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What are the ethical ramifications of not funding?
| #1 :: August 8th, 2011 @ 9:40 PM | |
 PoindextraNewbie   7 Posts 53 Achievements  
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The University of Alberta may have discovered a cure for cancer.
http://www.dca.med.ualberta.ca/Home/Updates/2007-03-15_Update.cfm [However, as DCA is not patented, Michelakis is concerned that it may be difficult to find funding from private investors to test DCA in clinical trials. He is grateful for the support he has already received from publicly funded agencies, such as the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), and he is hopeful such support will continue and allow him to conduct clinical trials of DCA on cancer patients.] The lack of a patent likely means that private investors cannot profit from the sale and use of this therapeutic method, which may end up saving patients. Chemotherapy drugs and procedures, as well as related surgeries, cost tens of thousands of dollars. That's 5 or more digits of medical treatment, which occasionally won't be covered by insurance companies. The question I pose is this; without the interest in a pharmaceutical profit, what other possible reason would there be for refusing to fund a cure for cancer? A disease that kills millions of people each year... Thoughts? 
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| #2 :: August 8th, 2011 @ 10:18 PM | |
 FaruzahThe Gourmand   5,725 Posts 836 Achievements |
@Poindextra
Quote:
Well sure there is a profit, marginal but present. More people living longer not spending everything on chemo still get sick. Still need antihistamines and headache pills and the list goes on. Living people equal profit, dead people equal an unreachable target consumer. I don't quite get the point of the debate though.
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| #3 :: August 8th, 2011 @ 10:42 PM | |
| Poindextra Newbie 7 Posts 53 Achievements |
There was talk of pharmaceutical companies being uninterested in this type of medicine because of the short-term nature of the treatment as compared to the profits gained from expensive and longer-term common chemotherapy treatments.
Where should the line be drawn when putting money before people?
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| #4 :: August 8th, 2011 @ 10:58 PM | |
| Faruzah The Gourmand 5,725 Posts 836 Achievements |
@Poindextra
In the end a company is a company, and no one can stay in business if they throw money at something that has no return for them. The company can't provide what they do if they bankrupt themselves on chances. I believe in moral obligation to help my fellow man, but I don't see why private sector citizens can't donate money to see a cure for such a vicious disease.
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| #5 :: August 9th, 2011 @ 12:48 AM | |
| viticus Is the Pumpkin King!  1,418 Posts 258 Achievements |
 I make - currently closed - Personally I've read about this and I think it's crap. This is the same reason why the permanent, 100% effective - yet easily reversible - male birth control that has been developed is not available in the United States AT ALL. It is not and will not be available because pharmaceutical companies can't profit from a procedure done only once or twice per consumer. In this case, that means it's almost entirely a woman's responsibility to get birth control, even though it can be pretty difficult to get depending on your financial situation and where you live (and for a woman it's basically impossible to get voluntarily sterilized), and even though you kinda can't get pregnant without sperm. But because it's pricey and you have to get it every month... yeah. (Also then it's the woman's fault for being irresponsible or a person of questionable reputation if she does get pregnant, go figure) But I also am not a fan of capitalism at all and that's the system that makes this possible. Idk. I could talk more about it but I'm too sleepy to make a real argument right now so idk why I'm in the debate forum but whatever.
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| #6 :: August 9th, 2011 @ 1:06 AM | |
| Poindextra Newbie 7 Posts 53 Achievements |
I was actually brutally offended by an insurance company here that refused to cover prescription birth control.
It's a ridiculous double-standard that requires shame and condescension for women who either a) get pregnant because they couldn't afford birth control or b) ask for coverage and get denied for whatever reason. And I'm sorry, thinking that covering birth control is 'encouraging people to have sex' is just bollocks. Sure, people may do that more often now that BC is less expensive, but I'd rather they be safe about it. Sigh. Capitalism makes me sad. Especially when it interferes with the health of other people.
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| #7 :: August 9th, 2011 @ 10:19 AM | |
| temporaryplaceholder is a DANCING QUEEN  1,614 Posts 329 Achievements |
 @viticus, @Poindextra, Capitalism is the system which best eradicates this problem. It disappoints me that society somehow thinks otherwise so consistently, with the majority of the developed world socialising/subsidising medicine. You see, the thing about this- and similar non-medical issues, for example: planned obsolescence... is that, if the product really WAS that beneficial, then there would be money in it and someone else would offer it. Yes, for "big pharma," selling 100000 bottles of expensive crap drug "x" is going to be better than selling 2 or 3 cheap wonderdrug "y." However, the free market which you so decry works just like the environment: energy sources don't just stick around. Where there is fruit, there are birds, where there is a corpse there is bacteria and where there is poop there are flies. There might not be a huge amount of money in selling once-off wonder cures, but if there is no competition, then at the very least, it is easy money. Someone will take up the opportunity. To imply that they wouldn't, that such things get "brought up and shelved" or "ignored" is non-sense. We all know Capitalism functions on greed. To imply that no-one is going to be after that easy cash, is to be telling me that investors are "not really that greedy afterall." I doubt it. And lets face the obvious reality: this is not the dark ages. It's not like wonder drugs and miracle cures are made by wizards and kept in the basement. In this day and age, we have the internet, and people are savy enough to be looking for alternatives, researching their health issues, and even accessing medical literature and searching for these avenues. Miracle cures really just aren't going to fly under the radar whilst pharmacies are raking in billions. There is ALWAYS something more going on with the story. For example, some of the things that put cures like this into the closet are strict regulatory agencies such as for example the FDA, which make such innovations in medicine impossible by banning them until approved, often after the death of many hundreds from the disease who couldn't hold out waiting, after millions have been scammed on lesser, sometimes more dangerous treatments, when really, the public are educated enough- and as I pointed out, have the resources- to be making their own decisions as to what is safe for their body. The male birth control medication mentioned for example, is not FDA approved- if it's the same one I'm thinking of. Capitalism is the system which will consistently deliver the best results in human health and any deviation from it should be avoided like the plague. If you feel that cost should not be a factor when it comes to health, you are wrong. Cost can NEVER be avoided, it is only passed on to someone else. When it is passed on to someone else, their share in the economy is reduced meaning more poor people, therefore worse health, therefore your solution is also the problem. As a metaphor; say I have a rare disease that cost $10 trillion to develop a cure, and about 2 people in the population have it. When you take that much money out of the economy, people lose jobs, you cause poverty and in turn less people are eating and more of them are dying. And for what? In this case, 2 people. Yes, a strange analogy and huge exaggeration... but the concept is relevant, valid and clear even when you take that a step down, a step further down, and a step right down to over-the-counter aspirin. Cost ALWAYS matters, and balancing it between a natural supply and demand is incredibly important. Capitalism does this better than any other system ever devised. Last Edit by:
temporaryplaceholder 8/09/11 - 10:21:33 am
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| #8 :: August 9th, 2011 @ 11:35 AM | |
| Poindextra Newbie 7 Posts 53 Achievements |
Fair point, but as a utilitarian in basic ideology I find capitalism and it's execution to be unfortunately disheartening. I see the divide between the lower classes and the upper classes going nowhere but farther away, which means that that initial investment, being big enough to break a willing person's bank depending on the amount of income they have, can cripple an investor. A lot of people are interested in the immediate return, which is the problem I see larger pharmaceutical companies using. You can buy brand-name antihistamines prescribed by a doctor, or you can get the generic un-named over the counter alternative at lower cost even with insurance co-pay.
This is at least how it works where I'm from, so I see pharmaceutical companies losing money when their name brand drugs are being used for decorating shelves in favour of a less expensive alternative. Why don't big pharma companies lower their prices to maintain competition? I also have to be curious about why a treatment that began its testing six years ago, with proven results, hasn't made much progress other than reaching more people via internet research (from my observation). The money that goes into advertising campaigns for pharmaceutical companies could be decreased by a minimal amount in order to maintain profit, while at the same time funding research. This hasn't happened, so while I understand your argument, I'm not really seeing how it's going to work. I'm open to examples though, 'cos I'd love to have a better, less severe view of Capitalism. Greed makes me sad.
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| #9 :: August 9th, 2011 @ 11:19 PM | |
| ravenlights Silly Spamming Sausage  308 Posts 77 Achievements |
@Faruzah your sig made me lol hard.
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| #10 :: August 10th, 2011 @ 2:50 AM | |
| viticus Is the Pumpkin King! 1,418 Posts 258 Achievements |
I make - currently closed - @temporaryplaceholder I get where you're coming from, but you're ignoring a lot of possibilities with this view. The biggest thing I took issue with was your claim that in the age of in the internet it would be impossible for a cure to be found without citizens finding out. Suppose these cures are found in a country that is heavily censored, such as North Korea? I don't know about you, but I certainly don't have access to North Korea's internet databases. I have no idea what they're doing over there. And I know that people like to think of America as this wonderful place where you can do whatever you please and nobody cares, but if someone had published a cure for a disorder without approval it would be easy enough to hunt them down and censor them if someone (company or government or private investor, whoever) really wanted to. Next, you ignored lobbying in your argument about the FDA approving things. Just because the FDA approves stuff doesn't mean it's actually good for you, it just means that someone paid them a lot of money to tell us that it is. Examples: processed meats (which the WCRF has claimed to be too dangerous for human consumption, and I certainly believe it), and aspartame (another carcinogen that was approved under extremely shady circumstances). The Surgeon General's warning about cigarettes didn't even arise until the 1960's when people had been smoking tobacco for centuries. And I have to disagree, your metaphor is completely irrelevant. We're talking about cancer, something that plagues MILLIONS of people, not two. To oversimplify it so drastically is "non-sense." Even if I indulge your idea that a cure would be profitable because it costs money, the goal of any profiteering business is to have returning customers - regardless of what they are buying. In this instance, the returning customers are people who go through chemotherapy and rounds of expensive pharmaceuticals that stave off the symptoms of cancers, and then relapse and are forced to go through all of it again. If you browse what people who have dealt with cancer have paid, there is a person on there claiming that one treatment cost $30,000. With the price of healthcare in the United States (without even the cost of insurance!) that doesn't surprise me and I don't see it as being out of the realm of possibility. A person who does chemotherapy might have to be treated weekly for months on end (after having surgery, which is a whole other cost to them). In order for a one-time cure to be profitable, it would have to cost more than $500,000 in one go. Realistically (to me), it would be in the millions.... which is still pennies to our pharmaceutical companies the way they run now. And even if that were the case, with each treatment, they would be eradicating the very thing that got their business started. What happens when those people no longer have cancer? They lose a customer. I suppose you could argue that people will always have cancer, but it would be happening at much lesser rate if we could eradicate it as fast as it appeared, which defies supply/demand - the very thing capitalism runs on. Why you keep saying this would be "cheap" alternative I don't know, maybe because I said it wouldn't be profitable, but that doesn't mean it would be cheap - especially not to make. Profit and price are not the same thing. A Pepsi is like a dollar and yet the company itself makes trillions. Why? Because people buy it again and again and again. Every day, with every meal, in every country, somebody is buying a Pepsi. If you spent $10 to buy a lifetime supply of Pepsi they wouldn't be making enough money to even produce that much for everyone.
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| #11 :: August 10th, 2011 @ 7:27 AM | |
| temporaryplaceholder is a DANCING QUEEN 1,614 Posts 329 Achievements |
Quote: This is at least how it works where I'm from, so I see pharmaceutical companies losing money when their name brand drugs are being used for decorating shelves in favour of a less expensive alternative. Why don't big pharma companies lower their prices to maintain competition? Because, not being a Capitalist society, we have subsidies. For this reason, most medicines do not HAVE competition. Pharmaceuticals companies set the price, and NHS, medicare, medicaid, mandatory health insurance, depending on your country, tends to pay... there is no need to increase efficacy and decrease cost when no one cares about how much their drugs cost. Where I live, we can get pills which cost into the tens of thousands to produce, generally don't work, and the government will pay for them. Why reduce costs? Why increase quality? Why would I, as a consumer, ever give a damn if my meds cost more money than I can even make? What is the incentive UNLESS there is Capitalism? Quote: I also have to be curious about why a treatment that began its testing six years ago, with proven results, hasn't made much progress other than reaching more people via internet research (from my observation). As I said, Federal Drug Administration turn around time for medication approval is significantly high. Quote: This hasn't happened, so while I understand your argument, I'm not really seeing how it's going to work. I'm open to examples though, 'cos I'd love to have a better, less severe view of Capitalism. Well, you have to understand that to give you an example of Capitalism at work in the medicine industry, I'd have to find somewhere actually giving it a try. That's incredibly hard. Every developed country has huge medicine subsidies and health care programs, inclusive of the US. Wal-Mart? Quote: I get where you're coming from, but you're ignoring a lot of possibilities with this view. The biggest thing I took issue with was your claim that in the age of in the internet it would be impossible for a cure to be found without citizens finding out. Well, your examples are beyond the scope of my argument, honestly. Of course, people say, trapped in caves... aren't going to be able to access public medical literature... and frankly, as far as I'm concerned, anyone who has the misfortune of being born on DPRK is for all intents and purposes, trapped in a cave. So yeah, maybe their cures aren't getting out... but at the same time, I'd be surprised to find they even have any. They can hardly afford cataract surgery as it is, so, I doubt they have the cure for AIDS out there. DPRK is about the worst country in the world to be looking for innovations in technology. As for censorship, this is impossible except with government intervention, which, is exactly what I am arguing against. Having said that, I see no evidence of medical censorship. Point me out a signigicant case? Quote: Next, you ignored lobbying in your argument about the FDA approving things. I absolutely agree with you here, but I don't see your point. For clarity, I think the FDA should be abolished. Problems with how flawed it is only emphasise my argument, ie, that there are other factors keeping medicines out of the market. Quote: And I have to disagree, your metaphor is completely irrelevant. We're talking about cancer, something that plagues MILLIONS of people, not two. To oversimplify it so drastically is "non-sense." I wasn't talking about cancer, and the issue is absolutely not over-simplified, it was just exaggerated for clarity. Your rebuttal is however, oversimplified. There is no cure for cancer, and the problem you are talking about has never arised. On the other hand, rare diseases with massive costs subsidised by government, do occur. However, as I said, the issue is the exact same from the expensive meds right down to aspirin. The point was that cost must always be balanced. Every time money is taken out of the system, that means someone else is worse off. When we are talking billions of dollars such as the medical industry is, this is significant. It means more people being put into lower income brackets which are where, feeding back into the loop here, people die sooner. I'm not trying to point it out as an equilibirum; it's not. But having said that, that fact is quite clear that more (non-voluntary) spending does not always result in greater health, and indeed due to the systemic effects of competition reduction and incentive manpulation, often has the opposite effect. Quote: In order for a one-time cure to be profitable, it would have to cost more than $500,000 in one go. Amusing that you would lecture me on profit and price after stating this absolute fallacy... and to use pepsi as an example... amazing. They're what, 50 cents profit a can? Surely it is absolutely untrue that a product requires a $500,000 sale price to be worthwhile. In no industry is this true, and the small demand for medicine does not cause significant means for it to be considered an exception.
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| #12 :: August 10th, 2011 @ 11:13 AM | |
| Poindextra Newbie 7 Posts 53 Achievements |
We don't operate on FDA standards in Canada, so that argument is invalid for me (I understand it, but it doesn't answer the question completely). Neither does our Provincially provided healthcare cover prescriptions unless you apply for a special coverage through the government because you could not get supplemental insurance. Therefore, as has been said before, -where I'm from- the big pharma companies inevitably lose money unless someone's willing to pay for a brand name. I still think capitalism in medicine is a dangerous road to go down, because capital and profit is treated with the same reverence if not more than human beings now. I'm sure that wasn't the intention, as was the case for communism, but that's how it has happened. Good points though, I learned something Last Edit by:
Poindextra 8/10/11 - 11:14:31 am
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| #13 :: August 26th, 2011 @ 10:42 PM | |
| shift Made a Living  585 Posts 209 Achievements |
Ah, @temporaryplaceholder, capitalist enthusiast #1. :p Glad to see ya.
Temporaryplaceholder, you seem to be saying: if there is a demand for the drug, someone will be able to sell it for a profit. Leave it to the market. Generally, this is true. However, the drug can't be sold yet. It needs a lot of R&D before it can be marketed. R&D is going to cost certain individuals a lot of money, but the results of the R&D will be available for everyone to use. The chemical structure of DCA is publicly known, so any company will be able to make it and sell it - unless the drug is patented. Investors, understandably, don't want to shell out for something they can't later make a profit on. The capitalist solution, it seems, would be to patent the drug and let the individuals who invested in R&D make above-normal profits when the drug is sold on the market. (Patents are backed by the government, by the way. You can't have a free market without the government doing something.) But! Then the drug would be priced to yield monopoly profits, and not everyone would be able to afford it. Some people would die of cancer when, theoretically, they might have lived. There's the ethical dilemma. I think there's a clear role for the Canadian government to step in and fund this thing.
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| #14 :: August 27th, 2011 @ 2:49 AM | |
| temporaryplaceholder is a DANCING QUEEN 1,614 Posts 329 Achievements |
Quote By @shift: if there is a demand for the drug, someone will be able to sell it for a profit No, I will clarify. I am saying that if there is a demand for a drug which is reasonable to produce then someone will be able to step in and profit. Obviously, if R&D costs are excessive and the net profit is negative, I agree, that is a no! The problem is what you are implying, and indeed, anyone who advocates collectivised funding to circumvent this fact, is that once the government steps in suddenly that cost is not an issue! Life is not so black and white. More medicine does not automatically mean a better society... when to fund that medicine, people are put into poverty. Every dollar taken to fund whatever butthead down the street has pinworms itching it, makes him better off, yes, but by the exact same token every dollar taken from your food budget for that pinworm medication means YOU are worse off. The most important thing within an economic discussion such as this is balance. The free market always optimises for the greatest balance. When the government steps in, it is always askew. Would you like some more realistic examples? Again, I stress that right down do aspirin and pinworm meds, this issue is all the same, but none-the-less, if it makes my standpoint clearer. I work in public health myself, and I see this every day. It's so morally outrageous, if I didn't have such a love for science, I would have left months ago. On any given day I can see a test come in for say, duchenne muscular dystrophy, spinal muscular atrophy, Huntington's disease, familial amyloidosis... most all of these tests are death sentences. You get it: you die. There isn't a treatment for DMD. Kids diagnosed with SMA will likely die before age 10. Huntington's, you're dead. Amyloid, you're dead. The tests do help to counsel parents in having future children, and to understand and accept their condition... so the government pays for the tests. The wonder of socialised medicine means everyone gets the tests they need. Now lets put that into a more rational, free market perspective. These genetic tests can cost anywhere from $500 to $2000. That is not even including the generous donations we get from the community of their free will- which I bring up because it is an important consideration. In the free market, lets not ignore the huge contribution of charity. The 19th century of "greedy capitalism" within America is the time of the greatest public compassion through charity. The time when organisations such as the American Red Cross came to life. So adding on that cost, lets say $2000 to diagnose a disease for which there is neither treatment nor cure anyway. This is just ONE test. Not even a medical procedure, which cost lots more. You say the ethical dilema is people dying when they could "theoretically" be saved. I say the ethical dilema is people getting free access to this waste, no guarantee of cure or efficacy (indeed, genetic tests have plenty of room for false positives), when people are dying of starvation with their guaranteed cure going to waste. Put it into perspective. $2000 could feed a starving family for a few months. Your "ethical issue" is just to view things as black and white. It is to believe that "more medicine = better society!" It is not true. Medicine has a cost, and a cost impacts on people's lives in equal magnitude as does disease. Everything must be balanced. Time and time again, only the free market has proven the most suitable balance. Now, patents on the other hand are an issue I honestly don't have time to go into, but I just wanted to at least dispell one myth. Patents are not so clear cut. Many free market thinkers are against patents. I personally am not, but they are very much a grey issue and your belief that they MUST be enforced by the government is nothing but fallacy. To name a prominent free market economist/philosopher who strongly disagrees with patents: Ludwig von Mises. Another issue, is that no, the government funding does not necessarily (and seldom ever) disposes of the patent issue. Governments still patent their own discoveries, or, alternatively, monopolise and restrict competition. Just because something is publicly funded, does not mean it is publicly owned. For example, regulatory bodies limit the production of drugs only to that which is approved. Due to government lobbying, as mentioned earlier, this process is inherently unavoidable with the government in charge. If your concern is monopoly as a result of government market intervention, maybe you're looking at it the exact wrong way. Socialised medicine is the way to ENSURE monopoly and eliminate competition. Last Edit by:
temporaryplaceholder 8/27/11 - 2:53:13 am
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| #15 :: August 27th, 2011 @ 3:06 AM | |
| shift Made a Living 585 Posts 209 Achievements |
@temporaryplaceholder Quote: The problem is what you are implying, and indeed, anyone who advocates collectivised funding to circumvent this fact, is that once the government steps in suddenly that cost is not an issue! Life is not so black and white. I never meant to imply that this is a black and white issue, or that more medicine is always better! Curing cancer means diverting funds from some other social issue, and if you think that issue is more important, that's a perfectly valid viewpoint. I'm perfectly indifferent to your personal stance on cancer. I'm more interested in how we, as a society, decide which issues are most important. You mention starving families. If anyone is starving to death in America, I think this is a travesty. All government-funded genetic testing should be halted at once and the funds used to buy food for the starving. Quote: The free market always optimises for the greatest balance. When the government steps in, it is always askew. I don't think that's true. All of my economics classes talked about market failure, situations in which the market fails to provide the most efficient solution. What about public goods? Or externalities? There's no such thing as a free market without government intervention at some level. At the most basic level, the government is upholding property rights. Without property rights, there can be no exchange of goods & services, and therefore, no market. Patents are another way that the government intervenes in the market. I don't understand what solution you're suggesting. What we have here (theoretically) is a potentially miraculous cancer-curing drug that is underfunded because it isn't patented. What do you propose we do about it? Quote: ...and your belief that they MUST be enforced by the government is nothing but fallacy. Alrighty, how else can you enforce a patent? Last Edit by:
shift 8/27/11 - 3:14:56 am
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| #16 :: August 27th, 2011 @ 3:13 AM | |
| Nightingale Gets Around  4,385 Posts 468 Achievements |
@Poindextra Pharmaceutical companies do not lose any money over brand name or not. They likely make more money on no name brands than they do brand names because no name brands are more commonly put out. Just because prescriptions are paid for by the health care plans doesn't mean they don't get compensated, it just does not work that way. No pharm company would put pills out without being paid. I regularly take narcotic pain relievers for my problems and I have never seen a brand name percocet in the past five years. If I wanted to request it I could, but since I'm not picky I don't. Pharmacies rarely ever give out brand names unless there is no alternative option, or they are told to. Now my birth control is brand name, but they don't make an alternative. Most companies that supply drugs make no name brands for everything they make unless it is specialty and they just haven't yet. Most drugs that aren't no name usually come along sooner or later because they want to keep their market. No name brands are produced by the same companies. Percocet brand name is produced by the company that produces percocet no name. They lose out on nothing. They are constantly raking in the dough. They sell way more no name brand name because most doctors don't write out prescriptions with brand specifics, and most pharmacists push no name. Why do you think they would lose out on money? Nothing is free, everything is compensated. Health care compensates everything to the rightful companies. The only time they lose money is when their product is not needed and therefore not bought. I'm in Canada too and I have no idea why you think this way. Is there a reason? I'm not trying to be snarky I'm just genuinely confused as to why you believe companies would lose money on no name branding and what health coverage has to do with anything.
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| #17 :: August 27th, 2011 @ 3:50 AM | |
| temporaryplaceholder is a DANCING QUEEN 1,614 Posts 329 Achievements |
Quote By @shift: You mention starving families. If anyone is starving to death in America, I think this is a travesty. All government-funded genetic testing should be halted at once and the funds used to buy food for the starving. Perhaps not to death in America, but certainly to a lesser lifespan than is otherwise achievable. This does not just apply to food. In almost every aspect of life, the poor are worse off. They are more likely to have older, less safe cars, with old tire treads and such, in turn more likely to be in accidents. They are more likely to work longer hours contributing to stress related illness. Even those who can afford food, are more likely to eat poorly and exercise less than the affluent. Again you are latching on to the idea that: if there is a benefit, fund it! I am not advocating at all that genetic testing should be halted for starving families. Indeed, that would not happen in a free market. What I am advocating for is the balance of natural supply/demand, which has built in incentives for products whereby the good outweighs the bad to be invested in and purchased, and where the bad outweighs the good, to be ignored. Without any intervention at all, we have this simple process sorting out the most effective solutions for us as individuals. When the government steps in, sometimes it hits things on the nail, but more often than not, it is a battle between soft-hearted liberals with no sense of economics, and special interest lobbyists at war with each other, and the loser is the consumer. It is to askew that natural incentive balance and provide a situation of lesser benefit to society overall. Quote: I don't think that's true. All of my economics classes talked about market failure, situations in which the market fails to provide the most efficient solution. What about public goods? Or externalities? The free market has never failed. Care to give an example? Now, I absolutely believe the government is a necessity in upholding property rights, and to a lesser extent patents, so in answering your following question I am only stating the alternative for argument's sake, it is not my personal belief. Quote: Alrighty, how else can you enforce a patent? One option: you just don't enforce it. To take a clear example, music. Yes, there are copyrights, but we all know they are VERY poorly enforced. Every second kid I know has hundreds of dollars worth of downloaded music sitting on their iPod. For the sake of our argument, intellectual property enforcement can be practically ignored. So lets look at it then: for over 30 years the music industry has been claiming that copying tapes will kill music. 10 years later, copying CDs will kill music. 10 years later, P2P filesharing will kill music. 10 years later, youtube will kill music. It has never happened. The music industry is still a multi-million if not billion dollar arrangement. Apple is currently making quite a killing with iTunes, for example, and youtube has signed deals with multiple music industries. Many free market economists believe that most industries will benefit from similar processes when left to their own devices. Again, whilst I DO believe in patents, at the same time, it is still quite easy to acknowledge that it is not true that an industry will not survive without them. In medicine, "generic" meds seem to be avoided like the plague. Most consumers purchase from a company they trust because of publicly available information on their efficacy studies and quality control checks, which are not related to the simple act of a patent. Furthermore, there are still many ways to a product in company hands without the government cracking down. Just because a "potentially miraculous cancer-curing drug" may be on the market does not mean it's means of production are public knowledge- they can still be kept an industry secret. There are many products within the medical industry (particularly within testing, not so much drugs) for which the chemical structure is not known- and if it is known, the means of making it are not. Furthermore, it does not mean that this drug is even made available for someone else to research and copy. Restricted sale, only to cancer sufferers? There are just so many ways. Again, I do support patents and copyright, but the reality is that they are not the be-all-end-all of profitable products.
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| #18 :: August 27th, 2011 @ 2:39 PM | |
| shift Made a Living 585 Posts 209 Achievements |
Quote: The free market has never failed. Care to give an example? Market failure on Wikipedia. Specific examples: public goods and externalities. A public good is a good that is non-rivalrous (not used up when others use it) and non-excludable (you can't easily keep people from using it). Examples of public goods: national defense, clean air, the police force. The textbook solution to public goods is for the government to provide it. Externalities occur when a transaction between two parties has an effect (positive or negative) on a third party. Examples of negative externalities: pollution, overfishing. The textbook solution to externalities is to tax/subsidize the businesses that create them to decrease/increase supply until marginal social benefit equals marginal social cost. Quote: Apple is currently making quite a killing with iTunes, for example, and youtube has signed deals with multiple music industries. I would argue that the music industry is far from unregulated. Filesharing is still illegal. But the downloaders aren't the ones being sued. The distributors are. See Kazaa and Napster, for example. The moment a filesharing program becomes large enough, the lawyers pounce. Further evidence that filesharing is being discouraged is the fact that iTunes exists at all. Who would pay 99 cents for a song when they could download it for free? Quote: In medicine, "generic" meds seem to be avoided like the plague. Most consumers purchase from a company they trust because of publicly available information on their efficacy studies and quality control checks, which are not related to the simple act of a patent. That's not true. I buy generic meds all the time. I trust the pharmacy that provides them to guarantee efficacy. It's true that brand-name meds make profits, but generic meds also make profits - through volume rather than mark-ups. Quote: Just because a "potentially miraculous cancer-curing drug" may be on the market does not mean it's means of production are public knowledge- they can still be kept an industry secret. That's very true. In this scenario, though, DCA's chemical makeup is public knowledge. Anyone can manufacture the drug. Quote: Furthermore, it does not mean that this drug is even made available for someone else to research and copy. Restricted sale, only to cancer sufferers? I don't understand. Naturally you'd only sell a cure for cancer to people with cancer. I don't think that changes much. Made available for someone else to research? Typically, after R&D has been funded by investors, no more research is necessary. So what is your solution to the problem? DCA is underfunded, unpatented, potentially miraculous. What should we do? Last Edit by:
shift 8/27/11 - 2:40:38 pm
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| #19 :: August 28th, 2011 @ 6:08 AM | |
| temporaryplaceholder is a DANCING QUEEN 1,614 Posts 329 Achievements |
Quote: Examples of public goods: national defense, clean air, the police force. The textbook solution to public goods is for the government to provide it. Allow me to re-word my question, sorry. An example that is either unique to, or manifested more severely in the free market. There are market failures such as unavoidable third party effects, yes, but theses occur whether the company down the road polluting the air is owned by Fatcat A, Government B or Public C. What I am asking, what are the distinguishing failures? There are none. To take your example, defence, is unusual, as I believe it is a necessity to socialise that. This might sound contradictory to my prior claims, but there is no such thing as a free market without defence. My reasoning is that since one cannot have freedom if they are under attack, therefore defence (both national and civil) is a necessary exception. Otherwise, instead of Capitalism where people trade voluntarily, we have anarchy, where people trade at gunpoint; an unfree market. Externalities such as air quality/pollution/etc on the other hand are different. The free market is made up of voluntary interactions. Should the air one one person's property be damaged by the actions on another, that is not a voluntary arrangement, that is force. Force is by definition a non-free interaction. It should therefore be eradicated and punished, by the civil defence force which I have stated above is necessary. If these issues are not eradicated, it is not a market failure of Capitalism, it is a failure of civil defence to restrict non-voluntary interaction. Under my revised question, ie, "An example that is either unique to, or manifested more severely in the free market" this issue becomes moot. If it occurs to any reasonably considerable extent, then the market is not free and the situation is irrelevant. Quote: I would argue that the music industry is far from unregulated. Filesharing is still illegal. But the downloaders aren't the ones being sued. The distributors are. See Kazaa and Napster, for example. To an extent that has had any effect on the average consumer? Nope. Furthermore, Kazaa, Napster, Limewire, ThePirateBay, many others who have received lawsuits from the RIAA, etc, either were, or are, not distributors, they are P2P software developers. Their lawsuits are the equivalent of locking up someone who gave a murderer directions to the victims house, instead of the murderer themselves. It is non-nonsensical, and of course has lead to nil results; as I stated, pretty much every second teenager has an iPod full of hundreds of dollars worth of pirated music. The effect on the average consumer, is negligible. Quote: Who would pay 99 cents for a song when they could download it for free? Do you actually believe this is the result of intellectual property enforcement? It's a result of human nature. Quote: I don't understand. Naturally you'd only sell a cure for cancer to people with cancer. I don't think that changes much. Made available for someone else to research? Typically, after R&D has been funded by investors, no more research is necessary. No. In an unregulated market typically you sell to whoever asks. The research I am referring to is not primary "R&D" research but reverse-engineering for the purpose of copyright infringement. Measures against this include restricted sales. To go back to the music industry as an analogy, digital restrictions management (DRM.) Quote: DCA is underfunded, unpatented, potentially miraculous. What should we do? DCA as a chemical compound may not have patents, per-se, but it can/does have patents on the processes with which it is used as a treatment, or patents on some methods of synthesis. To emphasise this, yes, "anyone can manufacture the drug," but there are more ways to skin a cat! Patents allow more efficient methods to be capitalised on. Furthermore it has strong regulation of sale as a drug- as all drugs do, regardless of chemical compound. What should we do? Abolishing drug regulatory agencies which restrict it's sale, ie, allow market competition. There is a huge demand for this compound. If such a simple act was performed, trials would begin almost immediately.
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| #20 :: August 28th, 2011 @ 10:36 PM | |
| Poindextra Newbie 7 Posts 53 Achievements |
@Lacie - It's very dependent on the province you're in, in terms of medical companies and what's provided via the social insurance. I wasn't aware that pharmaceutical companies produced generics as well as the 'brand names' so for that I thank you. I guess the question that comes to mind now is why the heck do they MAKE brand name ones which end up being more expensive? lol Though I disagree on the 'no other option' point. I've had a name brand drug prescribed to me a couple times only to hear the pharmacist say 'Hey, want the less expensive option?' It does happen sometimes, to be sure. Thanks for clearing that up for me. Last Edit by:
Poindextra 8/28/11 - 10:37:24 pm
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| #21 :: August 29th, 2011 @ 1:28 AM | |
| Nightingale Gets Around 4,385 Posts 468 Achievements |
@Poindextra They definitely do. Brand names are put out because they are the initial drug created. Companies then formulate generics after. Some brand name pills are just slightly different formulations as far as strength. 7.5 will be brand name but 5 will be generic. Sometimes it is a slight variation in the way the mix of ingredients is done. Brand names often are the stronger drug, but the strength differences are usually so minimal generic is a worthwhile replacement. As for your experience... A good pharmacist SHOULD and will do that. Pharmacists know more about prescriptions than doctors most of the time. Doctors have big books, and some use electronic listings for anything they don't know in their off hand memory. But it is the pharmacist who can and will say otherwise at the pharmacy. There are indeed drugs out there with no other option at this second. I have birth control that has no other option. There is no generic, period. But yes of course it happens. It should and it does all the time. I've had that happen before as well. Still there are indeed medications out there that don't have generic versions, yet. As for what's provided via the social insurance, yes. But companies are still reimbursed if insurance covers it. They never lose out on cash. I mentioned that above because I didn't understand what train of thought worked there that the companies would lose money in that way.
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| #22 :: August 29th, 2011 @ 8:30 PM | |
| Poindextra Newbie 7 Posts 53 Achievements |
@Lacie yeah, that was me not quite understanding. Thanks again
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| #23 :: August 30th, 2011 @ 7:30 PM | |
| shift Made a Living 585 Posts 209 Achievements |
@temporaryplaceholder Heh. That's a very original take on the subject of market failure. Quote: If it occurs to any reasonably considerable extent, then the market is not free and the situation is irrelevant. You've just redefined the free market so that it cannot ever exhibit externalities. Which is fine. You can do that. But how you do set up the market so that externalities never occur? You've mentioned the civil defense force. The civil defense force will run around and correct the externalities so that the market is a free market. Okay. Isn't that government intervention? Quote: Do you actually believe this is the result of intellectual property enforcement? It's a result of human nature. What part of human nature leads people to pay 99 cents per song instead of pirating music? Aaaanyway, this part of the discussion is just you distracting me.  What I asked you was not 'how do you protect profits without patents' but 'how do you protect patents without the government's help'.Quote: DCA as a chemical compound may not have patents, per-se, but it can/does have patents on the processes with which it is used as a treatment, or patents on some methods of synthesis. Where did you get that information? About the patents? I was under the impression that there were no patents on DCA, period. Quote: There is a huge demand for this compound. If such a simple act was performed, trials would begin almost immediately. Again, I don't understand how it could be profitable to begin trials. R&D is very expensive. R&D is necessary before the drug can be sold. R&D is paid for by individuals. However, once R&D has been done, anyone can manufacture and sell the drug. (Unless I'm wrong and some part of the process is patented?) The costs of R&D are private, the benefits of R&D are social. Why would anyone pay for R&D when they can sit back and wait for someone else to do it, then reap the benefits later? Last Edit by:
shift 8/30/11 - 7:31:43 pm
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| #24 :: August 31st, 2011 @ 6:21 AM | |
| temporaryplaceholder is a DANCING QUEEN 1,614 Posts 329 Achievements |
Quote: You've just redefined the free market so that it cannot ever exhibit externalities. {...} Isn't that government intervention? I wouldn't say redefined so much as better defined. If externalities occur, then how can it be considered "free" to the third parties who have no say? That's just a contradiction in terms. A free market, where some parties are unfree? Nope. I'm certainly not going to pretend I advocate that. If government intervention is required to enforce freedom, then so be it. The alternative is anarchy, and that never works out nicely; ask Somalia. I'm not an anarchist. I believe the role of government is to enforce individual rights, and thereby to interfere with our lives only so far as to... stop others interfering? Does my stance make more sense now? It should essentially just be a neutralising force. Quote: Where did you get that information? About the patents? I was under the impression that there were no patents on DCA, period. Here, http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/Health/20070120/DCA_feature_070121/ There are indeed no patents on DCA, period. The patent- before sponsopship was withdrawn- was filed was for it's use as cancer treatment. ie, not "DCA" but "cancer treatment using DCA; method this, dosage that" or whatever. These details can be patented. The compound itself, no. Also manufacture can be patented. As an analogy, it's like saying that one cannot patent gold, but they can patent a machine that makes gold. Does this make sense? Anyone could then create their own machine to make gold, but we inherently have competition there. Even though the product is "unpatentable," someone who can make 10kgs a day is certainly still going to be able to profit over someone who can make 5. The same process applies to drugs- aspirin is in the public domain as far as I'm aware, but that doesn't stop it being a multi-million dollar product. Why should DCA be any different? Quote: The costs of R&D are private, the benefits of R&D are social. The benefits are private as well. "Society" doesn't take your drugs. "Society" doesn't benefit every time you eat a burger, use toilet paper, and watch tv. The individual in question benefits. Quote: Why would anyone pay for R&D when they can sit back and wait for someone else to do it, then reap the benefits later? How do you propose they do that? There is more to a cancer treatment than just getting the green light: it is a intensely complicated process requiring methodology, drug synthesis purification, staff training, etc- all of which are not necessarily in the public domain even if DCA is. Mostly I'm just confused as to why you presume the medical industry is so incompetent. Everyone knows that developing the electric light bulb, the computer, the iPhone, Pasteurisation, skyscraper buildings, insurance company startup, filming a movie, rah rah rah- takes lots of "R&D" or whatever you want to call it, and an entrepreneurial investor willing to take a gamble. We all know that a lot of these products might look to investors as unpromising money sinks, and many of them struggle to get off the ground for many years. And yet, what do you know, if the product is sound and demand is good, it bounces back. It is unheard of to hear of genuinely amazing moneymaking inventions flying under the radar. We need to let the investors make their own decisions as the reality is, some products aren't good. Some companies will fail, and some products really are just unhelpful money sinks. Forcing investment is just silly: it's seldom necessary, and when the project fails, it's those you stole from who pay the cost. Somehow medicine is an exception? Any issue such as unproven efficacy, unknown side-effects, unwilling market, and unprofitable product are to be brushed aside for the government to kick us off in the right track. And when the product fails, it's the government there to bail us out and save us from "ourselves;" as though we had a say. What, fundamentally, makes medicine any different to any other industry?
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| #25 :: August 31st, 2011 @ 5:42 PM | |
| shift Made a Living 585 Posts 209 Achievements |
Quote:
Does my stance make more sense now? It should essentially just be a neutralising force. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for explaining your point of view so patiently! I think a lot of government intervention in the market is meant to do that. Whether it works is another question. Quote: The benefits are private as well. "Society" doesn't take your drugs. "Society" doesn't benefit every time you eat a burger, use toilet paper, and watch tv. The individual in question benefits. I think I'm not being clear about what I mean by "benefits." In my opinion, the benefits of R&D are knowledge that the drug does what it should without killing people. This knowledge becomes public knowledge. You can't hide that information. So everybody benefits by having the opportunity to manufacture and sell the drug, if they wanted to. It's a good question about patenting the manufacturing process and whether they could do that. Quote: What, fundamentally, makes medicine any different to any other industry? Ah, brings me back to economics class. Textbook answer: the pharmaceutical industry is distinguished by its business model. Before it can sell a product, it needs to incur the upfront costs of R&D. Furthermore, there's a lot of uncertainty involved. They might pay billions for research and discover that the drug is useless. That's why many new drugs are patented for a limited time. In effect, the company gets monopoly power until the patent expires, and makes super-normal profits to recoup the costs of R&D. When the patent expires, other brands are able to compete with the first brand, and the price of the medicine drops.
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