Quoting someone anonymous, and claiming that their information is even close to factual is poor reporting on you’re part.

You’re also misinterpreting the issues, trying to spin it to suid you’re biases.

The article you qoute (the unnamed article), talks about the cost and ability to do DRUG TESTING, as opposed to drug patents. It says the entry cost for testing is lower blah blah.

You spin this to mean that, this idea can be applied to what is admitted to be expensive and risky drug development.

Drug development and drug testing are two TOTALLY different things.

As the artile you quote says, it costs vast sums of money to develop drugs, and make the approval system (FDA and such) BEFORE ANY outside testing or human testing can be carried out.

That cost in development is not mitigated by testing by third parties, those thier parties according to you DO NOT develop drugs, they do not have the resources to do so.

They only test after the drug has been developed and in-house testing and passed through FDA (type) approval processes. That is the expensive part.

And that is the part that does not, and will not occur unless that drug development company has some form of protection on their IP. (the cost of drug development and approval).

All the effective, and good modern drugs these days are and have to be developed by large and well funded institutions. It’s high risk, they can spend billions on a drug and it may not work or may not achieve FDA approval. this is a risk the third party testers to not have. That and the zero development and approval costs mean a cheaper market entry cost.

But that says nothing about the cost and work necessary to get the drug to the human testing state that you speak about.

If what you try to claim is correct, (and it’s not), then countries like india would be the world leaders in modern drug development.
Not the US with it’s patent system on drugs.

Why cant you patent DOING SOMETHING with genes, as opposed to the genes themselves. Many inventions are defived from natural products, things nature produce, if you do something inventive or develop a new method to use that material (genes, wood, water, steam, mud, grass….) then you have every right to apply for and receive a patent for that.

Just because something is ‘natural’ does not automatically stop it from being applied in new and innovative and inventive ways. And receiving patents for it.

If for example, you work out that snake venom and water mixed in a special (proprietary way) creates rocket fuel you have every right to patent the “A method of creating rocket fuel using snake venom and water”

All natural, just like Asprin it’s a drug, it’s patented and it’s naturally occuring. The invention is finding out that if you eat a tiny amount of it you’re headache goes away.

What’s the difference between wood, water, asprin, or DNA ? none. It’s what you do with it and how you do it that matters.