E-drug: Attaran/Gillespie-White and PhRMA patent surveys (cont'd)
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Perhaps someone on this list can tell me why no one at the
Harvard School of Public Health (or anywhere else, to my
knowledge) has done a study that examines whether patents are
the most efficient way to support pharmaceutical research.
This sounds like music to me, as I really think that this is "the
issue". Unfortunately, unless we can show that property rights
protection is far from promoting good research, nor community
oriented research, the common belief that patent systems are the
only way to ensure that enough profit is created to be reinvested in
research will not change. The Scientific Community has to be open
sourced, since cooperation seems to be the only "effective" way to
make real progress. At the end, the patent system has only
increased the number of me-too drugs affecting the very nature of
scientific research within the scientific community. Don't forget that
vaccines and antibiotics have been discovered without any kind of
patent protection. I doubt that any of the pharmas would like to
sponsor any sort of research that might only show the disbalance
between profit and the real outcomes of industry-based and market
oriented research.
Mauro Guarinieri
Nadir Roma Nadir HIV Treatment Group
European Aids Treatment Group http://www.eatg.org
European Community Advisory Board
Italian Community Advisory Board (i.cab@libero.it)
Chair of the EATG e.V. Access Working Group
Via Drapperie 7 - 40124 Bologna (Italy)
Tel. +39 051 26 16 76 F +39 02 700 401 187
Mobile: +39 347 96 31 837
e-mail: m.guarinieri@agora.stm.it
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