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A comment on Only 3 northern white rhinos left on Earth. Parent comment

Re:Only 3 northern white rhinos left on Earth by danieltillett on Monday November 23, 2015 @05:13AM (#10613756)
Not necessarily. Rhinos would only be farmed if they could be patented. Of course rhino horn has no medical value, but it could still be hunted to extinction even if it did.

On this topic silphium went extinct despite being highly useful medically [1].

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium

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Re:Only 3 northern white rhinos left on Earth by dikdik on Monday November 23, 2015 @05:28AM (#10613797)
Lots of things are farmed that are not patented.

From your own source, "The identity of silphium is highly debated."

-_-

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Re:Only 3 northern white rhinos left on Earth by danieltillett on Monday November 23, 2015 @06:13AM (#10613943)
That is because silphium was exploited to extinction, much like the rhino.
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Re:Only 3 northern white rhinos left on Earth by onion2k on Monday November 23, 2015 @05:43AM (#10613845)
Rhinos would only be farmed if they could be patented.

That makes me wonder percentage of the world's farming is done under a patent.

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Re:Only 3 northern white rhinos left on Earth by danieltillett on Monday November 23, 2015 @06:16AM (#10613954)
Actually quite a large percentage. Plant patents are a huge business [1].

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeders%27_rights

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Re:Only 3 northern white rhinos left on Earth by tptacek on Monday November 23, 2015 @07:50AM (#10614264)
How does this argument even remotely make sense? Most manufactured drugs are not patented.
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Re:Only 3 northern white rhinos left on Earth by danieltillett on Monday November 23, 2015 @08:04AM (#10614320)
Most manufactured drugs were once patented. How many potential drugs that are not patentable have been brought to market in the last 50 years?
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Re:Only 3 northern white rhinos left on Earth by tptacek on Monday November 23, 2015 @08:06AM (#10614328)
I don't feel like I even need to engage with the second part of your argument, because the first still doesn't make sense. They're not patented now, and yet they're still manufactured. Why?
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Re:Only 3 northern white rhinos left on Earth by danieltillett on Monday November 23, 2015 @08:18AM (#10614372)
The major cost of bring a drug to market is not the manufacturing cost, it is the testing required to sell it. This is why except for a few very old drugs all generics (out of patent medicines) were once patented drugs. The whole purpose of the patent is to allow the pharma company to charge enough initially to make a profit before they are faced with competition. Without a patent you just can't bring a new drug to market.

In regards rhinos I was responding to the claim that if the rhino horn had real medicinal value it would be farmed. It could be possible (very unlikely) that rhino horn does have real medicinal value, but there is no way of ever showing this without a patent on rhino horn. Without a patent you can't farm rhinos for medicinal purposes because you can't ever show rhino horn has medicinal value (i.e. No pharma company will invest the money required to show this without a patent).

You can't use the fact that rhinos are not farmed to prove that rhino horn has no medicinal value when there are other possible reasons that rhinos are not farmed for medicinal purposes.

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