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Originally Posted by willravel
With Abbott, when they heard that the patent was going to be broken, they pulled arthritis, blood pressure and even AIDS medicines from the Thai market. That's not valuing the dollar, that's an act of vengeance. It would be easy to say that Abbott was afraid that they were worried that their other patents would be broken, but why would a government need to break a patent on arthritis medication?
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It definitely sounds like there was a little bit of vengeance in that decision. The ideal reaction wouldn't include the removal of a drug that the Thai government hadn't already stolen. But then, in this situation, I'm not sure I can blame them all that much for acting less than ideally - large-scale robbery does tend to raise tempers.
And without treading too much onto a slippery slope argument - the Thai government already decided that it's okay to break patents in response to exorbitant prices, what's the remaining unshakeable moral principle that prevents them from breaking patents for expensive prices? premium prices? more-than-dirt-cheap prices? Is the arthritis patent really perfectly safe?
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BTW, ethics aren't relative.
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I agree. And businesses that can afford to contribute to effective charities or lower huge prices without endangering the bottom line should do so. Companies that can and don't, have room for ethical growth.
But as for governments that compel businesses to attain this level of ethics through patent-breaking or punitive fines or what have you... I don't consider those governments very ethical, either. I place them on the same level as governments who would arrest adults for binge drinking or risky sexual practices - they're busybody governments, sticking the legal nose where it doesn't belong. To some extent - and what extent? therein lies the debate - governments should allow both citizens and businesses to behave unethically. Otherwise, we've got the incoherent notion of liberty as "the freedom to do that which is right", and I had enough of that idea at Hillsdale, thankyouverymuch.
'Course, public funding for pharmaceutical research just mucks it all up...