Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 1:48 UTC (Tue) by tterribe (guest, #66972)
In reply to: Yes, fix the patent system by butlerm
Parent article: A victory for the trolls

And how many of those drugs being tested were developed using government-provided research funding? I believe that something like 30-40% of all medical research in the US is federally funded. That seems like a much more productive way to redress that particular burden.

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Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 8:28 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (11 responses)

>And how many of those drugs being tested were developed using government-provided research funding? I believe that something like 30-40% of all medical research in the US is federally funded. That seems like a much more productive way to redress that particular burden.

That may be true in terms of % of money spent, but that does not mean that it's actually produced anything of value. But really, no, the government is hugely terrible at doing any sort of real research or producing products.

I can go into the economics behind it and how the lack of profit motivation and the ability to do proper accounting makes it impossible to accurately gauge the demand and usefulness of products, but most people would have no clue what I am talking about. It's not 'government is teh suxor', but simply a result of a facet of human nature.

One of the major problems we have in the USA is that the FDA is making it increasingly impossible to bring new drugs and procedures to market. The amount of red tape and regulatory burden is extreme. It's beyond belief for most people.

I had to have a operation done a couple years ago. In order to get it done I had to sign up to it as a 'research project'.

Why? Because due to our regulatory system it makes innovation almost impossible. The FDA never approved the operation I needed and the medical devices that were being used in the operation. Even though this operation has been successfully done on numerous people for a decade (and the basis for the procedure has been around for decades longer, this is a improvement to a established practice and nothing radical) and millions of dollars was pored into the research and development of the medical devices.

Right now we exist in a society with a medical system and regulatory environment that would rather see people die from cancer and other diseases then let them have access to life saving drugs and operations because those drugs and operations are deemed too new and too risky by mindless bureaucratic government processes. Then to make up for the fact that it takes millions of dollars to simply deal with government red tape, beyond just developing the products in the first place, we compensate corporations through the patent system which further restricts access and keeps medical advances outside the ability for most people to afford it.

Yup...

Posted Apr 26, 2011 8:54 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Well, if you studied the problem you've seen that FDA regulations are the problem patents are supposed to solve.

More then 90% of funds needed to "develop" new drug are spend in FDA-mandated tests. If you eliminate that part patents are suddenly not needed. Do you propose to abolish testing? Of course not! But this is mandated testing - in can be paid different ways, there are no need to issue patents to support it. It's artificial "problem", it can be solved using many different approaches, I doubt patents are the most effective approach anyway.

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 10:07 UTC (Tue) by dpc (guest, #74012) [Link] (5 responses)

I can understand economy well. I understand what you mean. However I disagree. The pharmacy does not have to be post-paid.

Sick people (their friends, families and foundations around them) are vitally interested in paying for the fact of researching. They would pay companies with good previous record of drag researching and publishing solutions for the promise that when the cure is found it would be "open-sourced"/"more or less free for anybody to produce", etc.

If selling medicine after successful research would be impossible (due to lack of patents), these companies would have to switch to a model which is more or less Open Source in medicine. Companies would be run for profit (selfish motivation, good!), would compete between them-selfs (good!) and once something is discovered everyone can benefit instantly (think about poor countries) and other drugs can be researched without licensing and patenting issues.

I see no reason why this model would be anyhow less efficient than current post-paying. But I'm opened for discussion.

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 11:45 UTC (Tue) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link] (4 responses)

People are rarely so forward thinking as to fund research that isn't likely to be complete before they succumb to their own illness, much less to do so proactively on the chance that they will develop a given disease.

"Why should I fund cancer research? I don't have cancer!" -- young, cancer-free person.

I'm not saying that it couldn't work, I'm just doubting whether voluntary funding like this would be sufficient to raise the necessary cash. That's the advantage of government funding; governments are more suited to long term investments and rewards.

I've often thought that it would be great to crowd-source funds for e.g. a TV show or a movie, but it really is very difficult to raise that kind of money on the promise that the donators will like the result. Medical research is the same kind of problem (only more expensive).

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 13:16 UTC (Tue) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link]

> People are rarely so forward thinking as to fund research that isn't likely to be complete before they succumb to their own illness, much less to do so proactively on the chance that they will develop a given disease.

That's what entrepreneurs are for. They search out new opportunities and seek to fulfill society's needs with the least amount of resources used (and, as a result, highest profits)

> governments are more suited to long term investments and rewards.

The bad thing about governments is that they are insulated against failures, have a poor ability to properly account expenses and lack a feedback mechanism that can properly assess society needs (democratic politics are proven to not be effective). All this means is that they are wasteful with resources and that expenditures are governed by politics and not needs.

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 21:57 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link]

<blockquote>I've often thought that it would be great to crowd-source funds for e.g. a TV show or a movie, but it really is very difficult to raise that kind of money on the promise that the donators will like the result. Medical research is the same kind of problem (only more expensive).</blockquote>

Showtime, HBO and others are examples of what you seek. They survive on subscriber funds, they produce new and innovative entertainment and IMO the best shows on television now. They do so without commercials (and the interference they bring) and without (AFAIK) government intervention or assistance. So you shouldn't need to wonder as it already exists, but costs considerably more than commercial television.

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 28, 2011 9:14 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (1 responses)

> "Why should I fund cancer research? I don't have cancer!" -- young, cancer-free person.

Quite true. Healthy people tend to behave like that, but what about ill people? Most behave just the other way around, funding research and creating foundations, generally trying to help. Paradoxical, isn't it? One may say that for ill-free people, having to chose between one or other cause finally leads to helping nobody. All that changes once life pushes you in certain direction. Human nature, I guess.

This is very similar to what happens with OSS, indeed. What makes anybody start collaborating with a project? And why do people start projects? Often they have a need to fulfill, or someone with that need is paying them.

So, the problem with Open Source Drugs is not people. It's a economical (and thus technological) problem. Such a project needs to be started by one person alone, or an small group, with very little funding. What's needed is not ways to raise more cash, but mechanisms to lower that need of cash, so many small projects can be started -and continued- by the people with the skills and interest. That and knowledge about the "Open Source" way of doing development, of course.

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 29, 2011 6:19 UTC (Fri) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link]

Open Source Drugs? Are you serious? This isn't a simple field, that's like suggesting that people should engage in nuclear or particle physics research in their basement including full blown experiments that could lead to catastrophic consequences. There are several ways to help drug research, the protein folding distributed computing application is one, although some professionals doubt it will ever lead to a single drug.

You don't just create a drug and start testing on people. Drugs go through computer models, animal research and many other steps before a single human takes the chemical. This is a highly specific field requiring controls and methods that are going to be economically beyond all but the most advanced and they are already working in the field. Please consider that if you start making drugs and someone dies you will end up in jail for a very long time. There is a reason government highly regulates this stuff, it's an area where even with full safety measures and a lot of experience people can still be killed by drugs that have previously proven safe.

I work in a profession that requires a professional license to work in it, I like to think that gives me perspective that some things just aren't meant for amateurs to work on because of the potential for fatalities. Maybe there are areas where ordinary people can help in the research but I just don't see it.

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 19:20 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link]

i love it how people trot out this argument as a patent defense, as if disease would wipe out humanity without patent law

really? i see an unending stream of mood pills, pills to grow your hair back, pills to provide boners for 90 year old men, pills to make women horny, pills to deal with life threatening issues like yellow toenails...and lets not even talk about the number of pills out there to address poor nutritional choices

the biotech industry has increasingly relied on feel-good, lifestyle drugs, while actually dropping many product lines that deal with actual illness since they just aren't profitable enough

i'm done with "too big to fail" reasoning. get rid of patents and let the chips fall where they may.

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 19:53 UTC (Tue) by Kluge (subscriber, #2881) [Link]

>But really, no, the government is hugely terrible at doing any sort of real research or producing products.

Really? My impression is that government funded research is quite good at producing the basic knowledge upon which applied research can be based. And applied research is essentially what the pharmaceutical/biotech sector is supposed to do. We can disagree with why they haven't, over all, been doing a very good job of it lately. Certainly complying with FDA regulations does cost time and money, but it's hard to see how we can do without some regulation of drugs. Recent history is replete with examples of selective publication of data, mismarketing of drugs, etc by pharma.

If you have a point to a more detailed discussion of your position, I'd love to see it.

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 27, 2011 20:47 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link] (1 responses)

If the only issue were the FDA regulations in the US, I would expect to see some off-shoring of the medical research. Indian people are cheap due to their permissive regulations, so drugs could be developed there first and only re-developed later in the US (to satisfy the FDA requirements) once they have proven themselves useful.

This has happens with?

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted May 5, 2011 4:47 UTC (Thu) by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606) [Link]

A highly advanced country with lots of resource use a developing country as drug testing subject, nice...

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 15:32 UTC (Tue) by cowsandmilk (guest, #55475) [Link] (2 responses)

Universities (where most of this "federal funding" occurs) only originate 24% of pharmaceuticals, and trust me, the amount they're spending pales in comparison to what drug companies spend. See http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/11/04/where_dru... for a pointer to where drugs come from.

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 19:22 UTC (Tue) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (1 responses)

that is because universities don't fund drugs to give old people boners or make sad housewives more interested in smiling.

the biotech industry pushes more mood altering/lifestyle pills than that guy on the corner

Yes, fix the patent system

Posted Apr 26, 2011 22:10 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (guest, #16953) [Link]

Drug companies also push a significant amount of research into very serious conditions that rob people of their lives. Government does very little research into arthritis (and it's many variants including Rheumatoid) compared to the private sector. The major drug companies are spending billions every year trying to discover the cause and treatment for these conditions because they are extremely lucrative due to the damage they reap on a persons life. People will literally sell their own mothers to gain access to drugs that will reverse the course of these conditions. The proof of this is the shear number of snake oil (herbal) treatments for the same.

In addition the primary driver of Cancer research (the #2 killer) and Heart/BP/Circulatory (Heart disease is the #1) research is in the private sector. Entire companies like Myriad Genetics spend their entire research budget on Cancer research from identifying the cause and genes responsible to developing treatments including one-off genetic treatments that cost $50K a pop and they will never make money on.

You make serious light of depression in your post, something I have a serious problem with as it is a very serious disease that results in death far too often and something one of my loved ones suffers from. You might not think depression or ED is a serious problem but that doesn't give you the right to belittle the problem and decide that no money should be spent on it until whatever pet cause you have is cured.