[ExI] medical marijuana

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

2010/7/15 darren shawn greer <dgreer_68 at hotmail.com>


>   I got malaria and nearly died. If I had seen a doctor prior to making
> the switch, he or she would almost have certainly checked my itinerary
> before putting me on a new drug.
>

### Indeed. While having experts (especially experts chosen through a
bureaucracy) assume control should never be mandatory, there are good
reasons to ask experts for advice voluntarily.

---------------------------


>
> Also, some medications don't treat symptoms but underlying causes. HIV
> medications are a good example. Reverse transcriptease inhibitors, protease
> inhibitors, fusion inhibitors all interfere with cellular reproduction of
> the virus. Sometimes it takes several different kinds at once to effectively
> reduce viral loads, and you only know if it's working by having regular CD4
> and viral load counts. All of these drugs have resistance issues, and it is
> preferable to know about them before you become symptomatic, which with this
> disease is always a dangerous proposition. This also requires lab testing.
> In addition, some herbal medications, such as St. John's Wart, inhibit
> uptake of anti-virals into the body through the liver. This field changes so
> rapidly that even specialized doctors who attend conferences constantly find
> it hard to keep up. General practitioners often don’t even bother to try and
> refer patients to infectious disease clinics instead. Some diseases are very
> complex, and require specialized physicians to treat patients. It is often
> not enough to just take a pill. I see making certain drugs available without
> a prescription hazardous in terms of the health of the general population.
> This could create viruses such as HIV with a higher profile of resistance at
> time of sero-conversion because of wide-spread misuse of medications due to
> ignorance of the science involved.
>

### Here we have another case where the absence of effective private
property protection results in social harm. Since inventors of anti-viral
drugs have only a limited period of patent protection, they have a lower
incentive to oversee and restrict their use so as to extend their
effectiveness. In addition, illegally produced drugs, and larcenous
government intervention reduce the price the inventors can charge, further
reducing the incentive to protect the effectiveness of a drug.

A socially progressive solution would be of course to have unlimited
duration of universally binding patent protection on all new drugs, without
any price restrictions imposed by illegitimate third parties (governments).
In this way inventors would have the incentive and the financial resources
to achieve most extensive and persistent use of their drugs. In addition,
inventing drugs would be more lucrative, increasing the amount of capital
investment in drug research, increasing their supply.

Rafal
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