[Ip-health] IP: Question Assumptions

[George M. Carter]

We have been told over and over like a psychotic mantra that the only way
drug discovery happens is with patent protections and concomitant consumer
assault with "cost recovery" pricing.

But an interesting article in Science raises an important and apparently
unanswered question about this presumption (see Bainbridge, WS, Privacy and
property on the net: Research questions, Science, 5 Dec 2003;302:1686-7).
Now, the article is primarily looking at confidentiality on the 'net and
issues such as downloading music. The author raises interesting questions
on to what extent copyrights are really good for musical artists. Given the
flat homogeneity of the music industry that so often has screwed the
artists (or simply manufactured them, Menudo-style) and turned innovation
into fast-food pablum, I can say that the answer is relatively clear to me.
(How many blues musicians never saw a fraction of the monies raised by the
industry?)

This is applicable to biomedicine and development too, in many ways....a
portion of the essay that struck me:
"We do not presently have good cross-national data on file sharing or a
well-developed theoretical framework to guide research on whether copyright
protection supports cultural imperialism versus enhancing the positions of
diverse cultures in the global marketplace.

It will not be easy to test such hypotheses, and extensive economic
research has not conclusively answered the question of whether the  patent
system really promotes innovation."

Sharing of data is squelched by the patent system. A recent patent on using
gene expression arrays may have a deleterious effect on proteomics and
their application in field work for diagnostic assays. As if these aren't
already another source of price gouging, necessary licensing fees, and a
crimp (as an added cost) in clinical studies, let alone care.

So I think that we should not simply blandly accept the industry's claim
that newer discoveries are helped by patents. Under the original
circumstances of patent law that were designed to protect individuals, now
that a corporation is viewed as an individual (apparently with all the
rights and none of the responsibilities), those original values have been
degraded profoundly.

Indeed, I think that we will only continue to see a deterioration in drug
discovery as the market becomes overly saturated and companies resort to
the minor changes in drug formulation with concomitantly increased pricing
structures (e.g., fosamprenavir or the latest baldfaced theft of Abbott's
500% increase in ritonavir).

Open architecture scientific discovery, cooperation and community
involvement are hallmarks of successful innovation and discovery. Such
efforts are being tried in disparate fields, such as physics, that have not
become so viciously encumbered by the parasites of Wall Street and their
cronies who are suffering cerebral hemorrhages in their thinking that the
only motivation that drives human endeavor is naked, voracious greed.

George M. Carter