| sega4life said:
I'm tired of Patented drugs that cost way to much money, when the patent runs out, they change the formula slightly to form a new patent. |
I don't think that you appreciate how expensive it is to develop new medicines. 1 out of every 100 projects started at Pharmeceutical Companies actually transitions into a successful product. The research money for these drugs is largely private, these aren't government contracts. These corporations spend billions of dollars to develope these drugs, and without patent protection have no way to profit off of them as others would just take the formula and undersell since they don't have all of the money invested in the drug (Brazil does this on a large scale, it is one of the major factors keeping it from gaining membership to the Permanent Security Council of the UN).
While it would be nice to have cheaper drugs (I have asthma, my medicine costs are ludicrous), getting rid of patent protection would destroy the industry. Realize that without modern medicine we would still have sweeping epidemics and childhood death rates that would be completely unacceptable. It is easy to look at these Multi-national corporations and see greed and evil, but it is only companies of this size that are able to afford the equipment and talent to develop ground breaking new drugs. While some natural medicine should be investigated, I am tired of hearing people think it is the magical end all. What was the mortality rate before modern medicine? What is it now? Because prior to the system that we have in place now, your "dangerous drugs" weren't around and natural medicine was all that we had. And Spoiler Alert, it wasn't very good.
