Re: India's IP policies and US lawmakers.

+++ Ratnendra Pandey [2013-06-30 12:54:09]:

> A far more number of people die every year in India for simple things like
> dirty water or dirty air.
> India does not need to steal expensive IP  to save her people from simple and
> avoidable deaths like those from simple diseases  like cholera, diearreaha etc
> and from other simple causes like death by falling from overcrowded trains in
> mumbai suburban system. As far as I can tell from my unscientific observation,
> the number of people who could be saved by drugs from stolen IP are very few
> (any idea how many patients die from cancer than from other waterborne and
> airborne diseases)?

Any idea how many people die in road accidents and in bathrooms around the
world compared to terrorist attacks on airlines? 

We should just give up on all security in airports, and spend all our money
on better bathrooms and road safety.

> But, you see, in socialist countries like India where government has to
> showcase what it is doing, revoking patents on cancer drugs is likely to get
> more votes than saving thousands of people who die every year from simple
> things like cholera.  It also stokes felling of nationalism when Indian
> government is seen as fighting a profit seeking American drug company.

Clearly you have no clue what the Supreme Court judgement was about. Glivac
was a cancer drug that had enjoyed patent protection for many years. What the
SC ruled against was evergreening of the patent to prevent generics from
entering the market for many more years.

From the wikipedia page about the main ingredient..

<quote>In 2013, more than 100 cancer specialists published a letter in Blood
saying that the prices of many new cancer drugs, including    imatinib, is so
high that U.S. patients couldn't afford them, and that the level of prices,
and profits, was so high as to be immoral. Signatories of the letter included
Brian Drucker, Carlo Gambacorti-Asserini, and John Goldman, developers of
imatinib. In 2001, imatinib was priced at $30,000 a year, which was based
on the price of interferon, then the standard treatment, and would have
recouped the development costs in 2 years. After unexpectedly becoming a
blockbuster, its price was increased to $92,000 per year in 2012, with annual
revenues of $4.7 billion. All its research and development costs were covered
in the first $1 billion, and everything else was profit.^[39]^[40] Other
doctors have complained about the </quote>

The very people who created the drug felt the company was overcharging even
by western standards.

> Cancer is never epidemic. At anytime it affects a very limited number of
> people.  A few cancer patients might be saved by these drugs. Not all
> patient will survive even with these drugs. So for the benefit of  a very
> small minority of patient who were unfortunate enough to suffer from
> cancer, we are subjecting the rest of 1.2 billion Indians to moral
> corruption and unethical environment that comes from stolen IP or living
> off someone else's hardwork or money.  So much for the self-reliant
> Indians. Is eating stolen food or treating with stolen drugs
> self-reliance?

You have been overly influenced by MAFIAA logic. 

Firstly IP violation is not theft. And nearly every major US company
including Microsoft and Apple are guilty of it and they get away with barely
a slap on the wrist.

And are you really lecturing the rest of the world on morality and ethics,
while supporting a company that raised the price of a life saving drug from
$30k per annum to $92k per annum for no other reason than they could get away
with it? (They had already recovered all sunk costs in two years.)

And wrt living off someone else's hard work? The drug company has been making
billions of dollars in profit every single year for over a decade now. What
percentage of that money was actually paid to the inventors of the drug who
definitely did all the hard work?


> But, the damage to Indian psyche and character caused by stolen IP is far more
> than the benefit that might come from it. I have not heard of anyone attaining
> wealth or prosperity from robbery or stealing. Karma, good or bad, always
> catches up.

There's a certain country that was built by stealing nearly a whole
continent worth of land by killing the bulk of the native people, (including
by spreading incurable diseases!) and restrictring them to tiny settlements.
And then spent another hundred+ years enslaving another set of people and
living off their hard work without paying them a single cent. And considering
they are one of the most wealthy and prosperous nation on the planet...  you
are clearly wrong.

> When I was a small child, I was raised with an idea that when wealth is
> lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost;  and when
> character is lost, everything is lost.

If you really believe in that, these billion dollar companies have lost
absolutely nothing! So there's no reason for you or anyone get all butt hurt
about the SC judgement.

> We will never be independent, innovative, and original so long as we are
> encouraging unethical short cuts.  Not being able to stand on our feet is
> far more  damaging to India than anything else.

Au contraire, we are truly independent when we can stand up for what is right
and good for us(and the world at large) and not meekly bend over to satisfy
the whims/greed of a tiny minority of super rich
countries/corporations/people.

Kingsly

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