Calling for ‘ethical pharmaceuticals,’ two professors have "devised a way to invent new medicines and get them to market at a fraction of the cost charged by big drug companies," enabling use in poor countries to cure infectious diseases and potentially slashing government expenditures on medicine. By altering the molecular structure of an existing, expensive drug they turn it technically into a new medicine, not under patent control, that can be made and sold cheaply. (Guardian)
Io Urania!
(That means Three Cheers for Science!”)
This is such a huge breakthrough! The pharmaceutical industry’s economic stranglehold that reserves cures for those who can afford them until the patent runs out has supposedly been the only reason new medical technology is discovered at all (because the process is so expensive). But the families of the folks left to die on the altar of Free Enterprise have been waiting for researchers who still consider medicine a profession