Most patents are drag on the innovation

Quite. Things which can kill people if insufficient care is taken need to be regulated, simply because if they're not, sharp operators will exploit the fact that the man in the street knows little about the subject (inevitable: nobody can be an expert in everything), and will exploit their lack of knowledge to sell them things that will, sooner or later, kill them. They'll do that *even if they know it is lethal*.

We know this because we see it happening in countries where regulation of pharmaceutical sales is relatively unregulated. Heck, if it happens with *alcohol*, whose imbibing is never a life-or-death matter, and which is a heck of a lot easier to manufacture ("no open flames, keep the methanol out" being the only real human-safety rules), it sure as anything would happen with pharmaceuticals too.

Software routinely critical for life and limb needs regulation too, and is regulated (e.g. medical device software, avionics software).

You can do better than thalidomide. There's so many drugs every year that make it to the phase 3 clinical trial and they find out that it just doesn't work but actually kills X% of people that take it that you would have an impossible time even listing them.

And that's AFTER computer models, rat studies, primate studies and early human testing, a process that typically takes a decade to even get to the phase 3. Current estimates are that including the Phase 3 clinical trial a drug from discovery to post phase 3 costs $250 million (yes a quarter billion dollars). This doesn't include factory certification, production line certification, ongoing inspections and quality control or long term studies (becoming far more common due to the Vioxx scare).

And that's just the US. Then you do the same thing for Europe, Japan and pretty much every other country in the world if you want to sell the drug there.

Getting a drug to market is HARD. Last numbers I saw said less than 1% make it to market. So on top of that $250 million dollars you probably have another billion or two in failures that also has to be recouped by the successful drug.

As others have said, drug patents make sense. They make a LOT of sense given the government regulation. Now if you want to suggest that companies can drug test on the unsuspecting population I suggest you line up first.