August 11, 2015
Those of you who were wondering about the best way to finance drug research need look no further, the Washington Post has the answer: It’s government-granted patent monopolies. They told us in an editorial today:
“The profit-driven system in this country has its inefficiencies, including high marketing costs and the like; but on balance it has served the United States, and the world, well, by promoting more innovation than a state-dominated system of research probably would have.”
It would have been useful if the Post had given some hint as to what evidence it might be relying on to make this assertion. The claim doesn’t start well with the phrase “profit-driven,” since there is no reason that alternative funding mechanisms might not also be profit-driven. For example, military contractors are profit-driven, last time I checked. These alternative systems also would not create the same sort of perverse incentives that are likely to lead to enormous waste and bad medicine.
But hey, since we got the word from the Post, there is no reason to look further. (I suppose it is rude to mention that the Post gets lots of advertising revenue from drug companies.)
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