[Gllug] seti

Adam Bower abower at thebowery.co.uk
Sun Jan 5 21:28:52 UTC 2003


On Sun, Jan 05, 2003 at 08:24:29PM +0000, Nix wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Jan 2003, Adam Bower moaned:
> > Just a warning but some of the distributed drug/cancer finding software is
> > being run by private companies who will be taking out patents on their research
> > so that they can sell the results. You may therefore unwittingly be helping out
> > people who will make money from this and you will get nothing, and then if you
> > get cancer in the future be having to pay for the drugs you helped researched
> > (or even discovered) for you treatment. 
> 
> Do you have any idea how expensive the drug creation / clinical trial
> process is, and what percentage of candidate drugs make it?

When they are using your computer and telling you that its for the good of 
humanity thus reducing their costs and making something that you may not have
access to in the future but you may have discovered it is a little unpleasant.
Of course I am aware of the costs involved, but usually they have to buy their
own computers to run their simulations on. 

> This is one place where the patent system, while unpleasant, is arguably
> *necessary*. Drug creation is *so* expensive that even *with* patent rights
> big pharma companies can be driven to the edge of bankruptcy fairly easily.

Please don't misunderstand, this was not anything to do with the rights and
wrongs of patents, it is to do with you thinking you are helping out "for the
good of humanity" but you are in fact perhaps helping to take something away
from people without actually knowing it. I don't actually care if people run
the client or not, its nothing to do with me, just I find it a little
distasteful that people are using something that people are giving freely
(cputime) to make something that they are hoping to profit from (drugs) without
making it very clear.

Adam
-- 
"Step away from the Cathedral, This Bazaar is loaded"
jabberid = quinophex at jabber.earth.li

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