The Science of Communicating & Marketing Your Business

That makes sense, create drugs that can help people and then charge so much they can't afford them. Big pharma and the US government usually always have problems whenever breaking a patent is the topic of discussion.

Not a no-brainer to me. Big pharma spends millions and millions on R&D. They jump through hoop after hoop to get permission to sell their product. They develop drugs that result in saving thousands, possibly millions of lives. Then the public complains that the drug prices are too steep and others should be allowed to make generics, undermining the profitability of big pharma R&D. But the less the profitability of big pharma R&D, the lower the incentive to do more R&D on drugs that save lives.

Worse, the incentive moves to do R&D in areas where laws and regulations will not limit profits. In medicine, many of the most skilled doctors gravitate out of internal medicine and hospital employment toward niche practices or cosmetic surgery where they will make the most profit for their skills. With big pharma, weight loss pills and impotency pills are more profitable because no one is clamoring for generics. So that's where the R&D money goes. Curing cancer is nice and all, but is any company going to be able to turn a profit on that before competitors are allowed to produce generics and undercut them? That's a no brainer.

And don't think for a second that discount drugs sent to Brazil won't make it back to the US. There is too great an opportunity there to turn a profit. And it's all about the profit. Perhaps the generics producers are the vampires and the big pharma R&D is the cattle.

Pray for cancer cures, but invest in Viagra or Cialis.

Interesting points, WindKiller, although my confusion on this issue lies elsewhere. There should be a post, Compulsory Licenses for Big Pharma Patents - Responding to WindKiller's Comment available about noonET, 18 Sept 07 that contains more of my thoughts on the subject.
And thanks for reading. - Joseph