If you care about developing new medicines and new treatment technologies you have to care about patents. Doctors and scientists are not our slaves. Don't expect them to devote their talents to improving health care without being paid, and without the reward of profit for innovation. Stealing the product of someone else's work and talents is morally corrupt.
And there it is... and it's bullshit.
Really, how much are smart people worth? The amount Big Brother decides? How much were slaves sold to American plantation owners worth?
What the fuck does slavery have to do with anything?
You make it sound so good...why do so many Cubans want to flee?
Since your post started with a question, I think its you that doesn't understand. Patents were developed as a way of preventing the theft of other people's intellectual work. It was recognized that without that protection, not enough intelligent people would work towards improving all of our lives with innovation. Governments cannot innovate. The best an institution can do is hire people and ask them to innovate.
The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.
Kinda telling in regards to what some governments consider a priority, hey?
If you're asking me, finding a way to travel between habitable planets, or to alternative sources of resources or other waypoints towards that goal, is the most important work any government could possibly be engaged in. We live on a planet with finite resources that will be habitable for a finite period of time (however long that may be).
You would clearly prefer the Cuban Government letting its people die, like in Iraq, because of US sanctions on drug sales.
Since what I'm saying isn't even controversial, I'm not sure I want to work very hard to provide all the background. A short overview is:
I think you've missed the point. The point is that you can only have cheap drugs if you steal them or force people to sell them to you at your preferred price. However, a universal system which allows for either is not sustainable. Cuba's practices can only exist because it can't, by law, export its artificially cheap generic drugs into the US market. If, however, every country did as Cuba does, no medical research would take place. So, we'd have cheap insulin, but there would never be any further medical innovation. No one would invest in research that could simply be stolen from them.
The flaw is a whole crapload of research is done not by the private sector but on university campuses and funded by Govt's.
Believe me, I understand patents and law. I have a dozen patents to my name.
Yep... in the 60's the priority was to get off this planet. How did that work out, 60 years later?
So basically, you have a problem with Cuba putting the health of their population ahead of patents.
Who pays the scientists to discover new drugs? Corporations. Corporations are in business to make money so that they can continue to pay scientists and employ people to make more money
The govt did. Via grants to universities. Drug companies don't search for cures. The search for ongoing maintenance drugs.
