Do you understand the difference between obtaining a patent and commercializing a product? Anyone can do the former.
however neither is a system that places so much empathizes on profit
Where do you think the money comes from to develop wonder drugs? Deny the profit motive and you deny innovation. In a free economy, the pursuit of profits and serving the people are one in the same. You may as well come out and say that you believe it's their responsibility to the state to produce innovative drugs that save and improve our lives . What was the last life saving drug that came out of the Soviet Union? Do you even grasp why 90-percent of all new drugs are developed here?
that it becomes risk adverse.
Are you trying to assert that the industry is risk averse? Good grief, that's just ludicrous. From post #41:
To develop a new drug is time-consuming, expensive and risky. It takes 12-15 years on average [patent protection normally lasts just 17 years], costs about $500 million, and only one of every 5,000-10,000 new compounds discovered in the laboratory ever makes it to market as a new drug."
New Drugs for Cancer Could Soon Flood Market
Yeah, right. They're risk averse.
The Chinese understand the free market, globalization, and capitalism very well. Anyone who thinks China will not challenge us economically is seriously mistaken.
They may challenge us economically but their leadership doesn't understand the free-market or capitalism very well at all. One thing is for sure, it will be a long time before they have what it takes to create and commercialize new classes of drugs.
Well, yes I do. I have 20 years experience, some of it with pharmaceutical companies.
Deny the profit motive and you deny innovation.
DeVinci was a pretty innovative guy and yet profited little from his research. What drove him? Nicola Tessla was one of the greatest minds of the last century and responsible for many of the inventions and discoveries that make our life, as we know it today, possible. I doubt GE would be where it is without him. He died in poverty.
Where profit is the motivating force, mediocrity reigns. Without a passion for discovery that is separate from profit, there is no innovation.
But the profit motive has a role to play too. The innovators are motivated by passion, the venture capitalists, by profits and perhaps a will to do good in the world; each has their part to play. When passion, profits, and altruism exist in balance, the context exists for maximum innovation and development.
They [China] may challenge us economically but their leadership doesn't understand the free-market or capitalism very well at all. One thing is for sure, it will be a long time before they have what it takes to create and commercialize new classes of drugs.
As a boss I had years ago used to say, "hide and watch".
I heard a Chinese government official interviewed, and he understood capitalism and free markets VERY WELL. Well enough to lecture the interviewer, an American reporter specializing in economics, on the subject. Honestly, it was chilling.
Just because they don't buy the whole package doesn't mean they don't fully understand the concepts.
Not a drug, exactly, but a treatment with a bacteria specific virus called a phage.
From Wikipedia
Bacteriophages or "phage" are viruses that invade bacterial cells and, in the case of lytic phages, disrupt bacterial metabolism and cause the bacterium to lyse [destruct]. Phage Therapy is the therapeutic use of lytic bacteriophages to treat pathogenic bacterial infections. Phage therapy is an alternative to antibiotics, being developed for clinical use by many western research groups in Europe and the US. It has been extensively used and developed in the former Soviet Union.
The treatment is effective by using a phage virus to infect and kill specific bacteria whilst not interacting with the surrounding human tissue or other harmless bacteria. The virus replicates quickly so a single, small dose is usually sufficient.
Phages are currently being used therapeutically to treat bacterial infections that do not respond to conventional antibiotics.