posted on May, 20 2011 @ 11:21 PM
On 19 May NPR ran a story about two very major drugs that are going to "go generic" this year and next year. Their patents will expire.
www.npr.org...
A reporter said on the air (not in the article) that this would cause a 90% price drop for these drugs. The story was all about how great this would
be for the generic drug manufacturers.
For some reason they completely missed the most obvious implication of this news. If manufacturers of generic drugs can stay in business selling their
products for about a tenth of what they were priced at when they were being manufactured under patent, why do the companies who patented these drugs
charge so much for them? Apparently patents are being used to fleece people who must pay for these drugs.
While looking into this I found a quote by Jonas Salk who invented the polio vaccine.
Edward R. Murrow: Who owns the patent on this vaccine?
Jonas Salk: Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?
CBS Television interview, on See It Now (12 April 1955); quoted in Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine (2001) by Jon Cohen
I include the link to the source page. Salk said a lot of other interesting things, too.
en.wikiquote.org...
For things like medicines, which can be life-or-death discoveries, doesn't Salk's approach make more sense?
edit on 20-5-2011 by l_e_cox because: tried to get comma out of title