Motsoaledi: Big pharma's 'satanic' plot is genocide

[Arthur]

Ah, yes. We need to support Small Pharma and restore it to the prestige it once enjoyed before Big Pharma ruined the world.

There once was a time when each community, no matter how remote, had its own healthcare system, staffed by specialists expertly trained in natural and holistic therapies.

Small Pharma Health Practitioners treat physical ailments and diseases with naturally-derived pharmacopeial remedies. They also provide psychological, metaphysical and relationship counselling services, understanding that often families and even departed relatives can affect a patient's wellbeing.

Based on field trials and real-world clinical practice, Small Pharma Health Practitioners have over many years developed highly intricate and sophisticated diagnostic techniques and tools. For example, by closely examining and analysing the precise alignment of endoskeletal segments, healthcare workers are able to diagnose underlying causes and prescribe cures that treat more than just symptoms.

Prescription drugs in Small Pharma are typically derived from a wide array of naturally-occurring organic compounds. The most common source is processed anhydrous vascular plant matter, though more specialised medicines are derived from Hexapoda invertebrates and Muroidea.

A variety of preparational techniques is used to optimise patient drug administration and drug efficacy.

The processing usually begins with reducing the bulk source to powder and mixing it with other compounds in carefully specified proportions. Thereafter it is administered to the patient using various solid or fluid transports to deliver the drug. Drug efficacy can be increased by adding formulaic incantations and invocations.

In short, without Big Pharma we're back to witchdoctors, sangomas, and spirits, with their bones, dried leaves, roots, powders, potions and spells. That'll rid the world of disease, eh, just as it has for thousands of years.

Stealing Big Pharma IP means Aaron wants to pluck fruit from a tree he didn't plant, and reap a crop he didn't sow.

Aaron has it exactly backwards. Destroying Big Pharma leaves nothing but Small Pharma. And the needless suffering of millions, consigning them to the place where his ancestors rest.

The road to hell is paved, as the saying goes. And Aaron is on it.

 

[Nick333]

Yep, that's the way to social and economic progress. We know from history that innovators, inventors and creative entrepreneurs will graft their guts out for little or no return other than the consolation that they're delivering a social service.

China has made massive strides socially and economically by simply ignoring IP laws all together.

The inventors and innovators do what they do because it's what they're driven to do. Inventors and innovators tend to see very little of the profits from their inventions and innovations anyway. For every Bill Gates or James Watt there are a thousand technicians, scientists and engineers inventing and innovating products, processes and technologies that we use every day who make nothing off their inventions except their salary.

 

[Nick333]

Ah, yes. We need to support Small Pharma and restore it to the prestige it once enjoyed before Big Pharma ruined the world.

There once was a time when each community, no matter how remote, had its own healthcare system, staffed by specialists expertly trained in natural and holistic therapies.

Small Pharma Health Practitioners treat physical ailments and diseases with naturally-derived pharmacopeial remedies. They also provide psychological, metaphysical and relationship counselling services, understanding that often families and even departed relatives can affect a patient's wellbeing.

Based on field trials and real-world clinical practice, Small Pharma Health Practitioners have over many years developed highly intricate and sophisticated diagnostic techniques and tools. For example, by closely examining and analysing the precise alignment of endoskeletal segments, healthcare workers are able to diagnose underlying causes and prescribe cures that treat more than just symptoms.

Prescription drugs in Small Pharma are typically derived from a wide array of naturally-occurring organic compounds. The most common source is processed anhydrous vascular plant matter, though more specialised medicines are derived from Hexapoda invertebrates and Muroidea.

A variety of preparational techniques is used to optimise patient drug administration and drug efficacy.

The processing usually begins with reducing the bulk source to powder and mixing it with other compounds in carefully specified proportions. Thereafter it is administered to the patient using various solid or fluid transports to deliver the drug. Drug efficacy can be increased by adding formulaic incantations and invocations.

In short, without Big Pharma we're back to witchdoctors, sangomas, and spirits, with their bones, dried leaves, roots, powders, potions and spells. That'll rid the world of disease, eh, just as it has for thousands of years.

Stealing Big Pharma IP means Aaron wants to pluck fruit from a tree he didn't plant, and reap a crop he didn't sow.

Aaron has it exactly backwards. Destroying Big Pharma leaves nothing but Small Pharma. And the needless suffering of millions, consigning them to the place where his ancestors rest.

The road to hell is paved, as the saying goes. And Aaron is on it.

Yes, because it's a zero-sum game. We either have to allow pharmaceutical companies to profit where and how they see fit or, we have to destroy them. Their profit streams are secure in the first world were their products are more or less affordable to anyone including the government. They aren't going to go out of business if they aren't allowed to put profit over lives in the developing world.

 

[OrbitalDawn]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma

Always applicable.

 

[Arthur]

China has made massive strides socially and economically by simply ignoring IP laws all together.

You conveniently fail to mention that the very reason for China's backwardness is because for forty years the Chinese people suffered under an economic system that was ideologically opposed to private property, including IP. From the day it usurped power, the Maoist Marxist regime totally ignored IP as an outmoded bourgeoise notion, and the country remained mired in backwardness.

It was only when the CCP's XVth Congress recognised many (but far from all) property rights that the entrepreneurial spirit of the Chinese people was partially unshackled. In other words, the recent rapid growth of China is precisely because they started recognising private property rights, though the Maoist culture of pillage still infects the society. You need to understand China's development spurt in its historical context - it was largely catch-up, trying to undo the damage of the anti-private-property Communist system.

China's recent manufacturing spurt was funded largely by Western manufacturers who transferred their plants there precisely because the one-party Chinese dictatorship introduced laws protecting property rights, including IP rights. Even so, there are large-scale violations of IP rights in China. In the technology arena many of the biggest pillagers of Western IP are crypto-military enterprises.

BTW, the Chinese economic spurt is deeply flawed. Growth is sputtering and even Chinese economists are predicting a crash, though they can't use that word openly. Real unrecoverable debts are massive and the system is being artificially propped up by cooking the books. In a hundred years, once the whole Chinese insanity has played its course and the house of cards has collapsed, historians will cite 1995-2025 as a case study of how not to do economic reform and growth.

Yes, because it's a zero-sum game. We either have to allow pharmaceutical companies to profit where and how they see fit or, we have to destroy them. Their profit streams are secure in the first world were their products are more or less affordable to anyone including the government. They aren't going to go out of business if they aren't allowed to put profit over lives in the developing world.

Your sarcasm cuts in the wrong place. It's not Pharma that's zero sum game, it's liberty which is a zero-sum, and liberty is premised on the protection of private property rights.

The vertical axis runs from slavery to liberty.

It is an axiom amply demonstrated in history that the vitality (social, economic, political, familial, etc, etc) of any society is proportional to the degree that private property rights are protected and vindicated.

The very reason why any government at all exists is to protect and vindicate citizen's rights from those who would wrongly appropriate it by force, fraud or theft. When the State fails in this fundamental task (as communist regimes do intentionally and ideologically) by mitigating or not vigorously protecting people's property rights, vitality drains and economic stagnation sets in - just see China 1948-1997. Russia 1917-1989. North Korea c1950-today. Examples are legion.

 

[DigitalSoldier]

Read through the article's summary of the new policy direction and for the most part the stance on weaker IP protections seems like a good idea to me. There are some parts I disagree with though. For example I have a problem with is the governement being allowed to hand over rights to manufacture generics of the drugs to a third party without the patent holding company's approval and with minimal financial compensation to the company.

That policy is basically telling pharmaceutical companies "don't bother to bring innovative new drugs to this country because we will just hand over the secrets to your drugs, that cost you billions to develop, to some third party (likely a politically connected BEE company) for next to nothing".

I don't think the ANC is even remotely concerned about the people of SA.

Imo they are just trying to get more cash. By getting a BEE company to develop the drugs. This will cost them nothing and they will get profit.

The ANC have never done anything for the people of it won't benefit them.

 

[Bar0n]

We know from history that innovators, inventors and creative entrepreneurs will graft their guts out for little or no return other than the consolation that they're delivering a social service.

That's the way it used to be. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries (pre-1900s) were freely distributed to advance knowledge, and not to promote yourself or get rich from it. Many scientists died in poverty, but they had honour and they made discoveries to further mankind's progress, not profit from it.

 

[Arthur]

That's the way it used to be. Some of the greatest scientific discoveries (pre-1900s) were freely distributed to advance knowledge, and not to promote yourself or get rich from it. Many scientists died in poverty, but they had honour and they made discoveries to further mankind's progress, not profit from it.

Indeed. That was their free choice. It was not imposed by the State. Their right to the fruits of their labour was not questioned or mitigated.

So why did they do it? Until fairly recently, leading scientists and creative people were highly religious, motivated by sentiments of solidarity and charity. Neither of these are possible in a legal regime that fails to protect property, whether tangible or intellectual. Without liberty, love is not possible.

 

[Nick333]

Indeed. That was their free choice. It was not imposed by the State. Their right to the fruits of their labour was not questioned or mitigated.

So why did they do it? Until fairly recently, leading scientists and creative people were highly religious, motivated by sentiments of solidarity and charity. Neither of these are possible in a legal regime that fails to protect property, whether tangible kr intellectual.

Don't really have the time to get into it but one of the fallacies in your argument is that today leading scientists and creative people seek to profit from their work beyond a salary. The people behind innovation and invention are generally salaried employees. They don't have ownership of their output. Those with the education and leasure to pursue science and creativity prior to the 19th century were generally landed gentry and other independently wealthy types who could afford to gift their output to humanity.

 

[Bar0n]

were generally landed gentry and other independently wealthy types who could afford to gift their output to humanity.

Sorry, but you're completely wrong.

 

[Arthur]

Don't really have the time to get into it but one of the fallacies in your argument is that today leading scientists and creative people seek to profit from their work beyond a salary. The people behind innovation and invention are generally salaried employees. They don't have ownership of their output. Those with the education and leasure to pursue science and creativity prior to the 19th century were generally landed gentry and other independently wealthy types who could afford to gift their output to humanity.

You are arguing with yourself, not me. Nowhere do I mention the lone inventors in that context.

Still, I get your point. But it's quite inapplicable today.

Certainly in the pharmaceutical industry today, new drug development and mass production is a vast and hugely expensive undertaking often involving dozens and maybe even tens of dozens of people. They pool their expertise by selling their research, testing and production skills in a collaborative entity we call a corporation (another way of looking at 'employment' and 'salary'). Part of the collaborative deal is that ownership of any inventions and innovations is ceded to the collective endeavor (ie the company).

The Lone Inventor is very much a feature of the 18th and 19th centuries. As production and distribution of new formulations was industrialised in the 20th C, so too the corporations could establish in-house R&D, and the virtuous cycle accelerated, which is why our time is so blessed with relatively inexpensive and increasingly efficacious drugs.

It is no accident that almost all 20th C drug therapies were developed in that part of the world that respects, protects and rewards those who develop and produce this veritable cornucopia of pharmaceuticals.

As George Rutler might have said: I might be nostalgic about 19th Century architecture. But I am not nostalgic about 19th C dentistry.

We need to live in the modern world. And one of he great blessings of our time is that we have such a vast array of pharmaceutical formulations. Destroying the property rights of inventors and producers might bring short-term gains. But in time it brings nothing but misery and war.

 

[ISP cash cow]

People are also missing the fact that this draft is also not only for the IP policies of "big pharma" but also of software, agriculture and sporting events.

If this move had anything to do with saving lives from the big capitalist pigs then why go after all the other IP's as well. I have a feeling it has more to do with lazy arse money making. You design and develop a product and we will just come in and give the business to one of our cadres to manufacture.

 

[Nick333]

Sorry, but you're completely wrong.

Not even close to completely.

 

[Mikey X]

Sorry, but the evolution from small to big pharma is where the truth was deliberately skewed.

To imply that we as humans are inherently faulty in a medical sense, and thus require big pharma, is to discredit the Christian bible since we are all made in the creator's image. Either he/she is very, very sick or he/she is dead.

 

[Arthur]

To imply that we as humans are inherently faulty in a medical sense, and thus require big pharma, is to discredit the Christian bible since we are all made in the creator's image. Either he/she is very, very sick or he/she is dead.

If that were what the bible says then it probably deserves to be 'discredited' as you say.

But it doesn't say that.

In fact, the Christian narrative affirms that humankind was indeed made without flaw, and made for love, which requires free will. Through no design error or fault by God but entirely through an abuse of his free will man irretrievably damaged himself so deeply that its effects infect his offspring. The Fall. God so loved the world..., etc. Redemption.

 

[Mikey X]

In fact, the Christian narrative affirms that humankind was indeed made without flaw, and made for love, which requires free will. Through no design error or fault by God but entirely through an abuse of his free will man irretrievably damaged himself so deeply that its effects infect his offspring. The Fall. God so loved the world..., etc. Redemption.

Absolutely. And free will is not a physical thing.

 

[Bar0n]

Not even close to completely.

The majority of pre-1900s scientists, especially in the fields of mathematics and physics (and probably chemistry too) were incredibly poor. Off the top of my head, the only mathematicians I know of that weren't living in poverty were Gauss and possibly Cauchy. The rest of them either just scraped by or went hungry every few days.

EDIT: If you can name some rich ones, or provide a link which states that most scientists pre-1900s were actually rich, I'd be interested to read about it.

 

[porchrat]

The majority of pre-1900s scientists, especially in the fields of mathematics and physics (and probably chemistry too) were incredibly poor. Off the top of my head, the only mathematicians I know of that weren't living in poverty were Gauss and possibly Cauchy. The rest of them either just scraped by or went hungry every few days.

EDIT: If you can name some rich ones, or provide a link which states that most scientists pre-1900s were actually rich, I'd be interested to read about it.

Charles Babbage. He was quite comfortable. So comfortable he turned down lands and titles.

Jenner too. Successful doctor.

Louis Pasteur didn't want for much (though his wealth mostly came from his discoveries, he was born relatively poor, still he was wealthy no denying that).

Isaac Newton too. He actually ran the royal mint at one point. A position that paid an obscene amount of money.

Those are just off the top of my head. I'm surprised you aren't aware of any wealthy scientists pre 1900.

 

[Nicodeamus]

The majority of pre-1900s scientists, especially in the fields of mathematics and physics (and probably chemistry too) were incredibly poor. Off the top of my head, the only mathematicians I know of that weren't living in poverty were Gauss and possibly Cauchy. The rest of them either just scraped by or went hungry every few days.

EDIT: If you can name some rich ones, or provide a link which states that most scientists pre-1900s were actually rich, I'd be interested to read about it.

Actually Gauss wasn't rich, he couldn't pay the 2000 francs that Napoleon demanded. La Grange was quite rich, Newton wasn't poor either when he worked for the royal mint. Many of the great mathematicians that are worth mentioning were soldiers during the Napoleonic war.

 

[noxibox]

People are also missing the fact that this draft is also not only for the IP policies of "big pharma" but also of software, agriculture and sporting events.

If this move had anything to do with saving lives from the big capitalist pigs then why go after all the other IP's as well. I have a feeling it has more to do with lazy arse money making. You design and develop a product and we will just come in and give the business to one of our cadres to manufacture.

You're right about the laziness, but it is on the side of those who don't want intellectual property protections to be reduced and restricted. Those protections as they exist now are no longer about innovation, but instead about strangling it.

The pharmaceutical companies are a good example of this rampant abuse of intellectual property laws. They also represent the incredible inefficiency of having important research done by profit-driven entities. Because the easy drugs have all been found they now go down many blind alleys, and when they do find something, even if it works only marginally, they then pour massive resources into distorting the research to make their drug look more effective than it is, getting the public to think they're sick, thus requiring the drug, and encouraging doctors to prescribe it. They even corrupt regulatory agencies, including South Africa's. It is quite remarkable that some governments are willing to stand up to them.

The point is that intellectual property laws need to be radically reformed. Their only reason for existing should be the greater benefit of society. Any benefit to the creators should be considered a lucky side-effect. In drastically changing them we may get some unintended negative effects, but then they can be tweaked to get them as right as possible.