Anarchic Fox on 22/8/2020 at 20:30
Edit: Oops, wrong megathread.
nbohr1more on 24/8/2020 at 04:07
David E. Martin makes a salient point here:
Quote:
"It is illegal to patent a naturally occurring biological organism.
Either the Coronavirus patents are evidence of illegal bioweapon research or they are illegal patents of naturally occurring pathogens."
(
https://youtu.be/xqxO_5sB2a8)
This same video echos the same idea that access to and research about Coroavirus is locked down. You must go through "authorized channels" to examine it.
demagogue on 24/8/2020 at 06:21
It's probably not the outrage you want to hear, but at least he and you have stumbled into the age-old complaint that naturally occurring organisms are getting patented. A lot's been written on it.
Worse is that the pathogens usually come from poor countries, and the local people don't see a cent of all the money they make for the companies that patent them. It's funny, even the terrible things from poor countries get stolen and cashed in by rich countries, not only the cultural heritage.
SubJeff on 24/8/2020 at 09:04
Wait what?
You seem to be saying it's unfair that a pathogen that comes from a poor country doesn't benefit that country. Or am I misreading that?
demagogue on 24/8/2020 at 10:36
There are different things happening that are overlapping, and this is definitely not the frame from which I'd introduce any of these issues to anybody. It only has the frame that it has because it's building off of nbohr1more's comment.
Some of the different things happening are: (1) the greatly different interests developed & developing countries have in harmonizing patent standards, e.g., in TRIPs, a lot of which come down to (2) patents limiting the ability for poor countries to provide cheap generic drugs, and meanwhile (3) the practice of companies from rich countries exploiting natural resources from developing countries to make tremendous wealth without the poor country receiving any of that wealth, oil, gas, timber, jade, coal, copper, rare earth metals, animal products, plant products, and as it turns out DNA from indigenous animals and plants, (4) and by the way there's a dispute in patent law to what extent you can patent biotech, or to what extent a patentable method or product has to differ from the natural base.... So that brings us to (5) all of these issues get implicated with patenting DNA from naturally evolving pathogens indigenous to a poor country, which can be unfair to the poor country, primarily for reason #2, but while poor countries are making that argument, they sometimes add #3, #4, & #5 to their complaint because it adds insult to injury (making poor countries pay insane amounts of money to buy a patented drug that by the way uses DNA indigenous to that country that not only shouldn't be patentable, but least of all patented to restrict the very country you stole that DNA from to sell it back to them.)
The combination of all of those things were what I was referring to. If I were teaching this in a class I would start from (1) and work my way down and I would leave that last item completely out because it's not really one of the serious cases in this field. But if someone directly raises the issue of patenting a derivative of covid-19 DNA as part of the argument that covid-19 was actually genetically engineered by the deep state to weaken the opponents of Trump's mission from God to expose the deep state's crimes... then I thought it was worth pointing out actually patenting pathogen DNA has been written about before, and here's this tiny part about that story that involves exploiting poor countries.
demagogue on 24/8/2020 at 15:21
Yeah those are derivatives. It's a weird slippery slope, from a derivative of nature to a process for extracting RNA code that makes proteins that's not too different from code. As biotech gets more code-like it's only going to get weirder the way the biology and computer worlds will cross pollinate.
By "regulated" I mean the patenting company can sue another company that tries to make a generic brand of a vaccine to stop them from charging significantly less for it so that poor people can afford it. We're talking about more people not having access to lifesaving medicine and getting sick and dying as a result, not protecting people from a dangerous substance. It's not the authorizations, labeling, transportation, handling, etc, rules that developing countries are complaining about.
But deriving the vaccine in the first place takes significant resources which you can see now, e.g., with all of these different tracks & we don't know which one will be successful, and there's a lot of pressure to get a safe and working vaccine as quickly as possible, which makes it even more expensive. Future patent protection is ultimately paying for that.
heywood on 24/8/2020 at 20:18
Sorry dema, I wasn't responding to your post. In a pre-caffeine early morning haze, I broke my own rule of sorts and responded to nbohr1more's latest innane conspiracy theory, but forgot to quote what I was responding to.
I don't disagree with you about exploitation of poor countries in general, but in the particular case of coronaviruses they haven't been coming from poor countries. I also agree that the prospect of making a very large amount of money from a successful SARS-CoV-2 vaccine is a prime motivator in the race to find a vaccine as fast as possible, and the incentive wouldn't be there if not for patent protection. And when there is a vaccine available and we're all paying for it, it will be the poor countries who can least afford it. I also think that with a first-to-file system and so many vaccine research teams working in parallel, there will be tons of provisional patent applications rushing in and many of them will be sub-par, so I'm sure there will be disagreements about whether these provisional applications fully describe the invention. Not to mention the questions already mentioned about what's patentable in the first place. And of course, the patent office will be under serious pressure to expedite the granting of patents and won't have time to follow normal process. The decisions won't be consistent around the world, and there's likely to be pressure in some places to ignore patents entirely and just get people vaccinated by whatever means necessary. I think it's going to be a heck of a mess to sort out, and I hope (but don't expect) that everybody behaves reasonably based on a shared interest.
Nicker on 27/8/2020 at 17:56
Thanks to Trump's medical dictum (
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/infectious-disease-experts-call-for-immediate-reversal-of-cdc-testing-changes/) _If you don't test, it will disappear._, the CDC is now recommending that people exposed to infection but not showing symptoms should NOT be tested.
Quote:
Intense backlash from medical and infectious disease experts continues over revisions to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 testing recommendations, which as of this week discourage testing for people who have been exposed to the virus but are not showing symptoms.
In a joint statement late Wednesday, the Infectious Diseases Society of American (IDSA) and the HIV Medicine Association (HIVMA) called for “the immediate reversal of the abrupt revision” by the CDC.
In a separate statement, Susan Bailey, president of the American Medical Association—the nation’s largest organization of doctors—called the revision to the testing guidance “a recipe for community spread and more spikes in coronavirus.”
Pyrian on 27/8/2020 at 20:40
"Quick, I need a way to make everything worse in the last couple months before the election! That'll surely help my campaign!"
zombe on 28/8/2020 at 01:34
It's 4:34 here and i am a bit loopy ... but is that real?