This is one of my biggest pet peeves (and have ranted about it here before). It’s just another way of privatizing the profits, and socializing the losses.
Too many people are ignorant about the facts, and they will insist that private corporations are what drive scientific research and create innovative technologies. What so many don’t know is that the majority of basic research is funded by the government. There would be very little innovation if the government wasn’t there to support the often unprofitable basic research that is required to jump-start the more marketable and profitable R&D.
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Science? Yes, the govt needs to fund it, and in a big way. IMHO, the govt needs to receive revenue streams from companies who are able to turn public research into a marketable and profitable venture, IMHO. IOW, the government should hold the patents to govt-funded basic research, and encourage private companies to use that research without being able to buy the patents. This way, we can be sure that there is real competition, rather than the monopolistic profiteering we so often find, especially in medicine. And the taxpayers will finally be rewarded for all the expenses they incur.
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KV’s drug, Makena, isn’t patented. KV gets the right to market exclusivity under the Orphan Drug Act, which was designed to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs that, for a variety of reasons, would likely not be developed if market exclusivity were not guaranteed for a certain period of time. And, although the price jump seems a bit outrageous to me, I think most pregnant women would prefer to receive a drug that has been manufactured under FDA supervision, rather than being whipped up by a compounding pharmacy. I’m sure insurance also plays a big role, plus it appears that KV is required to conduct ongoing investigations of the drug.
But even in the case of patented drugs, patent ownership by the government was the standard up until the Bayh Dole act of 1980, with abysmal results:
“Possibly the most inspired piece of legislation to be enacted in America over the past half-century was the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980. Together with amendments in 1984 and augmentation in 1986, this unlocked all the inventions and discoveries that had been made in laboratories throughout the United States with the help of taxpayers’ money. More than anything, this single policy measure helped to reverse America’s precipitous slide into industrial irrelevance. Before Bayh-Dole, the fruits of research supported by government agencies had gone strictly to the federal government. Nobody could exploit such research without tedious negotiations with a federal agency concerned. Worse, companies found it nigh impossible to acquire exclusive rights to a government owned patent. And without that, few firms were willing to invest millions more of their own money to turn a basic research idea into a marketable product.”
(Economist, 12/14/02).
By most accounts, before Bayh-Dole, the federal government had accumulated 30,000 patents, of which only 5% had been licensed and even fewer had found their way into commercial products. Not a great track records.
