Drug Patents Are Stifling Progress and Making us Sicker - Left Voice
Drug Patents Are Stifling Progress and Making us Sicker - Left Voice
Recently leaked corporate memos show once again that pharmaceutical companies always put profit over health. The recent example of Gilead shows how the pharmaceutical industry uses patent law to stifle medical progress and hurt the public.
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this has been going on a long time. usually they'll just tweak the release mechanism or the dosage form and get a new patent. this is just an even more galling example when you consider the difference in side effect profiles here. truly despicable.
It is despicable, but I don't really know what the solution might be, other than Socialism.
open source pharmapunk scene should be a thing. hell it could be a thing already for all I know
Well I guess it is if you count meth / crack as pharma.
In terms of researching new therapeutic drugs I don't think most people would be able to be contributors if they don't have multi million dollar labs on hand.
Well duh socialism it is then, lets nationalize those labs.
b-b-b-b-but without a profit motive there can be no innovation!
I don't, lol
maybe not drug discovery but my fever dream showed me a world where there are thousands of comrade chemists and pharmacists making and freely distributing already-known pharmaceuticals to people who need them, free of charge
drug discovery can and should continue to be done via public funding after the pharmaceutical companies are nationalized. this was also a scene from my dream.
The US government has emergency powers to limit patents. I can't recall a time it's been yet in recent memory (but they could pull out the parliamentarian bullshit).
But you'd think a drug that reduces the transmission of HIV down to under a percent would be freely available. I mean just make it freely available, have doctors recommend it when applicable, and we could reduce HIV to a more manageable condition.
I think about gay men I've talked to who couldn't afford PrEP or didn't even know it existed. Sex education is a nightmare in the US and we're sending lgbt kids in blind when there are so many resources stuck behind paywalls.