 Somebody, Param asks, I'm not sure if he's from India or it's an Asian currency he's paying in. So he says, why shouldn't COVID patents be removed if it can help countries like India? You know, assume that vaccine production does go up in the next few months because the patent are removed. Why is that a bad thing? So again, because removing patents will not increase vaccine manufacturing or distribution. It helps the elimination of patents helps zero people. There is no evidence. I just want to emphasize why I started off by saying there is no evidence that patents are a blockade or are preventing anyone from getting access to COVID-19 drugs or the vaccines. Now, why do you then, then you could say, well then if there's no evidence of what's the problem, right? Because then just get eliminated. Well, because then you're eliminating vital foundational property rights that are the basis for the vaccines that have been created in the first place and have been distributed. And you're eliminating the property rights that make possible the commercial agreements, the information sharing agreements. But as I mentioned, Biotech has partnered with Pfizer. That partnership was on the foundation of patents because it's property rights that serve the basis, the foundation for all commercial agreements. All agreements that are peaceful and are value producing between people are contractual agreements that are transfers of property interest. And if you eliminate property, then you eliminate the ability to have those types of peaceful, possible, commercial enhancing value enhancing contracts. Absolutely. And you eliminate freedom. I mean, think about the slippery slope, right? Indians also need iPhones. I mean, they really need iPhones. I mean, why shouldn't we just force Apple to license its IP so the Indian manufacturer can stop producing iPhones? Or India needs money. Why don't we redistribute all the money we have in the, again, it's pretty rich still. Couldn't we just redistribute all the money? I mean, need, once you make need the standard. Yes. You're willing to violate property rights even if it's just one time, right? Because the need is great. You've established the precedent that need is the standard and private property rights don't matter. You're done. You're done in terms of freedom. And the other side has always understood this, right? I mean, Mark's understood this, right? Hungry man is not free, right? And, you know, and what the very first thing AOC tweeted when the Biden administration announced that it was supporting its wave reposals, we're going to do insulin next. Because there's always an emergency, right? There's always someone somewhere in the world who's not getting a drug that they quote need, unquote. Insulin, by the way, patent expired a long time ago. So it's in the public domain already. Well, and, you know, and, and the fact that we have massive amounts of insulin is entirely the result of this biotech innovation that was created that was served as the foundation for the company Genentech, the very first actual company that was successful, now a multi-billion dollar biopharmaceutical company that was created on this ability to bioengineer insulin. It's why, but diabetes today is not a death sentence. 30 years ago, if you were diagnosed with diabetes, that was largely a death sentence for you. You would, your life was now measured in decades as an adult or years as a child. It's now today an entirely manageable condition because of patents. Yep. Yep. So why, so, you know, we always get this question, why is insulin so expensive? Yeah, that's a, it's a, another, another, yeah, another, because patents are such the easy go to, you know, whipping boy, the old, you know, term for any problem, you know, for the World Health Organization came out before I get to insulin, just want to mention this, you know, and said, oh, well, the real problem in the developing world is patents. We really have to get rid of patents. By the way, they came out with this statement three years ago. And the current estimate is the World Health Organization has a list of the most essential medicines necessary. You know, the medicines that treat cholera and diphtherias, 95% of them are off patent. 95% of them have zero patents on them whatsoever. So clearly patents are not the reason why these medicines are not getting to people in the developing world, which goes back to my earlier comment about lack of infrastructure and distribution and developing countries. So insulin is a great example, a great example. It's entirely a byproduct of government regulations that controls again. So, so, you know, again, the, if you want to create a competing product to compete against insulin, you have to get FDA approval. And, and, and the FDA holds up the people and prevents people from creating competing products. There's all, you know, because like I said, there's no patent, the patents, Genentech's patent on how to mass produce through bioengineering. Insulin expired years ago, decades ago. So, and so it's, it's largely, you know, a byproduct of regulatory controls. And also it's just a byproduct, you know, it, and it's also in part a byproduct of that it's knowledge and know how that makes it possible to create these things. You can't just all of a sudden say, all right, I want to create it. And I'm going to do it tomorrow. I mean, this is really cutting your stuff. People don't realize these types of treatments, these types of drugs, you know, even EpiPens. I mean, this is really cutting edge technology. These are the, these are Ferraris in the biopharmaceutical context, right? And, you know, and everyone's is going, no one goes around saying, why can't my, a Ferrari cost the amount of a Honda or a Toyota? We all know why, right? We should be recognizing the exact same fact when it comes to medical care. People don't need Ferraris, but they need EpiPens. And, and the funny thing is EpiPens is a good example where there was a competitor, a European competitor and the FDA wouldn't allow them. So, you know, again, it's, it's a barrier to entry the FDA creates, not the market creates. And it's, and all in the EpiPen one is another example where again, like patents got totally blamed for something the patents had nothing to do with. So one of the reasons why EpiPen became so expensive and became so prevalent was because Congress passed a law about 15 years ago mandating that any institution that receives federal funding has to have an epinephrine available in case someone in that, at that location has an allergic reaction. And they used in the statute the word EpiPen. Now, if you're, if you are a recipient of federal funds and a statute says you have to provide epinephrine, it doesn't say epinephrine, it says EpiPen. And you want to make sure you don't lose your federal funds. What's the most risk adverse thing you do? You buy an EpiPen. I mean, and so the federal government basically just created a massive demand for EpiPens. And what happens when you have massive demand? Prices go up. I mean, so it's just another example of just a way in which the government kind of mucked things up on top of the, on top of the regulatory controls, because what you're on side is exactly right. The FDA has also refused, you know, a approval for generic, you know, quote, generic unquote versions of EpiPen to be made available. So is not giving up for me. Here's from India. There's an Indian I'm deeply concerned because my COVID, because the COVID in my country is worse than it was last year. And if, if patients, if patents should be removed, should not be removed, how do we help countries like India to move beyond the pandemic? Licensing agreements, right? I mean, as you said, there's no shortage. Yeah, I mean, so let me, let me emphasize this again. So even before you had the explosion in, in the cases in India, that AstraZeneca had entered into a licensing deal with the serum Institute of India to manufacture its, its, its vaccine. Even, I mean, they are manufacturing the vaccine in India right now as we speak. And, and eliminating the patents doesn't magically produce more vaccines tomorrow to help the people who are currently sick or dying. I mean, if we had, if we had eliminated the regulatory restrictions and the trade restrictions and all the things that prevented India getting access to these, these vaccines before. And by the way, and if India itself had provided reliable and effective patent right protection for biopharmaceutical innovations, because they've been dragged that country kicking and screaming into protecting biopharmaceutical protections. They are one of the world's largest copies of biopharmaceutical industry. They're known as this, they're known as the, actually India is known as the, as the pharmacy of the world. Because they, that's where they just mass produce lots of, lots of generic drugs. You know, that, you know, if they had actually had a system that we, that showed they respected these interests, so perhaps there would have been more people willing beyond just AstraZeneca to license in the country, their know-how and their knowledge and things of that sort. You wouldn't, then you would have had all of the resources already there and ready to go when you had your explosion of cases. Absolutely. I mean, the problem in India is India. The problem in India is lack of property right protection. It's lack of free markets. It's lack of respect for patents. And of course, the fact that you just don't have the manufacturing capabilities to produce, you've got a billion plus people and you don't have the enough manufacturing capabilities to produce all the vaccines. The only part of this that I'm sympathetic is the trade restrictions of restricting India from importing the vaccine. The United States seems to right now have a surplus because we've got a lot of anti-vaxxers in the US who are not going to get vaccinated. So there's massive production in the US that's going nowhere. You could ship it to India. It's expensive, particularly the Pfizer because of the kind of temperatures you would have to hold it, but you could ship it to India. You could fly it to India. That is not happening because of ridiculous trade restrictions that exist all over the world. So if you want to complain about something, complain about the trade issues and complain about your own government, your own government not providing the kind of property right protections that you would need to ramp up production. And I want to also emphasize that this is always the problem with, well, this is an emergency. We'll eliminate the rights in this instance to immediately address this problem. So let's say, assume like this would magically lead to people getting vaccines tomorrow, which it wouldn't in India. But as Iran and I talked about, there's always an emergency somewhere. And the signal that you've just sent to every producer and innovator is the moment that we have pushed enough by someone that there is an emergency need somewhere that their rights will no longer be respected. Their response is, understandably, I'm not going to produce it. Why should I spend over two and a half billion dollars, 10 to 15 years of tens of thousands of innovative productive hours trying to come up with cures for hepatitis, treatments for diabetes. These are, by the way, now manageable conditions that were death sentences. If they're just going to be stolen from me the moment someone needs it, unquote. What we need today, what I called a new intellectual would be any man or woman who is willing to think. Meaning any man or woman who knows that man's life must be guided by reason, by the intellect, not by feelings, wishes, wins or mystic revelations. Any man or woman who values his life and who does not want to give in to today's cult of despair, cynicism and impotence, and does not intend to give up the world to the dark ages and to the role of the collectivist roads. All right, before we go on, reminder, please like the show. We've got 163 live listeners right now. 30 likes. That should be at least 100. 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