Patents

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Article #75541

#75541

From: drw
Date: Thu, 12 Jul 1990 20:03

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   From: Gordon Joly <gj@psychiatry.sm.ucl.ac.uk>

   Good. Drug patents, software patents. Some stuff.
   The exploits of the drug industry in the Third World make apple/lotus
   etc look like a tea party, in terms of ethics.

I'm sorry if I didn't make myself clear -- I'm not trying to judge the
morality of the various players, I was just noting that one wants drug
companies to spend money on developing and testing drugs, one must
give them some mechanism to profit thereby.  At present, drug patents
are the only mechanism for doing so.  (Plant breeding has the same
problems.)  Of course, one could just socialize that part of the
medical research system (as RMS would do with software), but that is
not without its problems too.

This is an example where the patent system has significantly boosted
commercial research, and in so far as you consider capitalism morally
acceptable, it has aided the economy.

Dale

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References: <4364.9007120935@murun.psych.sm.ucl.ac.uk>

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From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: Patents
Message-ID: <9007122003.AA07821@hermite.mit.edu>
Date: 12 Jul 90 20:03:23 GMT
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Posted: Thu Jul 12 21:03:23 1990

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