Thread by @BeautyAbounds4U

"The problem with this picture is that they are working in competition, not collaboration. This means that they are not widely sharing information with each other, since they don’t want to give their competitors an edge."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
1/n
newrepublic.com/article/156979…

"Instead of competing, these teams of researchers could be working in cooperation with each other, sharing new findings quickly and fully."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
2/n

newrepublic.com/article/156979…

"We should want research teams throughout the world to have access to the latest discoveries by their colleagues elsewhere. They can learn from failures, so they don’t waste time making the same mistakes, and build on successes."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
3/n

"When a successful vaccine is developed, it can be placed in the public domain, which means that it can be sold as a cheap generic from the first day it is approved by the Food and Drug Administration."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
4/n

"This would mean that we don’t have to worry about begging a drug company to make its vaccine available at an affordable price."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
5/n
newrepublic.com/article/156979…

"Drugs are almost always cheap to manufacture and distribute. If there were no patent monopoly, drug companies would not be able to charge high prices."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
6/n
newrepublic.com/article/156979…

"The pharmaceutical industry argues that it needs patent monopolies to recover its research costs, but in this case, the research costs are already being largely covered by the government."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
7/n
newrepublic.com/article/156979…

"Rather than giving out patent monopolies so that they may recover additional private expenditures, it would make far more sense just to have the government pick up the rest of the tab for the research and testing so that the companies would have no research costs to recover."
7b

"This would be the best route to ensure the quick development of an affordable vaccine."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
8/n

newrepublic.com/article/156979…

"The patent system for financing pharmaceutical research is an archaic relic of the medieval guild system. It survives by inertia; it is almost inconceivable that anyone would propose a system like this if we were designing one from scratch in the twenty-first century."
9/n

"without the patent monopoly, we wouldn’t have a problem of high-priced drugs in the first place."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
10/n
newrepublic.com/article/156979…

"Patent monopolies also encourage drug companies to mislead doctors and the public about the safety and effectiveness of their drugs. This is just basic economics."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
11/n
newrepublic.com/article/156979…

"The most dramatic example of drug pushing is the opioid crisis. @purduepharma & the other leading manufacturers would have had much less incentive to mislead doctors re: the addictiveness of their drugs if they were all available as cheap generics from the [first] day."

12/n

"It's important to recognize there's a huge amount of money at stake. We will spend ~$500 billion on prescriptions this year. If all drugs were sold as generics, w/o patent protection, we would almost certainly spend less than $100 billion."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
13/n

"If we go the route of publicly supported open research, we will not only grease the wheels for the eventual development and distribution of a coronavirus vaccine, we can end the problem of high-priced drugs forever."

#COVID19
#EndRxMonopolyPrices
14/14
newrepublic.com/article/156979…