At TCSDaily, Michael Rosen examines the "take back the commons" movement in the context of biotech. He finds:

On the whole, then, while the commons movement raises important concerns surrounding the patenting of life, its criticisms are exaggerated and its proposed reforms, in overlooking the benefits that the market motive provides, threaten to stifle innovation. Yet another reason patenting life is morally justified.

In a recent article in the Milken Institute Review, Tomas Philipson and Anupam Jena, two University of Chicago scholars, examined the particular case of HIV/AIDS drugs. They found that the miraculous life-extending and -enhancing medicines developed by, yes, large pharmaceutical companies since 1980 will have bestowed $1.4 trillion in value upon all past, present, and future people infected with HIV/AIDS. This number involves a calculation of the value of a given year of life (Philipson, an economist, can be forgiven for such a sanguine computation), multiplied by the numbers of years the drugs have extended lives, multiplied by the number of people who have been, are, or will be infected with the virus.

Astoundingly, though, in their estimation, drug companies will receive only $63 billion in profits over the lifetimes of their pharmaceuticals. While this number is large in absolute terms, it represents only 5% of the total value these corporations provide. In other words, the world as a whole -- the commons, as it were -- derives 95% of the utility created by private companies. This staggering data flies in the face of those like Bollier who find the root of most evils in multinational corporations.

posted by James DeLong @ 11:11 AM | Access: Commons, Fair Use, Orphan Works, Public Domain

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