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Date:      Thu, 11 Oct 2001 11:48:19 +0200
From:      Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in>
To:        Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com>
Cc:        Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, cjclark@alum.mit.edu, Salvo Bartolotta <bartequi@neomedia.it>, "P. U. (Uli) Kruppa" <root@pukruppa.de>, freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Use of the UNIX Trademark
Message-ID:  <20011011114819.B17422@lpt.ens.fr>
In-Reply-To: <3BC560CC.265B97BC@mindspring.com>; from tlambert2@mindspring.com on Thu, Oct 11, 2001 at 02:05:16AM -0700
References:  <20011010233539.G83192@lpt.ens.fr> <007f01c15220$a92e4ee0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> <20011011095845.B475@lpt.ens.fr> <3BC560CC.265B97BC@mindspring.com>

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Terry Lambert said on Oct 11, 2001 at 02:05:16:
> > Everything looks easy after someone's done it.  Future breakthroughs
> > will not come from refining the existing drugs and antibiotics, but
> > from some totally new approach like designing proteins/enzymes for
> > specific tasks, genetics, or something nobody has thought of.  Such
> > work goes on mainly in universities, not in the pharmaceutical
> > laboratories.
> 
> Actually, you should go to the IBM site and search for the
> term "blue gene".  IBM is dedicating an incredible amount of
> resources to the protein folding problem, which is almost
> purely a computational problem at this point.

IBM is doing that for computer/technology reasons, not for medical
research.  All leading-edge companies do it, to show what they're
capable of; IBM's last effort was a chess-playing machine which has no
conceivable commercial or social benefit.  If Blue Gene actually
recovers an enzyme structure which would be useful medically, I doubt
IBM would get the patent for it, but you know more than me about that,
I'm sure.

 
> > Medicine should be part of the infrastructure of "public good",
> > like railways and post which have never been successfully privatised.
> 
> ???
> 
> Most of the U.S. railway system has, and remains, privatized.

I said "successfully".  Would you call the US railway system
"successful"?  It's a shambles, and much of the country is not covered
at all.  The British railway system too was privatised 10 years ago,
and it was disastrous; the controlling company, Railtrack, collapsed
very recently.  For a good working railway system, try France.  Even
India has a good solid railway, which doesn't have much frills and is
grossly overstressed, but still does its job.

> FedEx has been explicitly prohibited from carring ordinary
> letters, since it was less expensive than the alternative,
> the government granted monopoly of the U.S. Postal Service.

I doubt very much FedEx would be less expensive.  I know that in India
many smaller courier services are less expensive than the Government's
"speed post" (not FedEx or DHL, though, they're much more expensive);
but none of them even approach the price point of ordinary post; I
don't think they're forbidden from doing so, it's just not
cost-effective for them to deliver to remote places all over the
country.  

In France, too, FedEx and other couriers are more expensive than the
French post's "Chronopost".  Ordinary letters within France cost three
francs, or around 40 cents; I doubt any courier company could approach
that price point.

I don't know what the USPS charges for ordinary letters.  Perhaps the
government granted monopoly of the USPS is merely an inefficient one?

> > Instead, we today have instances of multinationals trying to
> > grab patents on the healing properties of things like turmeric,
> > which have been known for centuries among traditional communities.
> 
> Not patentable: herbs can not be patented; this is why so
> much funded research ignores them entirely: no return on
> investment for investigating them.

You would know about this example if you were from India, or read the
Indian press, where it has been a major issue for a long time.  It is
not the only case; there is a huge catalogue of traditional herbs
whose healing properties have been patented.

Read
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/tur-cn.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/aug/23tur.htm

The turmeric patents were rejected, but only after protracted
litigation, which most developing countries can ill afford.  Other 
patents still exist.


> > Then the countries most affected by this have to go through
> > expensive and time-consuming litigation to try and overthrow
> > the patent.
> 
> That's ridiculous. 

See the above links, again.  For more links, just do a search on
google, for example, for "turmeric patent" or "neem patent".

> Realize, also, that those countries have the same vested
> interest in finding treatment protocols which never actually
> cure the disease, that the U.S. is claimed to have.

Realize, also, that your knowledge of "those countries" is extremely
limited and gleaned from a very selective reading.

R

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