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Does Pharma Really Need Patents?
Techdirt
English - April 27, 2017 19:54 - 53 minutes - 73.4 MB - ★★★★★ - 48 ratingsTechnology entrepreneurship business interview health leadership productivity comedy news politics music Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Previous Episode: The Evolution Of The Office
Next Episode: The Surveillance State
It doesn't take many stories of people suffering due to unaffordable medicine to make you question the state of pharmaceutical patents, but the arguments in their defense are loud and frequent. Most are variations on the same theme: without the promise of a monopoly, important drugs would never be researched and developed. But does this argument truly hold up? It's come up as a tangent in previous episodes of the podcast, but this week we're dedicating a full episode to questioning the popular defenses of pharma patents and looking for a better way forward.