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.
Anyway, I am quite ignorant. Do you have any references I could read so I have a better understanding of the problem? Thank you.