Patent Expires On Best Selling Drug of All Time

First, kudos for keeping the discussion civil.

I disagree with some of your points, though. Specifically:

You _do_ realize that animals have lived on this planet millions of years without "paying" anyone. The universe provides everything you need to exist

Animals (including humans) spend a lot of time "subsisting". That is, chronically hungry or malnourished. Animals left to their own devices generally consume everything that they can, build up a large population, and then starve back to a more sustainable population. Healthy populations of animals tend to be healthy because some predator is culling the sick and old and generally keeping the numbers down. I don't think you want to look to the animal kingdom as any kind of a model for humans.

I'm sorry but EVERYONE has the right to life, regardless of the cost.

Everyone has the right not to have their life taken away, but no one has a right to unlimited, state-of-the-art healthcare. Money is just a way to quantify resources, and we don't have the resources to give everyone all the healthcare that they want, when they want it. You have to ration it. Different countries take different approaches. In the US, we have 3 different systems of healthcare and so we see wait lists, prioritization (like for organ transplants), restricted availability, and of course dollars. In some countries, they use restricted availability, age limits for certain procedures, and wait lists. And these are the rich countries. The point is, you have to mete out the health care somehow, and while it seems cold to say, "sorry, you can't afford it," I think it also sounds cold to say, "sorry, you are too old to have a kidney transplant." I'm not sure what the right balance is, but I'm willing to discuss it - but I think it is completely incorrect to say that everyone has a right to healthcare - I think that's more of a laudable goal, or an ideal to strive for, but not a right. You do have a right to die, though:)

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/Ga3OnTFUnR0/patent-expires-on-best-selling-drug-of-all-time

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