Professor Posner
I haven't read the comments for the orphan drugs and their patent protection yet,so please excuse me if these comments are redundant.First,re 'Viagra vs anti cancer drugs,I feel Americans are much more likely to spend money for wants vs. needs.(I realize that's not a profound statement,but patients feel extorted when they have to pay for medications;much more so than even gasoline.).It may be they feel they have no choice and that fuels their resentment.
Secondly,there has been literature for about 5 years about Viagra's use for toddlers with right sided heart failure.iIbelieve there was an article in the WSJ in late October about it.It literally is a life saver.(Of course,we were snickering about the effects of high dose Vigara when the males reach 12-13 years old .I don't know the trade name the sildenafil is marketed under when used for pediatric/cardiac purposes.
Finally,my thanks to you and your partner for having us as guests on your site.

Judge Posner,
One more comment.There was a classic sci-fi short story encapsulating plague,economic and emotional costs and choosing between bad choices.Its title is "The Cold Equations".If you would like to read it,I'll send you a copy.and I'd recommend it to people who think there's always an easy answer..

Except If Bill Gates were the only victim, the Orphan Drug Act would not be necessary, because Bill Gates has enough money for there to be an incentive for companies to research and develop cures and treatments for whatever genetic defects he has. Buying into such a self-serving hypothetical obfuscates what would happen if the Orphan Drug Act were repealed. (I don't recall Bill Gates being mentioned in the WSJ article.)

Most who benefit from it now simply do not have the money to afford any cures or treatments for their illnesses. There is no profit motive for pharmacuetical companies to invest in R&D without the Orphan Drug Act. If the Act is repealed, the market collapses, the government funding goes toward other stuff -- not necessarily related to cures or treatments for any diseases -- and investors who put equity into the manufacturers of cures and treatments for the rare diseases will take their money elsewhere, e.g., they will invest in porn.

The end result is people with rare diseases -- NOT BILL GATES -- left without treatment or cures for their diseases, and no guarantee of any benefits on the other side of the scale.

That you ignore that is not a preference for an economic perspective over a utilitarian one; it's simply a failure to include all of the costs of repealing the Act. That is, as one commenter put it, obfuscation.

Does Bill Gates have to be mentioned anywhere to be a useful hypothetical example ? The question is not whether Mr Gates could afford covering the pharmaceutical companies' costs from his own pocketbook - let's not assume the R&D cost for his treatment to be inferior to what he can afford, for starters - but whether they might help him because of the extra incentives the Act provides in terms of tax benefits and other grants that would make such a one-off relatively more attractive than, say, spending the money on Gaucher. In other words, rarity is relative. If Gaucher is of personal interest to you, imagine an even rarer and potentially lucrative target that would cause a significant amount of Orphan Drug Act research dollars that were intended for Gaucher to be reallocated to that disease instead, due to the Act's incentives.

Where the government funding would go instead is not the main issue either, since most of the direct research dollars are in the end spent by the pharma labs themselves. Without the Act's extra incentives - tax benefits, exclusive rights etc - they would instead be allocated to the more common diseases that afflict larger numbers i.e. where they would have been spent without the Act, and where they were originally being spent before the legislation came into force. Evidence that either pharmaceutical companies, their boards or shareholders would rather want to invest it in porn is scant, to say the least.

The Orphan Drug Act/No Act is a distracting binary dichotomy. Like any set of incentives, the Act may provide too little and be less effective than it could be. Or it could be diverting too many resources to increasingly narrow targets. Ideally, we are doing neither too little nor too much but how do we know ? Surely, we should not have to wait until most or all research dollars are spent on rare diseases to ask what the optimal balance should be, and whether the Act achieves it.

Lastly, if one does want to consider repealing the Act, it would also be a failure to limit oneself to the real and perceived costs of its repealing. They ought to be compared to the costs of keeping it. Otherwise, the benefits of keeping it would always outweigh the cost of its repeal. Which is why advocates of this Act or any other will always argue about what would not happen without it, and critics will always focus on the opportunity costs of its preservation. It's natural, and even healthy, as long as the final decision includes both sides.

smart comment by Sylvain Galineau. nice to see some clear thinking in the comments section.

Actually, allow me one more on the relativity of rarity angle.

I believe we can safely assume that the Act's incentives do have limits. There could be, for instance, a patient population size under which its benefits will not induce the allocation of private R&D dollars. For the sake of argument, let's assume it is 50,000. If only 28 Americans share your pain, tough luck. One could imagine a succesful public campaign - one or two well-known and well-liked celebrity can do a lot - to expand its incentives to reach those diseases that affect 25,000 to 30,000 people. Later on, we might expand them further to reach another unserved population. And so on, until we reach our hypothetical Bill Gates Syndrome. At which point one can only wonder what is left for cancer, malaria, flu vaccines and the like.

Advocates of the Act will of course argue that providing incentives for private labs to research treatments for 'diseases of one' is neither their objective nor the Act's. Fair enough. It's only meant as a logical argument.

But I think that's where the dividing line in the debate resides in this debate, as in so many others. For any set of incentives, there is a point of diminishing return. Those who favor the Orphan Drug Act will, as a matter of course, assume that we have not reached it, passionately or even dismissively insisting we are not even close. Its opponents will of course assume, with no more evidence, that we are past it. The former can count on, and will use, the support of those who have benefited from the Act, in no small part to make the other side appear cold and heartless. The other guys will of course take pains to exploit the slightest anecdotal evidence of waste, dysfunction or corporeate favoritism to make them appear as pawns of a lobby. We are all familiar with the pattern, I think.

The rest of us, meanwhile, simply ask where the heck that point of diminishing return is. Of course, neither side wants anyone to ask. We don't know and therein lies their opportunity. The question ought to be asked nonetheless. Maybe there is no useful or practical answer. But that should be established by means other than rhetorical assertions and anecdotes, whether real or hypothetical.

(It's not 28, it's 28,000 - sorry)

The question ought to be asked nonetheless. Maybe there is no useful or practical answer.

We know one thing for sure: without the Act, people die. Pretend that isn't true all you want.

Just like with the Act, other people may be dying who otherwise wouldn't, quite possibly in much larger numbers. You may also pretend they do not exist 'all you want'. Or maybe you happen to possess an innate understanding of who deserves to wait and die, and who gets help now. I don't. And I'm not sure the government does either; or that I would want them to make the call in these terms.

Be it as it may, that's still not the issue as I am arguing it. Americans shouldn't die with no help simply because the number of people who share their pain is a small proportion of the population. The opposite is true as well: they should not be neglected simply because it is less profitable to treat them than addressing a disease that affects a smaller number.

Neither option is attractive. Nor is the pretense by both parties to this kind of argument that their 'side' of the equation is the more noble one, as if that death was worth less than this other one by virtue of mere statistics. Are people with a deadly and incurable disease more deserving to die because their ailment affects a million instead of 100,000 ? Can this line of reasoning lead anywhere except a frustrating moral impasse ?

Such arguments will always be appealing to both sides for obvious reasons, and they will quite naturally attempt to steer the debate towards their own favorite emotional swamp. This approach is, however, unlikely to yield much except hot air. One would think this would be clear by now.

Some of us want to know how we can achieve an optimal balance between these competing and perfectly valid concerns, without getting embroiled into judging whose death is more important. That suggesting there might such a thing, or even asking how it could be found, is anathema to the most vocal partisans/opponents is perfectly obvious. Whether their displeasure is relevant or helpful in figuring out the answer is, as usual, not certain.

Americans shouldn't die with no help simply because the number of people who share their pain is a small proportion of the population. The opposite is true as well: they should not be neglected simply because it is less profitable to treat them than addressing a disease that affects a smaller number.

There are no people on your side of the equation, because you have no proof any money would flow to anyone on the other side. You're simply making it up.

Sally J

Posner argued money would flow to the other side, as you put it:

Resources for medical research are finite. The Orphan Drug Act sucks large research expenditures into creating treatments for rare diseases. Without the Act, those resources would be channeled by the market into other investments that might produce a higher social return. The English economist Arnold Plant pointed out many years ago that if the law protects some monopolies, as by granting patents or equivalent intellectual-property protection, the profit opportunities that such protection creates (Ceredase generates an estimated 25 percent annual rate of return on investment for its producer, Genzyme Corp.), which are not generally available in the economy, may attract into the monopoly markets resources that would produce greater consumer welfare if invested in production in competitive markets.

Thanks for your interesting comments on this issue Judge Posner. It is always refreshing to hear people who can talk about issues like this without getting caught up in ultimately harmful 'emotional swamps' as one commentator nicely put it.

Anyway I just wanted to defend Viagra from all those people who dismiss it as frivolous. Ultimately Viagra improves quality of life for those who take it no differently than medicine which alleviates chronic pain or other unpleasent but non-fatal conditions.

Unless one believes that those recieving government aid should only be given the minimum amount of money to eat nutritous gruel and shouldn't be allowed to purchase a twinkee or any kind of clothes besides a sack it is hard to see why it is okay to pay to increase quality of life here but not with Viagra. Ultimately the government and individuals make the choice every day to allow people to die in exchange for increased quality of life. Every TV that is bought, every dollar spent on morphine is a dollar not being used to save the poor in Africa. Government money spent on the arts of literature is government money that isn't being used to give someone the best availible medical care possible.

I don't think one can consistantly support our societal choices not to live a completely austere lifestyle and devot every availible resource to saving life unless one accepts that sometimes life needs to be traded off against quality of life. These deciscions don't seem to be controversial when quality of life comes in form of freedom from other types of disability (glasses, drugs to prevent hearing loss etc..) so why should they be such a big deal with Viagra? I submit that Viagra is just another way to improve quality of life and the public uncomfortability with it is more due to a lingering puritanical charachter than any reasoned position. If we are going to be objective about the matter I see no reason to regard Viagra as any different than morphine, a reasonable expense to increase quality of life.

Sally....As if you had proof pharmaceutical companies or investors would invest their budgets in porn if the Act were repealed, as opposed to other areas such as oncology. As if you had evidence that the money spent on Gaucher today used to be spent on porn, or anything else for that matter.

Well, do you ? Can you conclusively prove the money would not "flow to anyone on the other side" , when most of it already comes from the same companies who also research and produce all the treatments for that 'other side' ? Then let's see it.

Wwhat the Orphan Drug Act does is give the pharma sector incentives to divert to these orphan drugs resources that would otherwise be spent elsewhere. Your argument essentially contradicts both the premises and the text of the Act itself.

In the end, you are proving yourself either unwilling or unable to argue from any position but that of a simplistic black and white choice. For starters, where did I say the choice was between spending on, say, cancer OR Gaucher treatments ? We want to do cancer AND Gaucher. But our resources being finite, we must figure out how to best use them to do both well.

Somehow, suggesting that there is such a thing as an optimal balance is tantamount to demanding a repeal of the Act, if not legalized mass murder. I am sure we could find an opponent of the Act to join you in the lazy quagmire of moral grandstanding to rhetorically ask what the point of saving Gaucher victims is if half of them die from bird flu with the rest of us because there wasn't enough money to invest in researching the latter. That would be the exact flipside of your self-righteous argument, and, given recent experience, it is very easy to see how the conversation would degenerate from there and get absolutely nowhere.

So you can either provide arguments and evidence to back-up your essentially absolute belief that the Act has achieved that optimal balance in the allocation of our resources. Maybe it's doing too little ? That's fine also. Let's see why we should be committing more to this without harming that.

Or you can strike another pose on your self-appointed pedestal.

Your call. Just understand I have no interest in some umpteen variation of the pro-life/pro-choice shouting match with the kind of person who can't accept nor understand that most of us are in between.

Without the Act, those resources would be channeled by the market into other investments that might produce a higher social return.

The above quote is Posner's, Sylvain: It is true money would go elsewhere. The point is it could go to government pork and private-sector porn, i.e., investments with a lower social return. There is no proof it would flow to other disease research, i.e., investements with a higher social return, as you claim. So: we know that if it flows elsewhere those who benefit from the Act will be harmed; and we have no guarantees of any benefits from the money flowing in the opposite direction. That is a certain loss, e.g., peopel with Guacher's who die, in exchange for nothing else but risk. Your support gambling with people's lives, and you don't even realize it.

Sally

Proof is the wrong standard for policymaking because, given any uncertainty, that standard supports the status quo no matter what it is or how inferior compared with alternatives.

Further, you are gambling with people's lives with or without the Act. There are unseen thousands or millions of patients that may have been treated under alternative policy settings.

Obviously, these are difficult choices for policy makers, but the approaches you have advocated for thinking about whether current policy settings are optimal are at best unhelpful.

Yes, and ? Is Posner saying that these investments would be channelled outside pharma, in areas such as porn or steel mills ? Or is he saying they would be channeled to those pharma investments that will produce higher social returns because those are the ones that a) are much more likely to yield a profit because b) they target much wider populations ?

There are in fact more reasons to believe the money would be redirected to other areas of pharmaceutical research rather than the alternatives you have suggested so far. At a minimum, most of the R&D dollars applied to Gaucher, among others, do in fact come from private pharma budgets, due to the profit opportunities created by the Act.

Assuming a pharmaceutical company is no longer given the opportunity to make a profit on its Gaucher treatment, am I supposed to believe it is more likely to FedEx that $100m research budget to Hugh Heffner at the Playboy Mansion rather than redistribute it to new or existing projects at their oncology division, for instance ? We do not even need to argue about evidence here; the argument is patently absurd.

Arguing that the Orphan Drug Act's budget would be reallocated to pork is a similar red-herring. Any government program could be justified this way regardless of need or costs. Example : "The Patriot Act may be bad, but if we do not fund it the money will go to pork instead of Homeland Security". Why is the conveniently ill-defined and negative-sounding 'pork' a more likely outcome than Health, Education, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid ?

According to Citizens Against Government Waste, pork-barrel spending in 2005 totalled $27.3 billion. Spending on Medicare this year is around $265 billion, or ten times more. Why would the Orphan Drug Act's funding be more likely to be spent on the former than the latter ? Could it be because you are likely to convince more people to support the Orphan Drug Act if the only apparent alternative is the much-hated 'pork', rather than Medicare, a program that reaches and concerns many more ? Convenient assertion. But entirely unconvincing. Of all the arguments to support the Act, it is probably the weakest. (It might even be counter-productive).

You are still religiously avoiding my main question, stubbornly adhering to your assumption that the only choice is Act/No Act. Is the Act doing too little or too much ? And how do we know ?

Fortunately, I am not the one 'gambling with people's lives'. The topic is serious enough to deserve difficult questions, to make sure that we are doing no such gambling. You, of course, seem perfectly content to run on blind faith, as if everything was perfect, dismissing anyone who dares even suggest your faith could be misplaced with strenuous moralistic posturing.

Lastly, nothing is guaranteed; gains or losses. Your claim that the latter are certain and the former non-existent remains unproven. And it will remain so until you are able to argue whether the program reaches the optimal balance of resource allocations.

Which you still stubbornly refuse to do, greatly underminding the credibility of your case by sticking to the same reflexive ad-hominem argument, achieving very little beyond attacking the messenger again, and again, and again.

Proof is the wrong standard for policymaking because, given any uncertainty, that standard supports the status quo no matter what it is or how inferior compared with alternatives.

Why does that make it the wrong standard? You are rejecting conservatism out of hand. Cannot government be conservative? Isn't it better to have gradual change as opposed to radical disruption? What is wrong with governnment having an inherent bias toward order, stability, and thus the status quo?

Why is the conveniently ill-defined and negative-sounding 'pork' a more likely outcome than Health, Education, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid ?

This only proves the point that we don't know where the money will go if the Act is canceled, but we know exactly what it is doing right now. Right now it is saving lives. If we take it elsewhere, there is the risk it won't save lives, and the lives it was saving in the first place won't be saved. Such result is a guaranteed loss and nothing else but risk.

We do not even need to argue about evidence here; the argument is patently absurd.

You only say you don't need any evidence because you don't have any evidence. You're presuming, which is a fallacy. You have no idea what will be done with the money.

First, the R&D dollars for existing orphan drugs have already been spent. Their continued production no longer needs the Act. Only future orphan drugs do.

Second, I don't need evidence to believe that private pharmaceutical company will not switch from spending on Orphan Drug research to investing in porn if the Act were repealed. In fact, the burden of proof here is on you : prove that this preposterous outcome is more likely than seeing the money re-invested elsewhere in their business. Incentives and tax breaks have been repealed before, in pharma and other industries. Where is the evidence that the porn industry has benefited from these events ? Where is the evidence that completely unrelated industries have clearly benefited from them in other instances ?

If Pfizer, Merck or others can no longer make a dime on new orphan drugs, their research budget for future orphan drugs will go to their other projects. No one there will invest it in porn. It will save other lives in other ways. There is in fact considerable evidence of this every day in every pharmaceutical company; projects fail their clinical trial, priorities change, money is re-routed to other projects. This is no different.

As if it would be more reasonable and rational to expect porn and pork to be more likely than anything else. Such completely random and unbiases choices. It couldn't possibly be that you chose them to make the Orphan Drug Act look like a no-brainer. But if it is so self-evidently good, why the need for such weak manipulation ? For the sake of the Act, there had better be better than this line of support; a bored teenager could see through it.

Never mind that I was still not asking whether the Act achieves the proper balance for our resource allocation and yet here you are, once again assuming this is about repealiong the Act; as if asking any reasonable question breaches a sacred taboo. As if you didn't want to know or care. Do you realize how counterproductive that is, and how much it undermines the credibility of your position ?

You quite conveniently assume as self-evident the status quo represents 'order and stability'. Based on what evidence ? Just because positive results have been achieved ? How do you know the Act is properly balanced ? Maybe it's not doing enough and we need more incentives and more money ? Maybe it's diverting too much ? Do you know ? Or do you just not care ? Who cares if we could use some of that money to save even more lives, or if it's preventing increasingly larger numbers from getting medical attention. Who is showing disregard for human lives here ?

This kind of quasi-religious stance is not exactly the way to inspire confidence, I'm afraid.

You're presuming, which is a fallacy
Because you're not presuming at all. Only arguing that all this private money will suddenly go to porn; the evidence to support this is so overwhelming. Also, if I assume the public money for the Act will go the the non-pork 98%+ of the federal budget, I am 'presuming'.

I guess presumption is only a fallacy when others do it and they presume 'wrong' right ?

You have no idea what will be done with the money. Oh yeah. Because you do. I certainly know that it won't be invested in porn, I also know that the odds of some or all the public money involved being diverted on pork are no lower or higher than the for any other chunk of federal budget money i.e. less than 2%.

When it comes to advocating this particular Act, you might want to consider the possibility that you are one of those people who do more harm than good by getting involved.

No need to keep beating this dead horse. Or should I say this Sacred Cow ? You have no evidence nor argument to offer beyond vacuous fearmongering and moralistic grandstanding.

I certainly hope this legislation deserves better. Although I am starting to have my doubts. Thanks t o you, among others. Have fun.

Typo : Never mind that I was still not asking whether the Act achieves...Never mind that I was still not asking whether the Act should be repealed yet...

Otherwise done.

Auction expert, telling people they are 'gambling with lives' to shut them up is moralistic grandstanding. That private research budgets will go to porn, or that federal money can only go to pork - when more than 98% of the budget is *not* pork - is typical of the fearmongering pressure groups routinely use.

There is nothing original or new about such tired rhetorical tactics. I'm just calling them for what they are. It might not be Sally's own intent - she might simply be repeating the talking points of others, for all I know - but that is in fact what they are intended for.

The way I look at it is this :

1. Pharma projects fail all the time : FDA rejections, clinical trial failures, executive decisions about budget allocations, you name it. Assuming a repeal of the Act, this would be no different. Unspent research budget dollars never go to porn or anything outside the company. They are reallocated to other projects.

Likewise, for all the media talk about it, most government money - 98%+ - does not go to pork-barrel spending. (The waste and inefficiencies on the rest is probably must larger than pork itself; in this way, the latter is probably a useful distraction...).

The only reason Sally picked porn and pork instead of cancer drugs and Medicare - even though the latter are vastly more likely as spending alternatives - is that they make her argument appear much stronger than it is due to the very negative perceptions associated with both items. That the actual probability of such an outcome is as near to zero as it can be is of no interest to the manipulative purpose of her argument.

2. The Fire Department saves lives too. Yet no one suggests we should pay them whatever they want while schools crumble because disturbing the status quo might have consequences. We have finite budgets and we must spend them as optimally as we can.

3. Existing orphan drugs have already been funded and are profitable. They will not stop being produced without the Act. But given how much is now spent on this - orphan drug revenues of $28bn in 2003, according to Posner's last post - it is certainly proper to ask whether this is not coming at the expense of research that could save many more. Ideally, we should give pharma labs incentives to work on orphan drugs. But there is an optimal balance : we can't do too little nor too much.

Somehow, stating that there is such a balance, and asking what it should be is anathema to some individuals. I can't say I care much about their quasi-religious tantrums. Especially when all they have to justify them are bogus claims that pharma research budgets would be invested in porn if some legislation were amended or repealed.

As if we somehow needed to establish where the funds would go before we are allowed to ask where they are going today, at what costs and with what consequences for other alternatives.

Such elementary diversion tactics are to be expected from otherwise knowledgeable individuals with a weak case to defend, or from those who grasp at straws because they don't really know what they are talking about. I'm not sure which we are dealing with here. Not that it really matters.

The original questions - Posner's and mine - still stand, valid and unanswered. That other people refuse to answer them or consider asking them somehow offensive is, quite frankly, irrelevant.

Incentives and tax breaks have been repealed before, in pharma and other industries. Where is the evidence that the porn industry has benefited from these events ? Where is the evidence that completely unrelated industries have clearly benefited from them in other instances ?

Where is the evidence that all reinvestment remains within the pharamcuetical industry?

2. The Fire Department saves lives too. Yet no one suggests we should pay them whatever they want while schools crumble because disturbing the status quo might have consequences.

Actually, fire fighter's unions suggest this.

The only reason Sally picked porn and pork instead of cancer drugs and Medicare - even though the latter are vastly more likely as spending alternatives - is that they make her argument appear much stronger than it is due to the very negative perceptions associated with both items.

The only reason you presume the reinvestment will be toward other drugs research is to manufacture wholesale the idea that other people who could be dying might be negatively impacted by the Act's continuance. My argument is mocking yours. You have no proof that would happen.

Unspent research budget dollars never go to porn or anything outside the company. They are reallocated to other projects.

Never? Never? There are no phamarcuetical companies owned by parent companies with other investments outside of the pharamceutical industry? Are you stark raving mad?

Sylvain: That private research budgets will go to porn, or that federal money can only go to pork - when more than 98% of the budget is *not* pork - is typical of the fearmongering pressure groups routinely use.

This was actually one of my original points. It appears in the first post of mine that you attacked. My point was that no revocation of the ODA could go through precisely because of how it would be demagogued. I see you have finnaly grown so desperate as to fall back on my "worthless" argument.

W, I never argued with that part of your argument, nor did I ever deem it 'worthless' or anything else since I never argued with it. You know full well what our argument was about. Nice try.

I certainly know that it won't be invested in porn, I also know that the odds of some or all the public money involved being diverted on pork are no lower or higher than the for any other chunk of federal budget money i.e. less than 2%.

This is technically a fallacy. Even if only 2% of the budget is pork, you have no way of knowing that the monies from the ODA will be equitably distributed across the entire budget. All of the former ODA monies might go to the 2% of the budget that consists of pork. All of it might go toward good stuff, as well. There is no way to know. But there certainly is no guarantee that 98% of the ODA monies will go to good stuff and exactly 2% will go to pork. That IS a fallacy of presumption, Sylvain.

Sally is right.

Sally, no pharmaceutical company has ever reinvested part of their research budget in porn. And most of the companies who do orphan drug research do not have parent companies who take their lab money out when it becomes available, regardless of the other projects they could use it on.

Please give us the name of one such externally-owned pharmaceutical company whose research monies have been routinely reallocated by its parent owner to other investments ? Or is it just another divertory attempt at justifying your unsustainable position with more speculative fabrication ?

Actually, fire fighter's unions suggest this.Oh yeah ? They suggest schools should be left crumbling ? I'm sure that works very well for them. I guess you sound just like them then, and they're not fooling anyone either. Thank you for helping out.

Where is the evidence that all reinvestment remains within the pharmaceutical industry?Where is the evidence that it doesn't ? If it's so self-evident they won't do so, it should be easy to prove. Show me one quarterly report from a publicly quoted pharma company that outlines such an external reinvestment case.

Pharmaceutical projects get cancelled all the time for a variety of reasons. Establish a clear pattern of industry behavior according to which the budgets freed by project cancellations are reinvested 1) outside the company and 2) in unrelated industries.

Since you're the one making the explicit claim that this is a serious concern, the burden of proof is on you. Repeatedly asking others to prove the negative of your assertion will only undermine your own credibility.

Either it is a common practice and proving it should be trivial. Or it's not and your concern is a red herring.

And, by the way. You're still not arguing the main point, which is not about repealing the Act but evaluating its costs to make it more efficient. By now, it is obvious you have nothing of value to provide on this topic.

But if you want to keep digging yourself a hole, keep at it. You've got the formula pegged.

Presuming that all or 98% of the money is more likely to be spent outside pork is not a fallacy; it's a perfectly reasonable assumption, given the facts.

Presuming, without one shred of evidence, that all ODA money will go to pork-barrel spending, is however, fallacious, biased and completely self-serving, given the obvious prejudice of the person making the argument.

Never mind that where the money might go is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. This does not need to be established to argue the costs and benefits of the Act.

Interesting that you would fall into supporting the very demagoguery you alleged opposed earlier.

Sally, no pharmaceutical company has ever reinvested part of their research budget in porn. And most of the companies who do orphan drug research do not have parent companies who take their lab money out when it becomes available, regardless of the other projects they could use it on.

This assertion has no proof whatsoever to back it up. It might be true, it cannot be proven, as it is a negative statement. Get some evidence, and then I will believe you.

Presuming that all or 98% of the money is more likely to be spent outside pork is not a fallacy; it's a perfectly reasonable assumption, given the facts.

No, it isn't. It is a fallacy of presumption. Reasoning backwards from past facts is begging the question. The point is we don't know how the money will be distributed or where it will go. We do not know. You simply presume that away, which is a fallacy.

My argument is mocking yours. You have no proof that would happen. Maybe you should quit mocking, it's been rather self-defeating so far.

In fact, this is already happening. Every dollar spent on an orphan drug is, by definition not spent on other research. Of course, by convincing yourself that these dollars would not be spent on any kind of pharma research, you can justify the ODA. It's rather circular, convenient and completely illogical.

Can you at least prove that the first round of orphan drug research - following the Act's enactment - was actually fully or mostly funded by outside interests ? Is there any basis

Over all, your argument goes as follows. "If the government cuts taxes, giant lollipops will grow on Pluto's surface." And somehow, if people disagree, they have to prove to you that one can't lead to the other, assuming there ever is such a thing.

Except...no. You're the one making the outlandish claim. You prove it.

Presuming, without one shred of evidence, that all ODA money will go to pork-barrel spending, is however, fallacious, biased and completely self-serving, given the obvious prejudice of the person making the argument.

No one has done that. I made the argument that there is a 50/50 chance. It could go to pork, it might not. We don't know. So presuming that it will go somewhere good, so as to "manufacture" offsetting benefits to the repeal of the Act, is fallacious.

Of course, by convincing yourself that these dollars would not be spent on any kind of pharma research, you can justify the ODA.

You have no proof it would be spent on other pharma research, so why should I assume it is?

Get some evidence, and then I will believe you.Actually, you're the one who claims it's a serious, even a normal concern. Where is your evidence ?

I have checked for myself. SEC's EDGAR database, Google, news archives - including paying ones. No such thing has ever been documented. And given how much attention it would have attracted, it is puzzling there is no trace of it ever happening.

Quarterly reports show pharmaceutical companies trying to keep up with R&D spending, even shading costs to increase that budget. Evidence of research budgets being shipped to outside industries is just not there.

But apparently, you have it. Let's see the evidence behind your belief.

Actually, you're the one who claims it's a serious, even a normal concern. Where is your evidence ?

You could try reading the Wall Street Journal articles that Posner's original post was based on. It details people with Gaucher's disease and other rare diseases who directly benefit from the existence of the Orphan Drug Act.

W, if you are going to jump into an argument you were not part of, please acquaint yourself with the claims being made. It has been suggested earlier that pork was the most likely destination for these monies, and no evidence was ever provided to justify it. Given the spending distribution pattern, I claim that a) more evidence is needed to believe that would be the case b) there is no such evidence and c) therefore it is not a viable argument.

And I stand by it. I really do not care what adjectives you choose to use to qualify it. You are neither an authority nor does anyone need or seek your approval in this matter.

Moreover, it is perfectly reasonable to state that all things being equal and without actual evidence, this budget is actually more likely to be spent on Medicare than pork, the former being 10 times bigger than the latter and in huge need of funding. But it is pretty obvious the person making the argument is choosing the latter out of self-serving rhetorical convenince, to make her case look stronger than it is. Which is understandable since her case has no legs to stand on.

You have no proof it would be spent on other pharma research, so why should I assume it is? And where is your proof ? Show me evidence that I should believe it would be very likely to be spent on something else.

Sally, where in this article does it establish that if it were not for the ODA, the research dollars involved would be spent elsewhere, outside pharma ? On porn ?

Please provide the specific quote.

Two points:
1) You would be correct when you say that it is pharmaceutical company money that goes to Goucher's disease under the Orphan Drug Act. However, the pharmaceutical companies get at least some of this money from investors, who would perhaps invest some of their money somewhere else (like the porn industry) if the pharma companies didn't have the profit making opportunities that the Act provides. Secondly, just because the money belongs to the pharma cos doesn't mean that it will be spent on R&D for other diseases without the Act. The percentage of profits spent on R&D is generally fairly small. More likely, the money would be spent on advertising, or something of that nature.
Secondly, it is wrong to say that every dollar spent on research into these rare diseases is a dollar not spent on more common ailments. Pharmaceutical companies often don't have the incentive to conduct the most basic of research, but research into rare diseases will often provide clues to the workings of the human body that will allow breakthroughs into more common problems. Take, for instance progeria, a (thankfully!) extremely rare disease that results in children aging very rapidly, so that they die in their teens. Quite possibly, research into this disease could lead to insights into normal aging which could help millions.

Hello Professors:

In your next column, please consider answering a question on everyone's mind: is it a Christmas tree or a holiday tree?

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