this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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i'm with you in principal but why does your proposed solution rely so heavily on the US owning everything? Wouldn't putting it out into the world under some kind of Libre license be better? (Creative Commons Share-Alike for medicines.)
Bill Gates is such a fucking menace.
I am not sure if we are talking about the same thing but I recall people in Oxford were seriously contemplating publishing their COVID vaccine info freely but Bill Gates flew his ass to England and had a private meeting with the guy in charge. Told him that brown people can't be trusted to do manufacturing properly and it was a recipe for disaster letting them make half-assed products. Idk if that was really compelling to the guy or maybe also waved around prospects of future funding or whatever. But whatever it worked.
Uh, I think I got off on the US because I live in this shithole. Obviously any vaccines developed outside the US shouldn't belong to the US at all. My main concern with patents and stuff would be US corporations doing what they did they to the insulin patent. It was never intended to be profitable, and yet it is.
It's all just tinkering stuff ultimately because I would like to see private pharma totally gone and only be publicly funded and then internationally shared for the betterment of all human existence.
What about those developed in the US?
Well first of all insulin was developed in Canada. But I was actually thinking of it in suggesting something akin to Share-Alike. Which I didn't really explain but it is a feature of certain Creative Commons licenses e.g. CC BY-SA:
Now obviously this is intended for artistic works. Even applying it to source code is highly discouraged. But I do find it useful to contemplate the ideas. CC are attempts to make libre culture integrate in capitalism and as such are doomed to certain limitations. So depending if you are thinking reformist or revolutionary, will go in different directions. Under communism we wouldn't have patents. We would have inspections, regulations etc but patents... don't think so.
My concept is that some sort of SA written with pharmaceuticals and medical devices in mind, could have, time travel-wise led in a different direction.
I am totally unclear in my limited research about whether/how a patent from 100 years ago is in force or relevant today.
In any case, nobody uses that insulin, everybody uses modern insulins and what really costs is the delivery devices (needles). What we need (under capitalism) is a mechanism to extend the good vibes "virally" to related innovations. Whatever they may be.
background re insulin
The discovery of insulin revisited: lessons for the modern era