On 10/27/06, "Lennert Böhm" <Lennert.Boehm(a)gmx.de> wrote:
Okay, I've got a suggestion which is somewhat
"out of the box".
I was thinking about purchasing patents to medications, that could then be used to treat
>those that can't afford them.
There are other costs. It is quite difficult to make stuff like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Ritonavir.png
First things that spring to mind are AIDS, Malaria or
TBC
medications, that are currently >completely inaffordable for many
people world wide.
That has little to do with patents. Anti HIV stuff tends to be
availible at cost in such areas. All major anti malerials have been
around long enough for the patents to expire. I belive the same is
true for TB (not that that means much with the number of drug resitant
strains we are seeing).
I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be easy to
convince pharmaceutical companies to sell even one >patent,
Most of the first generation of anti HIV drugs are comeing to the end
of their patent. 100 million would probably be enough to get them to
give up a year.
AZT has been patent free for over a year.
but if they were explained that they 1) would get a
positive
publicity that's very hard to >buy otherwise,
They can get paid for working on maleria vaccines. How much posertive
publicity do they need?
--
geni
