New owners of eBaum's World fire ebaum and his staff • Hacker News Board

Re: New owners of eBaum's World fire ebaum and his staff

#71

Post by anamax » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 10:17 PM UTC

redrobot5050 wrote: post #70

gravitycop wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we are seeing new antibiotics. Largely because of the costs of FDA regulation compliance, it costs ~$1-2 billion to develop the average new drug. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmaceutical_industry#The_cos... How many potential drugs, each year, have not been developed, because of the difference between that cost and the potential cost in a zero-regulation environment? Thousands? Millions?

A better question would be "How many potential drugs have not been developed because they cannot be patented?" Oh, and a zero regulation environment? There's always going to be liability for "your drug killed people". In a zero regulation environment that cost is going to be incredibly high. Or your placebo drug is going to CAUSE economic damage by killing productive workers. Your model of regulation/no-regulation is…

> A better question would be "How many potential drugs have not been developed because they cannot be patented?"

It depends on why they couldn't be patented. There's a nasty interaction between regulatory delay and patent terms starting at application which means that drugs that don't have huge markets don't get developed, but I'm pretty sure that you're not referring to those.

Let me guess - you think that there are substances which are unpatentable because they fail the novelty test but have great utility as drugs. If said utility is newly discovered, that satisfies the novelty test. If said utility is "folk medicine", then the only thing stopping anyone from selling them as drugs is the regulatory testing costs.... (Drugs don't have to be patented.)

Re: New owners of eBaum's World fire ebaum and his staff

#72

Post by anamax » Mon, Feb 02, 2009, 10:23 PM UTC

redrobot5050 wrote: post #68

anamax wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we get Food and Drugs that are safe? Nope. We get blockbuster drugs, after a long delay, and that's about it. As to their safety.... We're not seeing new antibiotics. Feel free to explain why Viagra is more profitable than a new antibiotic. (Profit = revenues - costs, so the argument should consider both revenues and costs.) > Notice that regional banks like BB&T, United Bank, and PNC -- non-investment banks, didn'…

>We're not seeing new antibiotics. Feel free to explain why Viagra is more profitable than a new antibiotic. Because of the same market forces you're arguing for. And we are seeing new antibiotics. SARS, for example, didn't kill everyone. Although as a side-effect, the drug used to treat SARS killed all their living bone marrow. So developing a curative anti-biotic that germs aren't already resistant to, that doesn't…

>>Huh? Somewhere north of $2 Trillion is being pissed away because of govt regulatory failures and you think that my money is safe?

> Again, Investment Banks != Deposit Account Banks. If you were investing in a mutual fund, there was risk.

Who said anything about mutual funds and investments? The financial mess was in regulated institutions. We've pissed about $1 trillion into them so far and are about to pass a $1 trillion "stimulus" package.

It was the regulators who put tax incentives on banks holding Fannie and Freddie stock, which put many of them under when that govt created house of cards collapsed.

> The CRA allows the bank to lend to people who otherwise couldn't get loans.

No, that's not what the CRA does. The CRA "encourages" banks to make certain kinds of loans. Banks were free to make those loans without the encouragement but weren't, hence the "need" for a law.

The article that I linked to is one example of how the CRA is used to "encourage" banks to play ball. It gave "activists" a tool for blocking unrelated banking activity.

Re: New owners of eBaum's World fire ebaum and his staff

#73

Post by redrobot5050 » Tue, Feb 03, 2009, 1:03 AM UTC

anamax wrote: post #72

redrobot5050 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We're not seeing new antibiotics. Feel free to explain why Viagra is more profitable than a new antibiotic. Because of the same market forces you're arguing for. And we are seeing new antibiotics. SARS, for example, didn't kill everyone. Although as a side-effect, the drug used to treat SARS killed all their living bone marrow. So developing a curative anti-biotic that germs aren't already resistant to, that doesn't…

>>Huh? Somewhere north of $2 Trillion is being pissed away because of govt regulatory failures and you think that my money is safe? > Again, Investment Banks != Deposit Account Banks. If you were investing in a mutual fund, there was risk. Who said anything about mutual funds and investments? The financial mess was in regulated institutions. We've pissed about $1 trillion into them so far and are about to pass a $1 t…

Still waiting on a URL detailing how...

Re: New owners of eBaum's World fire ebaum and his staff

#74

Post by redrobot5050 » Tue, Feb 03, 2009, 1:05 AM UTC

anamax wrote: post #71

redrobot5050 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better question would be "How many potential drugs have not been developed because they cannot be patented?" Oh, and a zero regulation environment? There's always going to be liability for "your drug killed people". In a zero regulation environment that cost is going to be incredibly high. Or your placebo drug is going to CAUSE economic damage by killing productive workers. Your model of regulation/no-regulation is…

> A better question would be "How many potential drugs have not been developed because they cannot be patented?" It depends on why they couldn't be patented. There's a nasty interaction between regulatory delay and patent terms starting at application which means that drugs that don't have huge markets don't get developed, but I'm pretty sure that you're not referring to those. Let me guess - you think that there are…

Well, yes, there are anti-cancer medications that have been used in clinical trials with great results, but fail the novelty test. If something is an OTC generic with an expired patent, its a little hard to get the genie out of the bottle. As long as they're not strictly encouraging the purpose of drug purchase to treat the "novel" discover, its legal, even if they copy your "applicator", dosage information, etc.

The big scramble to re-purpose drugs is while they're still patented by one manufacturer. Once someone like Mylan is manufacturing it as a generic, doing research for "novel" forms is only helping your competition.

Re: New owners of eBaum's World fire ebaum and his staff

#75

Post by randallsquared » Tue, Feb 03, 2009, 2:54 AM UTC

likpok wrote: post #47

randallsquared wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot steal anything with Bittorrent. Stealing necessarily involves the previous owner being a previous owner, but Bittorrent and other copying methods don't remove the item from the owner. Refusing to let someone get their files from a computer is more like stealing (though since the computer itself is rightfully owned by the new owners of ebaumsworld, it's certainly arguable that it's just rude, not stealing).…

Downloading a file with bittorrent (lets assume a illegal one) is copyright infringement , which is illegal, and still a crime. One issue is that most copyright infringement cases these days are civil rather than criminal , but the criminal proceedings do exist.

I'm not arguing that it's not copyright infringement. I'm arguing that it's not theft.

Re: New owners of eBaum's World fire ebaum and his staff

#76

Post by anamax » Thu, Feb 05, 2009, 5:40 PM UTC

redrobot5050 wrote: post #74

anamax wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A better question would be "How many potential drugs have not been developed because they cannot be patented?" It depends on why they couldn't be patented. There's a nasty interaction between regulatory delay and patent terms starting at application which means that drugs that don't have huge markets don't get developed, but I'm pretty sure that you're not referring to those. Let me guess - you think that there are…

Well, yes, there are anti-cancer medications that have been used in clinical trials with great results, but fail the novelty test. If something is an OTC generic with an expired patent, its a little hard to get the genie out of the bottle. As long as they're not strictly encouraging the purpose of drug purchase to treat the "novel" discover, its legal, even if they copy your "applicator", dosage information, etc. The…

> If something is an OTC generic with an expired patent, its a little hard to get the genie out of the bottle.

Umm, that's an argument against regulation. Regulation is imposing a cost that can't be recovered.

Note that the initial testing established "safe" (for some definition of "safe"), so any regulation-required testing is mostly for efficacy.

Re: New owners of eBaum's World fire ebaum and his staff

#77

Post by redrobot5050 » Mon, Feb 09, 2009, 2:20 PM UTC

anamax wrote: post #76

redrobot5050 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes, there are anti-cancer medications that have been used in clinical trials with great results, but fail the novelty test. If something is an OTC generic with an expired patent, its a little hard to get the genie out of the bottle. As long as they're not strictly encouraging the purpose of drug purchase to treat the "novel" discover, its legal, even if they copy your "applicator", dosage information, etc. The…

> If something is an OTC generic with an expired patent, its a little hard to get the genie out of the bottle. Umm, that's an argument against regulation. Regulation is imposing a cost that can't be recovered. Note that the initial testing established "safe" (for some definition of "safe"), so any regulation-required testing is mostly for efficacy.

I agree. However, governments, who have a mandate for public welfare, can fund the medical/clinical trials for OTC generics. Countries with socialized medical systems are already doing that.

Combine that with the headstart of stem cell research the UK and Germany has, and we'll like see some cost-saving medical breakthroughs coming out of that part of the world in the next 3-5 years.