Re:Supreme Court to decide if human genes can be patented
by rayiner on Sunday April 14, 2013 @05:44PM
(#5548455)
The alternatives in this case are, as you note, either public funding, or alternative means of monetization (e.g. a for-profit hospital). I think on the whole public funding is the way to go for this kind of medical research. The other alternative is precisely the kind of thing the patent system was designed to avoid. Is it really preferable to have private, for-profit hospitals using proprietary techniques that they don't publish in order to keep a competitive edge?
A report on the Sources of Cancer Research Funding in the United States (http://www.iom.edu/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Disease/NC...) found that only 31% of the funding in cancer research is from industry. The majority is from tax money (federal and state), which stand for about 63% of all funding. The rest is non-profit.
Maybe that 31% would be lower without patents. Some might still do the investing because they earn money on related products (for-profit hospitals to name one). Maybe the costs in medical institutions and research labs would go down because they can spend less to lawyers. Maybe the state would be willing to spend more and have more directed taxed to replace the lost industry funding.
But we are only talking about 31%, a number I would very much like to see updated for 2013. It also a number as reported by the industry itself, so its worth asking how true it is. The only number we can be fully sure on is the billions of state and federal funding.