[Glenn]

Why, exactly, do you insist on pushing these examples, wrongfully, into the the category of socialized medicine? Do you have an agenda?

Yes. I have an agenda. I have trouble letting a million people die because of patents.

At some future point, there may be an Iranian cure for some virus that is killing millions of Americans. Suppose their price was 1/2 trillion dollars and all of Montana for licensing rights. Would we pay it? Would we respect their patent?

Some replies to me have indicated that we can be selective about who to save based on their politics and policies. I disagree, is all. I think humanity has some common enemies that transcend both the law and money.

[Atlas Sneezed]

I have trouble letting a million people die because of patents.

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When you consider the, say, 10 million who are saved because of the motivational effect of patents on medical advances, I'd call the patent system a real life saver.

And if the Iranians want to advance medicine, and sell their results for what the market will bear, it would be a far better world. Let the free market bring freedom to the rest of the world.

[Congressman Billybob]

Invent whatever you choose. Give it to anyone you choose, on any terms you decide. In the meantime, reflect on the fact that roughly 90% of drugs that have lengthened the lives of millions of people around the world have been developed under our present, Franklin-inspired patents system.

Or, would you rather have those millions of lives depend on the cutting edge drugs that have been developed in the socialist and communist nations of the world? I hear they have developed penicillin just about now.

The best health is in the West, which has organized medical research on American lines. The worst health is in the rest of the world, where the research is organized on the lines you apparently prefer. Although you claim to be in favor of good health and long life, the geopolitical reality is that you favor the opposite, ill health and short life.

John / Billybob

[FreeKeys]

I have trouble letting a million people die because of patents.

Several million people are alive today BECAUSE of patents and the incentives they provided for high-risk investments into R&D, plus maybe tens of millions who they lived to give birth to. Just the threat of patent revocation can scare away the funds for so many research projects that maybe the one that would have saved your child's life will never come to be. I'd sooner trust the scientists and doctors than the politicians (who'd be the ones making any final revocation decisions) any day anyway.