Warp wrote:
>   I can understand why an American would be surprised about such a thing,
> even though I'm a bit surprised they would be surprised (tautology not
> intended).

Because some things take a huge amount of resource to develop yet are 
relatively inexpensive to manufacture. Why would I spend 20 years developing 
a cure for cancer if the actual cost of manufacturing the final drug is $10 
a dose? That's kind of exactly what patents are aimed at: encouraging 
development by protecting the profits long enough to pay back the R&D.

It just seems like it would be bad for business. Worse than the cluster-fk 
that's the current American patent system? Hard to say. But we already have 
things like substances which are very cheap and *seem* to do very well at 
curing a wide variety of cancers inexpensively that nobody is researching 
because you can't earn back the research costs by selling it.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Insanity is a small city on the western
   border of the State of Mind.

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