roachboy

matthew--ok so now i am paying attention....its good that you weighed in here. the main argument concerns i.p. law as it pertains to pharmaceuticals--not so much in general, but with reference to the treatments for aids. the article that starts the thread is really quite odd---worht checking out in a way.
the questions that were going back and forth had to do with whether there should be exceptions made to corporate property rights (and profits) for drugs that might treat aids---particularly in africa---on humanitarian grounds so that poor folk can get access. pan sums up the positions.

the cancer research bit was something that for better or worse i brought up to demonstrate a complexity of motive for the researchers that i know--that some who work in the private sector do so out of a desire to help people, and their sense of what they are doing and what should happen with the results runs counter to the for-profit nature of the corporations for which they work.

the question of the "public sphere" relative to research has to do with the curious relation between bodies of research from a variety of institutional sources that form the general base for current research into particular areas and corporate property claims to particular results--there seems to me a disconnect--but my familiarity with the matter is not an every day thing, so i did not think of the question of drug trials. so thanks.
stand corrected in that.

i confess that as an academic cultural worker myself, i have a kind of working suspicion of corporate property claims relative to the accumulation of "knowledge" in the academic public sphere....but i am not naieve about tha public sphere---a different question, different thread.....
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what i think is that "big pharma" can afford exceptions written into i.p. claims to treat epidemic in places like africa.

i see this as an example of capitalist forms being forced to alter their behaviour as a function of political pressure brought to bear on them from outside the arena of profit/loss, property relations, etc. it happens all the time, in almost any corporate sector, this dynamic.

i do not think that the pharma corporations will stop doing research if this happens because first all are diversitified and because second they walk the line between profit and humanitarian motives all the time anyway, and i imagine that they understand the possibility that on occaision they will get shoved from one pole to the other, and that it is to a significant extent the cost of doing business.

so i do not see a problem with altering corporate property claims in a situation like the treatment of aids in africa. the question of how that exception might be written and by which institution is seperate--another set of arguments might be possible about both--as the cliche goes the devil is in the details.

the article tries basically to chicken little the whole matter. i think the article is bullshit (but i said as much earlier)

i could imagine the same argument being repeated with reference to a potential cure for cancer, but that is not the question right now....i would prefer to wait until there is a cure, finish with smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer in celebration, watch the dust settle and then have a version of this debate again, should it come up. and i have to say that it would be a nice debate to be able to have.

i dont see the matter of altering ip law in the case of aids treatments for the poor, for africans, in a situation of epidemic, leading to universal health care in any direct way.

i support univeral health care, btw---but i just dont see the connection here.

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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

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