discovery economically possible. Were it not for patents we would not have a tenth of the new drugs and treatments available to us today. Marketing costs (an unreasonable expenditure IMHO) and testing costs are completely outrageous and there are so many promising drugs that wash out in stage two or stage three trials that companies need the assured profits of a success to compensate for the risks and costs.
There are many fields that would probably be improved by limiting patents or shortening their lifespan, but in pharmaceuticals the lifespan of patents probably needs to be upped five or ten years...