Really? Name some. The patent system started in 1790. The FDA didn't exist, thus no expensive trials and safety validation. Medicine was just a bunch of trial and error with no controls.
...opium and extracts for pain relief, cinchona bark for malaria, cloves and clove oil for oral pain relief, I could go on, but you could also Google this.
And the fact that a "patent medicine" is a synonym in history for "snake oil" shows how little scientific rigour patents brought to medicinal development, and how the patent system was initially co-opted to lend an air of legitimacy to quackery.
Penicillin and ether were not covered by patents. Pretty sure those were two of the greatest of all time.
On the patent side you have such modern marvels as OxyContin, which has arguably caused more loss of life than COVID-19.
Patented drugs are generally awful. The idea that it costs $1B to make a game changing drug is a lie. It costs $1T. The US taxpayer pays 99.9%, and the big pharma company spends a billion to generate some shitty subpar derivative that they can then get monopoly protection on and create an artificial racket supported by false marketing.
Average expected years left to live for a Covid death is about 11, prior to having any information on pre-existing conditions. Divide that by 2-3x once you are given pre-existing conditions.
The average Opiod death is 3x that by years alone, and more when going by expected healthspan.
> Patented drugs are generally awful. The idea that it costs $1B to make a game changing drug is a lie. It costs $1T. The US taxpayer pays 99.9%, and the big pharma company spends a billion to generate some shitty subpar derivative that they can then get monopoly protection on and create an artificial racket supported by false marketing.
This number is impossibly wrong. There were 48 new drugs brought to market in 2019. At an average cost of 1 trillion dollar per drug would mean the entire economy of both the U.S. and Europe were devoted to drug research which just isn't true.
