The exact same is true in agriculture. You can patent a gene or a variety that you bred. But the only way to sell it to farmers is if it gives them higher yields than the previous stuff.
Agriculture did benefit a lot from research done by public universities. As did medicine. I'm hugely in favor of increasing public research in both areas. This is not not mutually exclusive with private research. It's not like there are a finite number of things that can be researched or invented.
If as you say the majority of drugs are cheap, varied and didn't need patents, I'd say it's as good sign as any that we don't need patents for drugs.
I also think we need more research, both public and private. I understand that the current system relies on patent money to sustain itself, but I just don't buy that it has to be this way, or that it wouldn't work otherwise.
For the record I am not comparing industries, just saying that different models exists.
I think you are confused. Patents only last 15-20 years, not forever. The majority of drugs were developed by companies looking to own the patents. However they are now free to the public.
Without the patent system, they wouldn't exist at all.
Also, drugs do get super cheap once the patents expire. In fact, there are massive companies that do nothing but wait for patents to expire so they can make generics—take a look at Teva and Perrigo if you're curious about the model.
i recommend u go through this with an open mind and no bias on the source. the research might not be on what u think it is.
I am mostly aware of how bad farming is in regards of how animals are treated or what effect it can have on the surrounding environment. My entry to this rabbit hole was the huge pig shit lakes near some of the most industrialized pig farms. From there there is no illusion that most research would go into more 'humane' treatments, but at the same time there is a strong enough incentive to have balanced medication to keep the animals alive while leaving as few substances in the meat as possible.
I'm not sure that research is moral or goes in the right direction, but I just suppose there is a decent amount of it given the scale of the market.
Thus, I don't think we can analogize meat to pharmaceuticals.
Trying to think of other straightforward instances where a tremendous cost is spent on researching and testing, and directly affect human well being.
One example would be meat farming. As far as I know raising pigs or chicken evolved a lot in our lifetimes, extensive research was done on how to produce mor meat, there's oversight by a public agency and it is consumed by human so there is a decent amount of safety check and oversight.
Yet meat is cheap.
The more research that went into it, the cheaper it got. Provided meat as a product is more stable and less dangerous than drugs, I still think that it doesn't explain why meat would become cheaper while drug price should stay high and pharmatical firms should have extra protection to keep their prices high.
We're not paying for research, we're paying for monopolies.