walk away from 7 billion dollars to do the right thing?
Wouldja?
- Thread starter baddog25
- Start date
walk away from 7 billion dollars to do the right thing?
I’ll never put a price on being able to sleep at night.
This is a big croc. The cost of getting a patent is thousands of dollars. The BILLIONS of dollars you seem to beassociating with being lost, are the actual millions spent researching to find something that works. Even if he had gotten a patent, that has nothing to do with the conscious decisions of who pays now and do you try to recoup the millions spent so that you can respend them on a new drug.walk away from 7 billion dollars to do the right thing?
He spent other people's money, and NO DOUBT, whoever manufactured it charged people for it. Dr. Salk just didn't take a penny per dose made, which in the end would not have mattered.
See how easily people can bullshit themselves?
Once I realized how easily, and completely, people can rationalize and justify their behavior, I could understand how EVERY inhumanity has ever occurred... EVER. Slavery, genocide, murder, torture, you name it. Every incident of man's inhumanity to man- our ability to dehumanize each other- has been totally rationalized by the perpetrator.
We're barely out of the jungle, and it wouldn't take much to get back.
Maybe it's not so much about the numbers as it is about the idea of selflessness.
What!?
Are you actually arguing that the difference in price between a patented polio vaccine and an unpatented version is very low - like a penny per dose?
If Salk patented it, that would have given him the exclusive right to prevent anyone else in the U.S. from importing it, making it, or selling it - for 17 years. The amount he could have charged for a license to his patent would have been astronomical.
walk away from 7 billion dollars to do the right thing?
He could've still patented it and chosen not to make $7 billion from it.
He could've controlled licensing, etc. and still facilitated low cost distribution.
I agree. That’s probably what I would have done. I’ll license if for free, but somebody first buy me a nice house and 40 acres near Yellowstone.
Seems to me that he could have arranged it in such a way so as to allow him to live a comfortable life without having to work but at the same time have the vaccine widely available. Maybe he wouldn't be a billionare but he would have gotten ahead.
While I applaud the selfless action I also feel like the meme presents a false choice between $7 billion or $0.
While I applaud the selfless action I also feel like the meme presents a false choice between $7 billion or $0.
I think the OP is asking: would you walk away from an opportunity to make money off of something you made/discovered that benefits society as a whole? (in this case health) For you sociopathic ones on here I'm sure it's difficult to understand the question.
Polio vaccine is for pussies. **** you fascists trying to inject your Bill Gates microbots in my body to make me a fruit loop flag waving gun hating fruit cake like the rest of you. Not in my America you won't!
After the Cutter Incident he was probably just hoping to escape liability for the deaths and paralysis so he just washed his hands of it all???
Didn't see this post before I started typing mine but I think we're on the same page here. The idea of $7 billion or nothing is a rather false choice.
Soldiers and police face violent deaths on behalf of society and no one thinks them selfish for taking a salary. He might not max out his money but he could take some money for it and keep the cost low.
Apparently that might be a crime today. He probably got some public money. Making it available to all prevents the politicians from awarding the rights to their donors so they can make a, um, killing by extorting people for life-saving meds.walk away from 7 billion dollars to do the right thing?
Yup. Or maybe a small royalty to set his family up financially for future generations. The amount wouldn't have had to be huge or even really noticeable to the end-patient cost. The volumes were huge.
But he acted nobly either way. We're just splitting hairs here.
Fortunately, he was better than that.
I'd rather follow his example than strain for ways to oppose his example.
Your soldier/cop example really doesn't fit. I assume Salk had an income while developing his vaccine. Nobody is asking him to give that back. But when he had the idea, he didn't withhold it.
In our country, people who had little or nothing to with developing an idea think they should be able to own it and profit from it. It's a very different mindset.
I don't oppose his example at all. But I'm pointing out that he could have made some money in a very morally acceptable manner that hurt no one.
What you say sounds OK at first blush, but it's still holding lifesaving knowledge for ransom.
No approach that holds lifesaving knowledge for ransom can be called moral. Legal, maybe. Smart, maybe. Moral, no.
Yes. But the meme uses a number, hoping the unthinking masses won’t challenge it.
Given that the vaccine is going to be produced by private companies who are going to profit off of it anyways I would hardly call that holding it for ransom. I would call that making sure that you get a small cut of the money they are going to rake in.
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