Other Wanderer said:
The issue with patents is not their existence, but rather their length. The IT industry has far, far shorter patent cycles than the drug business, and produces far faster levels of innovation.
Drug companies would argue the length and nature of testing, regulation, etc is what makes it so long and expensive to get products to market. They have a point there, so reforming both and then shortening the length of time for which patents are allowed would help.
How about shortening the time to zero?
Other Wanderer said:
The other issue is that most drugs just don't work, and our medical community is addicted to "selling" them, indirectly, instead of dealing with core causes to diseases.
If most drugs don't work then the FDA and individual physicians are failing at their jobs and succumbing to Big Pharma lobbying. So along with eliminating patents, the government should eliminate the FDA, and remove the restriction that only physicians can prescribe. These actions would allow the members of the public to make their own decisions.
If I were a pure libertarian I would subscribe to the above removal of regulations, but I'm not a pure libertarian (yet), and I don’t have an opinion as to how well the FDA is doing its job. If I could recommend the FDA then I can see allowing a limited patent as a means for the drug company to recoup its costs of satisfying FDA regulations.
At the present time, I recommend more transparency by the FDA. This would include disclosing the full rationale for decisions including references to the medical literature. This would also include disclosing potential conflicts of interests for FDA decision makers.
The matter of physician disclosure of lobbying is complex. Physicians are private business people, but, as possessors of a government imposed monopoly on prescribing, they are lobbied directly by Big Pharma in their offices and at conferences. Should physicians keep a list of their lobbyist visits for patients to consult?
