X-Message-Number: 29727
References: <>
From: David Stodolsky <>
Subject: Incentive to do research (was:  Doctors' Mob Riot - No UAGA B...
Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 20:26:26 +0200

On 14 Aug 2007, at 08:48,  wrote:

>
> Life expectancy would still be about 37, because there would be no
> incentive to do research to cure the common diseases from back  
> then.  No
> patent protection.  No legal protection against theft of  
> inventions, nor
> the umbrella of an anonymous entity (corporation).  Heck, we would not
> even have the telephone, the automobile, much less the airplane,  
> because
> no one's research would be safe from copying it.

These types of hypotheticals don't yield any info.

Most scientific advances come from scientists who give their findings  
away by publishing their results. The greatest advance in human  
health resulted from sanitary engineering (sewers) and the greatest  
advance in health science, the Human Genome Project, came out of the  
US Dept. of Energy. There is also evidence that Big Pharma is  
suppressing innovation at his time, not to mention killing millions  
by inflating drug prices.


"As a result, real innovation has been declining for
almost a decade. In 2003 the US Food and Drug
Administration, which approves new drugs for the
American market, acknowledged that the number of
applications from pharmaceutical companies for
"truly innovative products" was on a downward trend;
in 2006, fewer than a quarter were for "new molecular
entities" - novel medicines that had not previously
been marketed in the US. In November last year, the
US Government Accountability Office warned that the
drug industry had become "stagnant".

<http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/mg19325972.800-making- 
poor-nations-pay-for-drugs.html>


dss

David Stodolsky    Skype: davidstodolsky

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