Instead of patents - a prize fund

    American economist Joseph Stiglitz received the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001 for his theoretical research on “analyzing markets with asymmetric information,” that is, markets where some participants have more information than others. Professor at Columbia University, Ph.D., he is also known as a critic of liberal reforms in Russia .

    However, Stiglitz’s latest thoughts are not related to Russia, but concern the global patent system. The professor took pharmaceutical patents as an example. In his article , Scrooge and Intellectual Property Rights, he shows with concrete examples how corporate greed is causing harm to humanity.

    We all remember the hero of the children's cartoon Scrooge McDuck, the main feature of which was greed. Imagine that Scrooge would have a monopoly on the manufacture of a medicine that could be sold exclusively to sick people. It is terrible to imagine, but this is the state of things in the modern pharmaceutical industry.

    In the field of intellectual property for medicines, the situation with patents is becoming crystal clear because it immediately shows how the commercial interests of corporations lead to deaths.

    We tolerate the patent system only because the benefit of it, it seems to us, exceeds the harm. Like, it stimulates innovation, so that ultimately contributes to progress. But let's see how innovation is driven by the fact that the American corporationpatented the healing properties of turmeric , although this plant has been healing people for hundreds of years. Now, poor people in the same India will begin to pay an American firm for medicines.

    The World Trade Association is increasing its influence and spreading the American style of the patent system to all countries of the world, so that they all begin to pay the main copyright holder - America.

    Pharmaceutical giants receive billions of dollars in royalties. For example, an annual set of drugs for treating AIDS could cost about $ 130, while brand-name, patented versions of these drugs cost about $ 10,000. Millions of patients who live for $ 2-3 per day cannot afford to spend $ 10,000 on drugs.

    Another example. The international non-profit project of decoding the human genome completed its task on time, but still there were several corporations that decrypted individual parts of the genome a little faster than scientists. They immediately patented gene drugs, including cancer. Naturally, the cost of these drugs will be high. Not all patients will be able to afford to buy them. Yes, mankind received the medicine several months earlier, but the harm from this is much more than the benefit.

    A medical prize pool would be a great alternative to the patent system, says Stiglitz. This fund can pay large rewards for inventing important medicines that millions of people need, as well as small rewards for simpler medicines.

    Contributions to the prize fund can be paid by governments of developed countries, as well as charitable organizations. They are already spending huge amounts of money to help the third world. A medical foundation would make this help more effective.

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