06.25.07

Drug companies should not be responsible for research

Posted in Uncategorized at 6:00 pm by blog

Does anyone else see the problems with for-profit drug companies doing all the research into new medications?
For one, when a drug company develops a drug, they will patent it, giving them an artificial monopoly on that drug. They can then keep prices artificially high, because there’s no competing companies offering the same drugs. If you cant afford that price (and many people in poor countries cannot) your screwed.

But how about the hypocrisy of it all? Imagine for a minute that you run a for-profit drugs company… Will you:
a, develop a cure for AIDS, that sufferers will take for a brief time before being cured.
b, develop combination-therapy that, with continued use, will keep sufferers alive but infected with HIV for many years

For-profit companies will take the latter. Why? It’s obvious, why sell a quick effective cure when you can keep selling people a whole cocktail of drugs for many years? It’s in the drug companies interest to offer a less effective treatment that the sufferer will need to keep taking.

So what *should* be done?

1, Abolish patents on medications, and publish medication details in the public domain, use capitalism for what its good for, pushing down prices with competition as drugs companies are forced to produce the same drugs cheaper in order to compete.
2, Have all medical research be done by charities, or non profit organisations like the UN, with all the research openly published and collaborated, so as to avoid multiple organisations repeating the same work.

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