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Government-granted patent monopolies gave Purdue Pharma incentives to push opioids

Summary:
From Dean Baker Maybe this is too obvious a point, but I don’t see it mentioned in news coverage of the company’s settlement. If we could ever have a serious debate on the relative merits of government-granted patent monopolies compared with direct upfront funding, as we did with Moderna’s research on a coronavirus vaccine, the incentive that patents give to lie about the safety and effectiveness of drugs would be an important factor. Unfortunately, we may never have this debate because our policy types refuse to consider any alternatives to the patent monopoly system. It’s sort of like in the days of the Soviet Union, they didn’t have public debates on the merits of central planning.

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from Dean Baker

Maybe this is too obvious a point, but I don’t see it mentioned in news coverage of the company’s settlement. If we could ever have a serious debate on the relative merits of government-granted patent monopolies compared with direct upfront funding, as we did with Moderna’s research on a coronavirus vaccine, the incentive that patents give to lie about the safety and effectiveness of drugs would be an important factor.

Unfortunately, we may never have this debate because our policy types refuse to consider any alternatives to the patent monopoly system. It’s sort of like in the days of the Soviet Union, they didn’t have public debates on the merits of central planning.

Dean Baker
Dean Baker is a macroeconomist and codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. He previously worked as a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute and an assistant professor at Bucknell University. He is a regular Truthout columnist and a member of Truthout's Board of Advisers.

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