• @[email protected]
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      5614 hours ago

      Of course not, which is why they’re publicly funded. That’s the issue. They’re using public funds to make private profits.

      • @o_arguido
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        2414 hours ago

        It’s amazing you even have to explain something so obvious.

        • @[email protected]
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          1813 hours ago

          License and release it into the public domain: research, methods, processes, patents—the whole deal.

          Privatizing medicine, even elective medicine, just ensures predation.

          • @[email protected]
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            313 hours ago

            I’m not following. Making the results public domain doesn’t prohibit private companies from manufacturing for profit.

            • @[email protected]
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              15
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              12 hours ago

              No, you got it. It’s not about prohibiting profit, it’s about preventing the exclusive ability to profit.

              Think of generic medicines (in the US) versus brand equivalents and how vast their cost difference is.

              • @[email protected]
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                110 hours ago

                Which is reasonable in principle, but when they sell the exclusivity, they’re and to put that money back into their research expenses.

                I’m okay with public money going to funding research projects that become private profit for a limited time. I’m a capitalist system, which is what we’re operating in, this seems to be the most effective. Government partially funds otherwise unprofitable R&D, companies make the product, and ordinary people are able to buy it at reasonable prices, and once exclusivity ends, anyone can make it.

                • @[email protected]
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                  58 hours ago

                  That would be great, except in the US, that exclusivity can last for decades, which means entire generations will come and go before it becomes public.

                  In a better-regulated system where consumers are put before corporate interests, it could work, but the US hasn’t been that for a long time.