A technique to repair spinal cords to eliminate paralysis has been proven valid, and now it needs to be proven reliable. The researchers are awaiting a patent so they can raise the billions to test reliability, a and thus achieve that extremely elusive event, science.
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Wait. There are some 3 million people suffering from paralysis on earth, and there would be more if they were not let to die in 3rd world countries. We learn...
The treatment, which was carried out by surgeons in Poland in collaboration with scientists at University College London, involved transplanting cells from Fidyka's nasal cavity into his spinal cord.
Polish doctors? That means they were trained under communism, a system with no IPR. Yet now their work is being co-opted by capitalists who will "monetize" the practice.
I understand there are doctors and there are surgeons, the doctors diagnose and prescribe, but when it comes to cutting people up and changing things around, they call in the "fighter jocks" who do almost nothing but surgery. So who knows who contributed what in the collaboration to the result, but we do now collaboration among the skilled happened, and UK researchers worked with Polish surgeons. I wonder what the Polish surgeons get in compensation? (I hope Cuban doctors are observing.)
What we know: there is a valid treatment to cure paralysis.
We know what was spent to get to that result.
We have no idea what it cost to get to that result, because we have a system in which results are gamed with a view to creating great personal accumulation of wealth defined as personal assets, in this instance the mechanism is IPR. What a result costs is always less than what is spent under the IPR regime.
We can imagine the testing would come faster if no one was working with a view to IPR.
We can imagine the cost of testing for reliability would be less, perhaps dramatically so, if the work was done without and eye to IPR.
They quote they need billions to continue the work. Let's say 3 billion they want to spend, never mind what it may cost. 3 billion dollars divided by 3 million cases is about $1000 per case.
At indigogo and kickstarter people are raising money to get better cheese. How much more so would people kick in to see paraplegics walk?
But we will not go that route. The suffering will continue until asset-less backed credit is used to secure "property" "rights" in a technique that for decades those who control asset-less backed credit can control and monetize who gets what help at what price.
Will a communist country step up and apply one of their few advantages over capitalism and make this cure more, better, cheaper faster? Cuba? Vietnam?
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