this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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No medicines have copyrights, but they do have patents. And, drug patents are kinda necessary if you want money to be spent on developing new drugs.
No one is going to dump a few hundred million into developing a new drug if everyone can manufacture and sell it upon release.
Patents aren't the issue, though, it's companies charging out the ass because they can.
Publicly funded research is out of the question then? Why does it have to be private corporations doing the research?
Oh, the patent expired? No problem, we'll just methylate the structure, see that it makes no difference and put it out on the market as a new drug. Or maybe take the active part of a racemic mixture and half the dosage. Same drug double the patent. Semisynthetic insulin is even worse in that regard.
You won't sell it on the market because you have to produce it cheaper or at the same cost as the competition. You don't have the knowledge to produce the drug efficiently, and you can't learn that by looking at the end product. In a society without IP, the most important things are the optimised production processes, which will be kept secret. The rest can be copied because it will be more expensive to produce.