Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1744-1746

Why Companies and Countries Are Battling for Ascendancy in 5G

By DON CLARK and CECILIA KANG

Taking an early lead in ultrafast next-generation wireless technology can give players a strategic advantage.

NYT Headline

   March 07, 2018

  If those cuts had gone through, they would have exposed one of the biggest lies told about Big Pharma: that the current system of patents and price-gouging is just an unfortunate necessity to cover the cost of all their brave and noble R&D work.

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Just how important is our publicly funded research to Big Pharma and Biotech? According to a new study by a small, partly industry-funded think tank called the Center for Integration of Science and Industry (CISI), it is existentially important. No NIH funds, no new drugs, no patents, no profits, no industry.

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The authors found that each of the 210 medicines approved for market came out of research supported by the NIH. Of the $100 billion it spent nationally during this period, more than half of it—$64 billion—ended up helping the development of 84 first-in-class drugs.

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...publicly funded labs conduct years of basic research to get to a breakthrough, which is then snatched up, tweaked, and patented (privatized) by companies who turn around and reap billions with 1,000-times-cost mark-ups on drugs developed with taxpayer money.

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Those companies then spend the profits on executive bonuses and share buybacks, and lavish mass marketing campaigns to increase sales of amphetamines, benzos, opioids, and dick pills.

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Why are we allowing drug companies to gain proprietary control over taxpayer-funded research, then turn around and price-gouge those same taxpayers to literal death?...

"... taxpayers fund the riskier part of drug development, then once the medicines show promise, they are often privatized under patent monopolies that lock in exorbitant prices for 20 years or longer,”...

Taxpayers—Not Big Pharma—Have Funded the Research Behind Every New Drug Since 2010

By Alexander Zaitchik / Social Security Works
March 2, 2018, 10:46 AM GMT
[emphasis JS]

One of the many studies I would have funded had I hit one of the really big lotteries is on how much ostensibly private profit is gained from publicly funded research. Most of the iphone is derived from public research. The Weather Bureau costs about a billion a year to run, for a long time far beyond the ability of a single person to underwrite, and they gave away their output for free. Private profit, annually, from the Weather Bureau's research and forecasting? 100 billion dollars.

Where's my equity share of that? Where's yours?
Jack Strawb 
[emphasis JS]