[lbo-talk] Dumb QOTD: What kind of labor produces intellectual property?

[Wojtek S]

I am talking about Africa, not the US.  Several years ago I attended a
UN sponsored conference on indigenous development in Africa, and it
apparently is a big problem for Africans.  This is at least what I
heard.  I also understand that they are organizing themselves to fight
back - but this is not really my field, so I am not sure what the
current status of this is.  However, judging from general nastiness
and destructiveness of neoliberalism one may think that it is not
good.

I am fully with you regarding public ownership of biotechnology - and
for that matter, banking, infrastructure, key industries,
communications and anything else of considerable public value.  It
worked - there is proven track record of it.  Neliberalism does not.

Wojtek

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 2:11 PM, Somebody Somebody <philos_case at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Wojtek:  If patents could be used that way, some really big bads - like destruction of traditional medicine by big pharma, could be avoided...
>
>
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> Somebody: What traditional medicine has been destroyed? People can still go to acupuncturists, faith healers, herb retailers, and homeopathic specialists. And they do. As a matter of fact, FDA unregulated alternative medicine like this is itself big business: over $30 billion is spent on the stuff per year in the U.S.
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> I'm glad Cuba, for example, has invested in pharmaceuticals and biotechnology without relying upon the same level of intellectual property rights as the West. We should be advocating more public control and investment in pharmaceuticals, not their replacement by untested remedies from the pre-scientific era. For example, state-owned pharmaceutical firms would invest much more in vaccines and treatments for infectious diseases common to tropical nations and less on life-style drugs for impotence and unsatisfactory eyelash development.
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