If Amateur discovers 'cure for cancer', what does he do next?

Factual Questions
1

Supposing Murray McAverage working in his basement discovers a ‘cure’ for cancer of the ______.

Supposing the cure is legitimate; what practical steps would he have to take next, in order to make billions off of it?

Would he first look up in the phone phone the name of an Intellecutal Property Firm? To patent his ‘exlir’?

Call up the professor at a medical school that is the director of the oncology program?

When would he actually profit from it – woudl he have to wait until it is proven to be safe for use on humans, which might take a decade to get FDA approval? How would he pay for the tests? Would he have to partner or sell out to a bigpharma company? Would they even beleive him if he called them?

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path . . .

2

He would apply for a patent and then begin to raise investment money to pay for all the FDA tests, etc. Most likely it would be easier to just sell to a big company.

How can he possibly know this if he doesnt have a serious animal lab and lots of his own studies to prove it? That means samples of all sorts of cancers, human testing, trials, etc. Its these results he would use to woo investors.

Its unlikely he could come to this stage without human testing so the idea that someone could homebrew something like this is unlikely and the question really has to do with “If the near impossible happened how would the business community react?” Well, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

3

The days of the amateur scientist working at home making big discoveries on his own is over, so it wouldn’t happen. These days it takes a team working with lots of expensive equipment over an extended period of time to discover any new advances.

4

So, you don’t believe in thought experiments; mathematical proofs?

5

Well a mathematical proof isn’t going to cure cancer.

6

One of the complaints about the U.S. patent system is that it doesn’t really protect the individual like this very well. The way it is supposed to work is Murray McAverage files a patent, and then he has protection while he figures out how he’s going to manufacture his new drug.

But that’s not how it works.

The problem is that a patent doesn’t really buy you much. There are no patent police. There are no automatic protections that kick in. Some other guy like BigPharma Inc can just take his formula and start manufacturing it themselves, without his permission. Murray can take them to court and try to make them stop it. The problem is that Murray McAverage can’t afford to spend tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. BigPharma Inc, on the other hand, doesn’t mind throwing out a million dollars in legal fees, because they are going to make billions off of this drug. They can basically adopt the strategy of “let’s lawyer Murray McAverage to death” and there’s not a whole lot poor Murray can do about it. They can keep the thing tied up in court until the patent expires. In the meantime, they can tweak the drug just ever so slightly and make a new patent on it. While Murray is busy fighting for his original formula in court, BigPharma Inc is making billions on the slightly tweaked version. In the end, BigPharma gets rich, and poor Murray ends up flat broke.

Now if Murray is a very shrewd businessman, maybe he can partner with some other pharma company before BigPharma starts to muscle in on his patent. Any other pharma company knows that Murray is just a little guy, though, and can’t really defend himself very well. They aren’t going to make him the sweetheart deal of the century. They are going to offer him some small amount for his patent. Murray might be able to pay off his house and buy himself a new car, but he’s not going to be moving in next to Bill Gates any time soon. If Murray’s smart he’ll take that deal, because the alternative is that he doesn’t get diddley squat.

It’s not fair, and it’s not supposed to work that way, but that’s the way it is. Folks have been screaming for patent overhaul for a long time, but it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon.

7

“They can keep the thing tied up in court until the patent expires”

But when the suit finally reaches a jury, McAverage probably wins. Then the BigPharma has to cough up its (or a large share) of all those profits. And surely with the stakes so hgih a lawfirm would take this on contingency?

8

Why would a jury vote the way you want them to vote? Competency of the lawyers has more to do with winning than facts in many cases, especially in highly technical cases like IP law. Joe Sixpack isnt an expert on science of cancer treatments, IP law, etc.

Not to mention all big pharma has to do is find prior art to invalidate the patent. In some of these cases the smartest thing to do is just settle. Jury trials can be dangerous.

9

Here’s how it works when someone in academia discovers The Cure for Cancer (or, to be accurate, A Chemical that Might Be a Slightly More Promising Treatment for Certain Types of Cancer):

Let’s say a researcher is studying something cancer related. Lo and behold, she happens to stumble across some novel chemical that happens to have a really strong effect – at least in a tissue culture kind of setting. First she’ll file a patent, likely before publishing the result. I believe large institutions will have their own patent lawyers on hand, but will also have some claim to patents on research that they hosted. (Here I’m rather ignorant of the details). Then she can simply license the treatment to an existing pharmaceutical company, if someone is interested. Most big pharma companies would rather not bet on something until it’s gone through some more thorough testing, however.

In that case, our intrepid researcher will create a startup to investigate medical applications (and possibly has to license the treatment from the original parent institution? Again I’m ignorant here). She finds some business partners to help out with financials and management, finds some venture capital, and starts a small company that will work on preliminary drug research. They might, for example, explore possible uses for the treatment, optimize it a bit, and see how well it works well in simple models (tissue culture, perhaps small animals like mice). The startup might go public at some point, to raise more money for research. The end result is that they have some good data backing up the new treatment, and maybe a few more related patents. This will take years, millions of dollars invested, and lots of work. The original researcher can be involved to different degrees – she could quit her academic position and work full time at her company, or she could just be a glorified part-time consultant that gets a nice cut at the end.

Now, the researcher (or more likely the business partners that are more savvy in this area) will shop around big pharma companies, looking for a buyer. Most of these startups aren’t lucky enough to get a buyer willing to pay more than investments, and just go bankrupt. The lucky ones get a nice deal from some big pharma company that thinks the new treatment is promising. The really lucky startups are bought out for huge amounts of money – see Sirtris, which was bought out for $720 million.

Now, our original researcher probably had a big chunk of stock in the startup, so she’ll get a big pile of stock (from the buying company) and a big pile of cash in the buyout.

The situation for our basement amateur is probably similar, but they’ll have a lot more work to get anyone interested in their cure.

10

Which is why companies create shill corporations and such to limit their liability. So the guy sues and wins and the dummy company files bankruptcy and the guy wins a judgement against a company that no longer exists.

There are tons of ways of getting around this.

The most obvious is other countries would simply take it and “nationalize” it in the name of health. Suppose Brazil, for example, does this and allows anyone to manufacture the medicine because there is a huge social interest in allowing it on the market without cost.

So even if you could stop imports of the Brazil made meds you’d simply have every cancer patient in the world flocking to Brazil to get cured.

The real money an inventor would make would come from speaking engagements and book deals and the like. That’s not chump change. An inventor like this would easily pull in AT LEAST $100,000 per speech he gave.

Ex-Presidents now command about $250,000/speech and former first ladies are at least $150,000. So you can imagine how much this guy is gonna get to lecture.

Then there would be job offers from companies and book deals and the like.

He’d be plenty rich, but not from his discovery. It would be just too important of a find to allow anyone to exculsively profit from it

11

…need answer fast?

12

If you’re still doing research, and you’re legitimate, you’ll stay in the environment explicitly designed for research, i.e., academia. There was an experimental cancer treatment I heard about here, that was just finishing up tests on rats and starting in on dog tests, and which was still done entirely in-house. You wouldn’t start a company until you have something you can sell. You might still do more research after that point: Once you’ve got something that works on dogs, there’s definitely a market for that, so you might start a company, but you’ll probably still want to work your way up to human application.

13

The thing is, an amateur working alone in his garage cannot discover a cure for cancer. It can’t happen that way, because the only way he can tell whether his proposed method actually works is to test it.

Because even if you have a magic cancer-curing ray, how do you know you have a magic cancer-curing ray? How do you know it works? How do you know it’s safe?

You can’t even begin to treat patients with your magic ray until you prove it is safe and effective. And that means clinical trials. But you can’t do clinical trials until you convince people that your treatment is promising, and that means animal studies and in vitro studies.

There are thousands of people who are convinced they’ve discovered a cure for cancer. Maybe a few of them really have, but even if they have they are still wrong to believe they have, because they have no good reason to believe they can cure cancer unless they’ve done multiple scientific studies on their proposed treatment. It isn’t enough to have taken banana slug extract, note that your cancer got better, and decide that banana slug extract cures cancer. Maybe it does, but you still have to prove it.

14

The problem in the original idea is who is Murray?

If some kid comes up and discovers cold fusion using a styrofoam cup, Coca Cola and a bottlecap tied to a string, then the number of flaws in his technique, methods, methodology, training, replications, etc. etc. etc. are so numerous it won’t matter if he actually discovered it or not. It’s very likely he would be unable to write a paper of minimum quality that could be submitted for peer review.

Therefore, hypothetically, Murray McAverage cannot discover the cure for cancer in his basement. Dorothy Doctorate, however, can.

But, this would be a different story if you are talking about a simple, useful invention like that mini table in pizza hut pizzas.

15

A proof can tell you what happens when your assumptions hold, but it can’t tell you anything at all about whether your assumptions are worth a damn.

16

I think the term you are looking for is “shell corporation,” although your Freudian slip is rather apropos.

17

John Kanzius claims to have done that. Not a cure for cancer per se, but a new treatment.

He is a radio technician who, after being diagnosed with leukemia, tried to find a way to use radio waves to kill cancer cells. He decided that using various metals injected into tumor sites, then exposed to radio waves, would heat and kill the tumor cells. The next goal is to coat the metal particles with proteins that allow them to attach to or enter cancer cells (but not healthy host cells). I assume they’d inject the particles into the bloodstream, they’d be taken up by cancer cells and then vaporized with radio waves.

Apparently doctors at a nearby cancer center took up testing of his device, and clinical trials are being planned. He raised the initial $200,000 for the device himself however.

However it could be years before anyone knows if or how well it works on humans who have one of the hundreds of kinds of cancer.

18

Note that it’s perfectly possible for one smart guy to come up with hundreds of inventions and get patents for dozens of them and make money by creating companies to develop those ideas. But to make it work you have to be a combination inventor/businessman.

The only way to make money as a lone inventor is to sell your invention to a company, or to create a company to produce it yourself. Unless you’re planning to manufacture everything by hand in your basement? You aren’t going to get much from selling your invention to another company unless you’ve developed it enough that it’s a proven moneymaker. A patent by itself is pretty much useless, because you can get a patent on plenty of unmarketable unprofitable products. A patent just allows you to sue an infringer, and that’s it. 90% of patents don’t make the inventor a dime. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Coming up with patentable new inventions is the easy part. Making money from them is the hard part.

Or, if you’re a humanitarian sort, you can disclose your invention. That means you don’t get a patent on it, but nobody else can either.

19

And when BigPhama refuses to pay off the settlement?

20

Then the court orders their assets seized. It isn’t like big corporations can ignore court orders, just because they don’t feel like paying. They drag their feet, and appeal, and try various things, and maybe they’ll find a court that will help them get a better settlement. But they don’t just tell the courts to go screw.