Cory Doctorow on Nostr: There's plenty wrong with this argument. For one thing, pharma companies use their ...
There's plenty wrong with this argument. For one thing, pharma companies use their monopoly winnings to sell drugs, not invent drugs. For every dollar pharma spends on research, it spends three dollars on marketing:
https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2015/05/Pharmaceutical-Marketing-and-Research-Spending-APHA-21-Oct-01.pdf
And that "R&D" isn't what you're thinking of, either. Most R&D spending goes to "#evergreening" - coming up with minor variations on existing drugs in a bid to extend those patents for years or decades:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680578/
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https://www.bu.edu/sph/files/2015/05/Pharmaceutical-Marketing-and-Research-Spending-APHA-21-Oct-01.pdf
And that "R&D" isn't what you're thinking of, either. Most R&D spending goes to "#evergreening" - coming up with minor variations on existing drugs in a bid to extend those patents for years or decades:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680578/
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