[quote=CA renter]Yes, it would make them a bad person. Yes, I agree that this is being done with respect to treatments that cannot be patented (have seen it with my own eyes). Viva capitalism.[/quote]

The NIH is supposed to pursue therapeutics that are needed but not commercially justifiable. I wouldn’t say capitalism is the problem – its the failure of government agencies to do what they are supposed to do.

[quote=njtosd]
The NIH is supposed to pursue therapeutics that are needed but not commercially justifiable. I wouldn’t say capitalism is the problem – its the failure of government agencies to do what they are supposed to do.[/quote]

The NIH’s stated mission is here, in case anyone is curious: http://www.nih.gov/about/mission.htm

I find the notion that they haven’t “cured cancer” yet as evidence of their “failure” to be laughable if not outrageous. Even the idea of a “cure for cancer” is a naive fantasy, perhaps as best expressed by this comic: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1162

There are armies of highly intelligent and motivated individuals working on it, and moreover, there is a crystal clear profit motive. So no, I don’t think we can chalk this one up to failure on the part of the NIH, but rather as evidence of the complexity of the universe and the difficulty of the problem at hand.

[quote=jeff303][quote=njtosd]
The NIH is supposed to pursue therapeutics that are needed but not commercially justifiable. I wouldn’t say capitalism is the problem – its the failure of government agencies to do what they are supposed to do.[/quote]

The NIH’s stated mission is here, in case anyone is curious: http://www.nih.gov/about/mission.htm

I find the notion that they haven’t “cured cancer” yet as evidence of their “failure” to be laughable if not outrageous. Even the idea of a “cure for cancer” is a naive fantasy, perhaps as best expressed by this comic: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1162

There are armies of highly intelligent and motivated individuals working on it, and moreover, there is a crystal clear profit motive. So no, I don’t think we can chalk this one up to failure on the part of the NIH, but rather as evidence of the complexity of the universe and the difficulty of the problem at hand.[/quote]

The point that I was responding to was the contention that unpatentable therapeutics exist and are not pursued by industry. I probably didn’t express myself well. What I intended to say was that if we assume that such things exist, then it is the responsibility of the NIH to pursue those therapies, not private industry. I do believe that is the case, and in fact, the NIH has its Office of Rare Diseases because it recognizes its responsibility to fill the gaps left by private industry.

It also supports investigation using unpatentable compounds: http://www.nih.gov/news/health/nov2011/ott-28.htm

I am well aware of the complexities of the science. I disagree with the notion that the public has no guardian for its health care other than private industry.

Legal right — sure. Moral right, hell no.

For an example of the right thing to do, look at Willem Kolff who released the plans for a dialysis machine into the public domain in the late ’40s, rather than “patenting and profiting.”

Plenty of scientists work at pure science out of curiosity or for the betterment of humanity.

Not for free, but not aiming for extreme wealth either.

[quote=jstoesz]If there was not a healthy profit margin to cure conditions, the will be no cure. It is not really all that complicated. There are unethical business practices to be sure. The regulatory capture of the FDA to mention just one, but profits are the engine of invention. The regulations regarding medical development and how medical care is paid for are the real travesties of the whole sector.[/quote]

Bullshit.

Some of the leading causes of our extended life expectancy have nothing at all to do with patents.

Hand washing:

Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis (July 1, 1818 – August 13, 1865), also Ignác Semmelweis (born Semmelweis Ignác Fülöp), was a Hungarian physician called the “saviour of mothers” who discovered, by 1847, that the incidence of puerperal fever, also known as childbed fever could be drastically cut by use of hand washing standards in obstetrical clinics.

While employed as assistant to the professor of the maternity clinic at the Vienna General Hospital in Austria in 1847, Semmelweis introduced hand washing with chlorinated lime solutions for interns who had performed autopsies. This immediately reduced the incidence of fatal puerperal fever from about 10 percent (range 5–30 percent) to about 1–2 percent. At the time, diseases were attributed to many different and unrelated causes. Each case was considered unique, just like a human person is unique.

http://semmelweis.org/about/dr-semmelweis-biography/

————

Polio vaccine:

Until 1955, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered the most frightening public health problem of the post-war United States. Annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952 epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation’s history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis,[1] with most of its victims being children. The “public reaction was to a plague,” said historian Bill O’Neal.[2] “Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned.” According to a 2009 PBS documentary, “Apart from the atomic bomb, America’s greatest fear was polio.”[3] As a result, scientists were in a frantic race to find a way to prevent or cure the disease. U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt was the world’s most recognized victim of the disease and founded the organization, the March of Dimes Foundation, that would fund the development of a vaccine.

In 1947, Salk accepted an appointment to the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. In 1948, he undertook a project funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis to determine the number of different types of polio virus. Salk saw an opportunity to extend this project towards developing a vaccine against polio, and, together with the skilled research team he assembled, devoted himself to this work for the next seven years. The field trial set up to test the Salk vaccine was, according to O’Neill, “the most elaborate program of its kind in history, involving 20,000 physicians and public health officers, 64,000 school personnel, and 220,000 volunteers.” Over 1,800,000 school children took part in the trial.[4] When news of the vaccine’s success was made public on April 12, 1955, Salk was hailed as a “miracle worker,” and the day “almost became a national holiday.” His sole focus had been to develop a safe and effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal profit. When he was asked in a televised interview who owned the patent to the vaccine, Salk replied: “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?”[5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk
—————–

Penicillin:

The reviewer also asserts that penicillin ‘didn’t move for 14 years
due to absence of a patent.’ This is far off the mark, and a clear
case of misattribution of cause. Fleming discovered penicillin in
1928 and found it could be used as an adjunct to diagnosis of
H. influenza infection. He never tried to do clinical tests of
penicillin as a human antibiotic. It was indeed not patented, but
it was also not fully characterized and it is not clear it was
described with sufficient precision to warrant a patent. Moreover,
for the limited utility that Fleming wrote about in his papers,
there was little reason to patent penicillin. In any event, the
patent would nearly have expired by the time Florey and Chain did
their crucial clinical experiments in mice and then humans in 1941,
and would have had only a few years left when production was
sufficient to lead to broader clinical use in 1944 and 1945.
Moreover, the inducement to produce penicillin during World War II
was largely driven by the War Production Board, and far from
encouraging proprietary exclusive property rights, the U.S.
Government basically forced various pharmaceutical manufacturers to
share technology, including various manufacturing patents. It is
crystal clear that the missing element in the 1928 to 1941 gap was
not absence of patent incentive.

http://archive.mises.org/5216/patent-and-penicillin/

…

Large-scale commercial production of penicillin during the 1940s opened the era of antibiotics and is recognized as one of the great advances in civilization. The discovery of penicillin and the recognition of its therapeutic potential occurred in England, while discovering how to mass-produce the drug occurred in the US — at the Peoria lab [a government lab – CAR].

http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/docs.htm?docid=12764