While I support IP for individuals, I don’t support it for large companies and definitely not for drug companies.

I understand the money involved in making drugs, but you should not be able to monopolize a life saving drug and charge exorbitant money for it. Most of the initial drug research is done by scientists not associated with drug company.

  • TA202301
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    21 year ago

    Drug companies should be allowed to make back their investment and should be allowed up make reasonable profit. They should not be allowed to make unlimited profit forever.

    Drugs produced as a result of publicly funded research should be manufactured and sold at a reasonable profit to support more publicly funded research.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      11 year ago

      The root of this issue is just having patents for those drugs and not allowing generic drug makes manufacture drugs that are a lot more affordable.

      • TA202301
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        11 year ago

        They are a lot more affordable because the generic drug manufacturers didn’t pay for the research and development. They’re taking the product of someone else’s hard work, voting it, and selling it for less. That’s easy when you didn’t spend money developing the drug. There had to be some profit in making drugs if you want companies to do it but what I’m saying is that that should not be unlimited.

        • @[email protected]OP
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          11 year ago

          I disagree. If the patent was never filed the compound is hard to reverse engineer. Even then it has to go to drug trials.

          As I stated before most of the research is done by researchers. And drug companies mostly spend on advertising and lobbying and executive pay compared to the money spent on research.

          • TA202301
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            11 year ago

            Like I said…if the research GND development is publicly funded then the drug should be public and we should pay enough for it to pay for the research into the next drug. Socialism.

            If a company pays for the research and development then they should be allowed to make their investment back with reasonable but not unlimited profit and not forever. Limited capitalism.

            • @thepianistfroggollum
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              011 months ago

              No, don’t you see? Companies should spend billions of dollars developing a drug and just give it away at cost.

              • TA202301
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                -111 months ago

                Straw man. Come back when you’re not going to use childish devices and are ready to have a real discussion.

  • @thepianistfroggollum
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    111 months ago

    Well, this is an unpopular opinion because it’s an incredibly stupid take that shows you have no real understanding of pharmaceutical research or business in general.

    When a company develops a drug, they don’t just go, “Hey, this chemical works, let’s patent it.” One drug successfully making it to market means that there are potentially thousands of similar chemicals that were developed, tested, and failed.

    The development, research, testing, and even marketing (doctors have to know it exists to prescribe it) of a single drug is astronomically expensive. If companies aren’t allowed to recoup their costs and make money on a product they created, then they’re never going to develop life saving drugs in the first place.

    Now, I’m definitely all for pharma research being completely publicly funded, but most governments don’t care that much about citizens, so we’re stuck with private companies footing the bill for the majority of drug development. I’m also all for setting a price cap on patented drugs and generics.

    A patent at its core is just protecting the investment the inventor made for a period of time so they can benefit from it. It’s a huge component in all innovation.