Well, I am glad we are coming into agreement then. If we can get Chumpsky to moderate his statement from “Corporations do very little scientific research” to something like that “they do not do most of the scientific research”* then we could all be in happy agreement right in time for the holiday!
[I am assuming “scientific research” = “basic research” here which seems like a reasonable relation to me. I am a little confused as to why one AAAS graph seems to show the industry contribution to basic research at just a tad under 1/3 and the other states it is about 1/4, but hey, I guess that’s close enough for our puposes.]
But jshore, where would such moderation leave his claim that private industries are “parasites” who with their “private power” “take” the benefits of research?
I have yet to find any information saying that PPL Therapeutics mapped the human genome. Not that I’m disputing the veracity of this, just trying to get to the bottom of the issues since Meta-Gumble or anybody else hasn’t explained why the HGP was a fiasco.
The Human Genome Project is a publicly funded international effort. So I’m not sure why Meta-Gumble had a problem with it.
Oh I’m sorry is this the “Chumpsky’s a troll” thread? I must have wandered in here by mistake.
The human genome is an interesting case study. The Human Genome Project is publically funded. They originally claimed that it was going to take a decade to map the Human Genome. Then a private company called Calera came along, and managed to sequence the entire Human Genome in about 2 years. I believe the publically funded project is still going, and will have a full Human Genome Map as well within a year or so.
By the way, when considering whether private companies fund basic research, it would be good to note that Compaq Computers donated a lot of money and expertise in the effort.
"The strategies of the HGP and Venter (who now created a new company called Calera Genomics out of TIGR) were different. Yet, stung and rivaled by each other, they hastened their paces and completed the task independently and simultaneously in 2001, to 97 % accuracy, so that the Draft Human Genome Sequence is available for all to see today. `Peace’ between the two was brokered by none other than Charles De Lisi of DOE, who stood along with Collins, Venter and President Clinton in July 2000 (with Blair on the satellite video across the ocean) announcing that the race is over - both parties agreeing that it was a tie! " source
It may be important to note that TIGR was private but non-profit, and came after Venter’s failed (and IMO reprehensible)attempt to patent human gene sequences.
AFAIK the human genome is in the public realm where it should be.
Still not sure what Meta-Gumble was talking about.
Hmmn… The cites I read said that Calera was 99% done (this was in 2000), and the HGP was still at something like 86%. I suspect the ‘tie’ was more PR than anything.
Regardless, the point still stands that the human genome was mapped by a private company.
I’m not sure how important this point is on the whole since the debate doesn’t seem to be properly framed yet.
If Celera had finished a few years earlier and had been successful in patenting the human genome I would have considered that highly unethical. The fact that Celera had performed important research would be irrelevant to me since it was merely duplicating an ongoing public research project. I would have been willing to wait a few years in order that everyone would have equal access to that information.
I think at some point most people acknowledge the possibility of unethical practices, it’s more a matter of what you intend to do about it and when it’s appropriate. I haven’ t seen any proposals addressing that yet.
I haven’t thought of any of my own at the moment, but if Meta-Gumble continues to be a no-show I might take the time to do so.
Well, I haven’t seen any independent work on this. But I know that the way patent law is right now, one can certainly take stuff that is basically in the public domain, do something “not obvious” (which seems to mean that an average 3-year-old couldn’t have necessarily thought it up…Okay, I exagerate but not that much!), and then patent it. So, my personal opinion (again, based more on what I vaguely know than any hard evidence) would be that Chumpsky’s claim is overstated but not completely without merit.
To be perfectly honest, I have my name on 3 patent applications this year and I can’t say that I believe that any of them ought to be patentable in a reasonable world. It’s to the point where I don’t feel myself qualified to decide on what is patentable or not because my standards are clearly way too high relative to what people seem to believe (rightly I’m afraid) is patentable!
perspective: The question is whether or not private industry engages in basic research. I pointed out that private companies cloned the first animal and mapped the human genome, both of which qualify as ‘basic science’. The fact that the government also did it is irrelevant to the debate.
Well the debate your having may or may not be relevant to the OP. Which asks:
"Is it for the best that Multi-National companies be allowed to conduct unlimited research and development?
What if important medical knowledge is discovered and patented by a greedy corporation?"
I don’t see any assertions about whether or not private corporations do important research. The question is whether or not certain vital information should always be in the public domain. The fact that private interests might perform important research may be an important supporting point in an argument against giving certain information to the public domain, but it’s not a direct rebuttal.
It seems to me you were making this argument to support your earlier statement:
But if it’s clear that the research duplicated public research strategies, then your Celera example won’t support that argument. Therefore my point is relevant to your argument.
Could you restate succinctly exactly the position that you’re arguing against? Because I’m not sure what it is.
Yawn. Businesses are set up to make money. It is so tiring to hear the argument that companies trying to make money are therefore “greedy”.
Do you really think we would have anywhere near as many important, life-saving and life-improving drugs today if the pharmaceutical companies could not make a profit out of selling them?
Yes, but the point is that, as a society, we must weigh the costs and benefits are granting “intellectual property rights” on various things. To some degree, these rights provide the monetary incentive to help advance research and development of new drugs, etc etc. But on the other side, such property rights can serve as a barrier to the wide dissemination of the good stuff…i.e., lead to monopolistic pricing and such.
So, for example, we can look at the pharmaceutical company and ask whether their profits are excessive. We have the right … in fact the responsibility… to consider this question given that we as a society have granted them the intellectual property rights that have allowed them to make these profits. (In fact, we have allowed them the right to a charter to exist as a corporation in the first place.)
I agree with the above. The IPR laws should be such that companies (and people) are encouraged to research new ideas. They will only do so if they can see a profit - they need a period during which they can recoup their investment. We limit the length of IPR ownership so as not to give the holder monopolistic powers forever, i.e. so that the results of the research can benefit society as a whole.
IANAL, but in y experience, holding a patent is not equivalent to gathering up all the essential information to a product or process and locking it away. Quite the contrary; you must specify quite distinctly what you are doing, and what is so darned special about it in the first place. In return, for a limited time, others are prohibited from commercializing on your work. Sounds fair to me. However, as I hope someone will point out, there are a myriad ways to work around a patent. The OP’s scenario is a tad paranoid.
If you do away with patents, and allow governments to decide that some things are just ‘too important’ to allow people to keep, then the result of that will be:
Higher drug prices. The risk of confiscation becomes a cost of doing business. Drug companies will have to pass that on to the consumer.
Less research into new drugs. If drug companies can’t protect their investments, they won’t invest.
A move away from patents and towards trade secrets. This is exactly what patent law seeks to avoid. The idea is this: People who invent new things get legal protection for a certain number of years to allow them to reap the benefits of their own discovery. In return, the inventors agree to publish all the information pertaining to the discovery so that others can learn from it. This is a big win-win for society - it gives people an incentive to strive for new things, while giving the rest of us the chance to learn from the discovery, and eventually to use it for free. Take that away, and the result will be secret formulas, duplication of effort, and a slower pace of innovation because people can’t learn from their peers. Bad idea.
Now, I’m sure that elucidator will be along to tell us that drug companies make ‘too much profit’. I hear this claim all the time, but I’ve never had anyone be able to explain to me just what constitutes ‘too much’ profit, and what they would do about it. If the answer is to nationalize drug development, or try to put price caps on drugs, or legislate maximum profits, the end result will be a flight of capital out of the drug industry. And we’ll all be poorer for it.
I agree with bizzwire and Sam Stone about what patents do and why they are generally advantageous. However, to present a few more cynical comments:
(1) The ideal of publishing “all the information pertaining to the discovery so that others can learn from it” is not always realized in practice. It seems to me that patents are quite poorly written and explained. If I ran the zoo, poorly written patents could be rejected on that basis…i.e., the inventors would either have to be more forthcoming and/or clearer about things in order to obtain the patent.
(2) I think patents have also gotten out-of-hand in terms of the standards being too low, especially for what constitutes “non-obvious”. In other words, it has gotten to the point where the companies with the best lawyers are getting rewarded more than the ones with the most creative scientists…And, in general, simply too much stuff is being deemed patentable. Actually, this view that the patent system is somewhat broken and some ridiculous things are getting patented isn’t only the views of some lefty anti-corporate type… The head of the corporate research labs where I work gave a talk on this at a science and technology conference this year.
(3) Given that patents have a fair amount of arbitrariness in them (What should be patentable? How long should the “intellectual property” be protected giving the company an effective monopoly on some invention?), I think it is fair to question things like the amount of profit being made by drug companies with their patents. Sure, the drug companies are going to try to threaten that doing anything to reduce their profits will do in innovation of new drugs but it doesn’t mean that we should totally buy their claims. If there is smaller but still sufficient profit still left, they will still have incentive to proceed with their inventions. And, perhaps if we are creative in legislating we can create a system that gives them incentives to cut down on the marketing but keep up the research by making the marketing in particular less profitable for them.
Another issue, as kimstu would point out is that the current market incentives for the drug companies place a high premium on “designer drugs for the wealthy” at the expense of, say, drugs to help deal with diseases of the poor such as malaria. But that’s probably a topic for another day.
Jshore: But you’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I agree that some of the problems with patents exist as you describe. No question. But the proper solution is to fix the patent system, not scrap it. And the answer damned sure isn’t federal caps on drug prices or the reduction or elimination of patents. That would be a disaster for society.