Nice stuff, but you missed a couple of points:

Let’s start with the easy one: In the 19 century, the time for any serious copying to occur could take years. It could take a single man a couple of years of his life to “go around the world”, something most of us now could do within a few days, without much effort (but probably hating airports and airplanes). Information, and thus the ability to replicate, moves faster now than at any other time. What happens in one place is known in other places without hours, if not minutes.

Market domination in a matured market (dyes) is likely that of the most open market, because there is little in the way of new development going on. They can ignore licensing or paying the dye patent owners, and sell anywhere. One of the many reasons places like China (and Japan before it) has spectacular rises from zero to hero. But over time, as their economies start to depend more on their own actual research and development, they become more protective of it.

As for Italy, the same argument can be made today for India. But if you look closely, any work on new compounds is immediately moved out of the country and patent by the parent companies in other places.

Nobody is claiming you “need” a patent, it isn’t a physical requirement. However, it is a business case requirement. There are plenty of ways to make money, but none of them would pay these sorts of bills or justify the immense risks of capital, time, and effort to try to get to new medicines.

Italy wasn’t an information island. They were taking others’ patent work and using it for their “innovation”.

Your examples show how your logic works. The first ignores how the dye industry got there, choosing to focus only on the end game after most of the research was completed, and in the other, you look at a single market without looking at it’s connection to all other markets.

Short term, both examples make money. Without input and source patents from outside, neither would have existed or been successful. There money was made by ignoring the rights of others.

But over time, as their economies start to depend more on their own actual research and development, they become more protective of it.

No that start to happen when consolidation speeds up and that happens when someone start to make more money then the others, then excluding others is a priority for growth of one entity, which sterilizes the environment, it functions very much like cancer do in reality that is why people keep having bad feelings about it.

but none of them would pay these sorts of bills or justify the immense risks of capital, time, and effort to try to get to new medicines.

You don’t need patents for that, to justify all of that you need competition that will make you cry and go out of business if you don’t do it, patents grant someone with the ability to not have to worry about competing or improving anything, that is why pharma patents are down and slowing down as IP laws get more rigid, those people don’t need to invest heavily, they invest more in public campaigns and lobbying than they do in actual research.

Italy wasn’t an information island. They were taking others’ patent work and using it for their “innovation”.

That depends, Italy was the birth place of one of the greatest empires in the whole world that collected knowledge from the 4 corners of the world and made great use of that knowledge, without patents I might add, also Leonardo Da Vinci is from there, the renaissance happened there so they have a big history of great accomplishments over there, further all countries were taking from others and making their own including the U.S. that took everything from Europe up until the second world war, most of the American real technology happened after that and not before, where Europeans where decades ahead of the U.S.

Your examples show how your logic works. The first ignores how the dye industry got there, choosing to focus only on the end game after most of the research was completed, and in the other, you look at a single market without looking at it’s connection to all other markets.

You can say that is true when historically the evidence says that without any protections people created things because of necessity, most industries are formed because of a need not because they are protected, and people keep improving to stay relevant, protections actually served only to stop innovation that is why everybody agrees monopolies are inherently bad.

3rd try to post it, and the 3rd successful attempt.

Try clicking your browser’s Refresh button somewhere up there ??????????????

So when I read this statement from Rekrul about the drug trial it make me wonder what he’d like to see changed about the system. Does he expect thousands of people to work many man-years and then give the resulting products to him for free? I wonder if he was running one of the drug companies would it be any different?

To be perfectly honest, I don’t how to make the system work. All I know is that it’s too expensive to get sick in the US (I don’t know about other countries).

Before I started the drug trial, I had several joints that were swollen and painful. The worst was my left ankle, which made walking very difficult. There were times when I couldn’t put any weight on it at all. More than once, I literally hopped down the hall to the bathroom on one foot. Even when I could walk on it, I had a permanent limp. I don’t have insurance and couldn’t afford any of the drugs that would have helped me.

A couple years ago, it felt like I was having a heart attack and since it was the weekend, my doctor sent me to the ER. I was there for most of the day while they ran tests (and couldn’t find anything wrong). I’m still paying off the $4,400 bill. I then had to see a cardiologist which cost me another $1,500 for two visits and some tests. If I’d needed any kind of an operation, I would probably have had to sell everything I own and ended up on welfare just to live.

I have a friend who would probably be dead now if his sister hadn’t been paying for his medical insurance a few years ago when his doctor discovered, after a heart attack, that he had a blocked artery. There’s no way he would have been able to afford the $40,000 it cost to open up the artery.

I don’t know what the solution is, but I know that the current system sucks for the average person while the medical industry profits.

“First off, citing wikipedia as your source isn’t really going very far.”

True, but your assertions here just went all the way around the world! Wanna see it again?

I’m not sure that post by Rekrul holds up. This page says Orencia IS approved for RA and is sometimes used for psoriasis: http://www.psoriasis-cure-now.org/biologics .

If you read more carefully, it says it’s approved for RA, and has shown to improve psoriasis. It doesn’t say that it’s approved for it, or for psoriatic arthritis though.

I know it is fashionable to criticize America right now, but where were these cutting edge drug trials? AMERICA. Are drug companies greedy? Sure. But at least it gets us treatments like Orencia.

Assuming that you have insurance or can afford the $4,000+ a month it costs. If not, it might as well not exist for you.

So your argument is that, because someone opened up a message board, that suddenly proves that pharmaceutical corporations care? Do you know how silly that sounds?