How stupid could I be? For goodness sakes

[EC]

I just figured out this argument on Stem Cell...The Republicans are so in the pockets of big pharma...this is about Patent control...any cures found with government funding would belong to us, the government...but any cures found by private corps would be under their patents...How did I miss that?

[Az]

1. GOP plays both sides of that fence

They play the fundamentalist appeal game as well as the woo the Big Pharma game. They love it when an issue can be played to the beat of both their masters.

[sandnsea]

2. That it would work that way

No, even government funded research ends up patented and licensed to a pharmaceutical for treatment. We already fund a ton of research, and you've never had someone tell you a new medication was cheap because a government grant was behind its discovery.

We are bamboozled up down over and under by the corporatists.

[Th1onein]

3. You've got that exactly right.

Our tax dollars pay for the research and we license it to the big pharmas and they charge us for it, all the while pretending that they did the work themselves. Yep, we're screwn.

[TahitiNut]

4. Think about how much big pharma makes on diseases like diabetes.

... TREATMENT without cure ... it's the golden foie gras.