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October 17, 2001, Jeff Smith
Bayer is a German company that has promised they can supply
adequate amounts of their drug Cipro at a price of around $350 per month for
treatment. This is a new drug that
has just recently been developed, and treats Anthrax a little better than
penicillin. Because of the patent
that Bayer holds on the drug, generic drugs which do the same thing for a
fraction of the cost (about $10 per month for treatment) are illegal in this
country until Bayer’s patent expires.
Tom Daschle, in a panic after his office was attacked, has
proposed legislation to suspend the German company’s patent rights in this
country until our current Anthrax situation is over. Allowing Americans access to cheaper generic drugs.
Patent rights exist so that companies are ensured
temporary, total rights over the profits of a new product that they have
developed. This ensures that
Research and Development costs are recuperated and profits can be made.
Because of this basic right, R&D efforts yield nations great
technological advances, and tend to separate the developed country’s from the
less developed country’s.
The minute patent protections are eliminated, companies
will not be able to recuperate R&D costs, and technological progress will
stop.
What does this mean? It
means we’ll never develop alternative fuel vehicles or a cure for aids or
continue our progress toward beating cancer because the losses that any company
would face in developing new technologies, services, or medicines, would drive
them out of business.
No American company is stupid enough to pursue any course
of action, and only our politicians are ignorant enough to suggest such ideas.
Politicians are the only people who lack the foresight enough to not
understand that the denial of the ability to turn a profit on a good means that
that good will cease to be offered.
Clinton’s legacy left us with 8 years of crisis after
crisis. We are now facing a war
that has been waged against us, and the crisis mentality has been engraved in
our minds. The time will come when
the crisis’ will be over, and life will be back to a new normal.
At that time, if we have subverted the law in an attempt to fix things,
when an even greater crisis comes to us (and one surely will), we will be much
less prepared to handle it than we are this one.
Daschle’s proposal is ignorant.
September 11, 2001
Never Forget
God Bless America
I Pledge Allegiance
To the Flag
Of the United States of America
And to the Republic
For which it Stands
One Nation
Under God
Indivisible
With Liberty
And Justice
For All