Imo, if you use public money then the products should be free of intellectual property. Public money, public goods.
How much % of research today is publicly funded but privately patented? The principle of "public money, public goods" sounds good, until you you start mixing public and private funding. If you make a drug that's based on public research (that costs say, $1B), and then spend another $1B bringing that to market, should anyone be able piggy back off your work and compete against you? Why would anyone want to be the first company to do that? This is basically the exact problem that intellectual property laws are trying to solve.
Your example makes the public money side sound far too good because I promise you the government is not spending even close to $1b on making a single drug. that's like 1/4 of what we spent on all covid research and that was unprecedented.
I don't think that's true. Even a cursory search turns up, as the first response, this:
NIH has received almost $4.9 billion to date to fund important COVID-19 research on diagnostic tests, vaccines, and treatments. More than $940 million came from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in March 2020, with supplemental funding coming from the U.S. Congress .
Edit: I guess that you could argue that it wasn't all for a single drug
Covid was different because of the urgency. A nation which gets vaccine first could easily recoup much more than $5B when the rest of the world is closed.
That is bullshit, public spending is really massive here, and this study just looks at investments made by NIH not accounting other governments:
In this cross-sectional study of 356 drugs approved by the US Food and Drug Administration from 2010 to 2019, the NIH spent $1.44 billion per approval on basic or applied research for products with novel targets or $599 million per approval considering applications of basic research to multiple products. Spending from the NIH was not less than industry spending, with full costs of these investments calculated with comparable accounting.
The industry might spend more overall, but if you look at typical drugs they are typically publicly funded.
Edit: I think the main point people miss is all the research done by universities that is government funded. MRNA vaccines were made possible by decades of university research based on public funding, the private corporations just came in and did the easy part at the end. Novel medicines are mostly based on such research and hence mostly publicly funded, we would continue to make such progress regardless of private investments.
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How much % of research today is publicly funded but privately patented? The principle of "public money, public goods" sounds good, until you you start mixing public and private funding. If you make a drug that's based on public research (that costs say, $1B), and then spend another $1B bringing that to market, should anyone be able piggy back off your work and compete against you? Why would anyone want to be the first company to do that? This is basically the exact problem that intellectual property laws are trying to solve.
Your example makes the public money side sound far too good because I promise you the government is not spending even close to $1b on making a single drug. that's like 1/4 of what we spent on all covid research and that was unprecedented.
I don't think that's true. Even a cursory search turns up, as the first response, this:
NIH has received almost $4.9 billion to date to fund important COVID-19 research on diagnostic tests, vaccines, and treatments. More than $940 million came from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in March 2020, with supplemental funding coming from the U.S. Congress .
Edit: I guess that you could argue that it wasn't all for a single drug
You're right - 1/5 more so than 1/4. And yes, it wasn't all for a single drug at all.
I misread your post as meaning there was not more than approximately 250 million spent. Sorry, my mistake.
Covid was different because of the urgency. A nation which gets vaccine first could easily recoup much more than $5B when the rest of the world is closed.
That is bullshit, public spending is really massive here, and this study just looks at investments made by NIH not accounting other governments:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10148199/
The industry might spend more overall, but if you look at typical drugs they are typically publicly funded.
Edit: I think the main point people miss is all the research done by universities that is government funded. MRNA vaccines were made possible by decades of university research based on public funding, the private corporations just came in and did the easy part at the end. Novel medicines are mostly based on such research and hence mostly publicly funded, we would continue to make such progress regardless of private investments.
Interesting, I agree that study seems at first glance to contradict what I am saying. Will look into it further.
This includes amortized spending for failed drugs I think, but so does pharma spending so seems like a fair comparison.