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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RMF who wrote (36514)	8/25/2009 9:44:26 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

it's not like the pharmaceutical companies have been going "out of their way" to benefit humanity. They're trying to make a buck like everybody else and I certainly don't blame them for that. Regardless if the motivation is purely egalitarian or selfish the fact is that medical technology has advanced at an amazing pace in the last hundred years. Most of the money to pay for it over the last twenty years or so has been extracted from American consumers. I can see giving them "grants" for research. We're already giving them dibs on research done in national labs and universities. They get to set up in Puerto Rico and dodge a lot of taxes that other companies couldn't. We already fund some of it through grants. Drugs awarded orphan status get longer patent protection. However taking consumers out of the system will result in severe distortions. What if the head of the FDA (or President) had a grandchild with say Lupus? With no market forces in effect she or he could direct a disproportionate share of research to one disease. Researchers would have to play ball or risk being denied future grants. I just want to ask them to come "halfway" on stuff. How about foreign countries get the message they will have to pay a fair share? If all countries that currently pay no share of R & D paid a small portion it would flow both to company bottom lines and back to American consumers through lower costs. That would get us to halfway.