"What I discovered is that... [pharmaceutical corporations] don't, by and large, invent medicines. They behave like hedge funds. They buy the rights to produce medicines that have been made by others - with public money, or at small biotech companies - and then they squeeze the most they possibly can out of those drugs Whatever the consequences are to society... [or] how unaffordable they are."
#NickDearden, 2024
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/11/how-big-pharma-makes-a-killing-from-letting-people-die
Or just end the patent system. That would also work.
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@Hyolobrika
> Or just end the patent system
I'm all for that. I've yet to see a strong argument for keeping them, especially in medicines.
But there are lesser reforms that might improve things considerably.
(1/2)
Imagine that rather than creating a transferable asset, a drug patent created a chartered company. One non-transferably owned by all the researchers who worked on the drug. That company would have 2 functions; licensing others to manufacture the drug, and using the resulting funds to give out grants for new medical research.
(2/2)
The patent-created company would be automatically wound up at the end of the patent period. Any remaining funds would be passed on to another medical research funder. Which one(s) is among the things that would need to be agreed on as part of the process of creating the company.