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A comment on Why Sleep Apnea Patients Rely on a CPAP Machine Hacker. Parent comment

Re:Why Sleep Apnea Patients Rely on a CPAP Machine Hacker by IshKebab on Thursday November 15, 2018 @05:23PM (#18464038)
Poor analogy. Food is not generally patented, and people can eat many different kinds of food to live.

Would you tell the people that needed epipens "well just have some paracetamol instead".

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Re:Why Sleep Apnea Patients Rely on a CPAP Machine Hacker by Zak on Thursday November 15, 2018 @05:48PM (#18464218)
In a free market, there would be cheap generic alternatives. Epinephrine itself isn't expensive at all (around a dollar a dose), and the autoinjector was patented in 1977, making it long-expired (though modifications of the design are covered by newer patents).

There are other examples, such as complex surgeries that would illustrate the point you're trying to make better.

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