I had a question about Medical research in general, Cancer research in particular. Let's say tomorrow a Cure for cancer is found tomorrow. It is made from A,B, and C. Substances that cost relatively cheap but have to be formulated in a special way. QUESTION: since so much public funding and charity funding goes into it. . . is that fomula Public Domain? or does some company get to patent it and make huge profits off it? Rocket River
I assume you mean something like a bit of an apple peel, the shell of a walnut and a pinch of salt. If so, some lab will have spent countless hours to discover the formula, gone through countless hours to make sure it is right, go through countless hours to test and end up with a patent and countless billions of dollars. Of course, toycen will probably tell you there is already a cure for cancer but since it is such a high profit disease, the government is holding back the cure.
As far as I understand it, the money that is given to corporation through public funding such as grants or through charity funds is essentially given with "not strings attached". So the company who formulates the drug would be able to patent it and get profit off of it. I think there is a case to made that in return for the public funding, the company receiving the money should give some shares of the company to the government so that the government is able to get back some of it investment.
I learned about this From what I know, if this is supposed to be formulated into a compounded drug, it has to go through a few phases of pre-clinical and clinical trials before its even allowed to go on sale. So in order do these testing, it requires hundreads of millions of dollars and anywhere from 3-15 years of experimenting to make sure its efficacy and safeness. So a company like Pfizer has to I guess first be able to make a compound that first goes through all the trials. I believe the first do so gets a 5+ year patent.
I had a question about Medical research in general, Cancer research in particular. Let's say tomorrow a Cure for cancer is found tomorrow. It is made from A, B, and C. Substances that cost relatively cheap but have to be formulated in a special way. QUESTION: since so much public funding and charity funding goes into it. . . is that fomula Public Domain? or does some company get to patent it and make huge profits off it?
I understand the process somewhat my point is . . .since the public and charity money is going into those hundreds of millions . . . How much of it is given back to the public. If I give you 20$ to make a product .. then you sell it to me for a 100$ you getting paid on both sides. . . . . doesn't seem right Rocket River
I don't think the public has ever donated 500million dollars for one single "anti-cancer" formulation.
It happens all the time. People give millions of dollars to fight heart disease. Great strides have been made, but it still costs you for medicine and treatment. When I stay in a hotel in Houston, I am paying for the stadiums, but I don't get a free or discounted ticket.
