Considering how much of their research and development costs are funded by grants from governments, I’d say just get rid of private pharmaceutical companies entirely if they can’t play nice.

Give them a choice. No drug revenue at all, or any paradigm-changing drugs get their license bought out cheap.

They either go out of business entirely, and governments and academic institutions take over the work (so so much of it is paid with grants anyway, I don’t think pharma companies should keep any profits unless they fund 100% of the r&d for it, which they won’t), or they agree to sell the patents that can literally change the trajectory of a society for a fair “this is the actual amount of work we put into it plus 200% to make it worth doing.”

If they can’t be happy with that, the default option is they get to do nothing so..

But again, the profit motive of big pharma leads us to places like the opioid crisis, side effects that aren’t disclosed or even fully studied, etc. and I don’t think we should be trusting drug development to for-profit companies, at least not without much much better protections for patients and much more stringent requirements on proof of efficacy and safety.

My adhd says this is a lie. If I’m not good at something the first time, I’m bad at it and there’s nothing I can do about that. Ever.

(Yes I know my brain lies to me, but it also takes shortcuts which directly lead to failure, so it isn’t entirely wrong, just right for the wrong reasons.. and when it doesn’t take shortcuts it gets stuck in the planning loop and never progresses, because then it might fail..)

Edit: wait. Wait. I understand the point of this post now.. damnit.

What are they doing with the heavy metals? Building a new society? Can I join? I can probably collect a lot of heavy things.

So.. semi-serious question here.. if he’s so concerned about other-substance “bars” being “drug dens”, would he prefer the drugs were used openly on the streets with people ODing in full view of children or what..? Because that might not be part of why we have bars for alcohol, but it sure is a nice side-effect..