BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Patenting drives up the cost of therapies and renders them unaffordable to the poor

The government and its laws should take care of all their people. Because the state is a construct built by all the people, who all pay taxes to support it, laws should also be based to benefit the greatest amount of people possible.In the case of the Myriad company, which holds, together with the University of Utah Research Foundation, rights over tests for ovarian cancer, it prevented cheaper tests being offered to the public. As a result, Myriad is the only company that can market a test for the mutations, and it charges as much as $3,000. That is a price that for many is inaccessible. Patients’ state: “There is no other, cheaper test that you could go get in another laboratory, because they have the exclusive patent,” she explained, adding that Myriad also controls the efficacy of the test—second opinions are only available for certain surgeries 1.Because patenting harms the accessibility of diagnostics and testing, it should not be allowed.   1. Pratt P.A., Court Rules That DNA Is Information, Not Intellectual Property, published March 30th 2010,    http://www.scienceprogress.org/2010/03/gene-patents-ruling/, accessed 07/20/2011
Patenting inhibits research and therapeutics

The prevailing belief is that this is an area of such great importance and potential benefit to mankind, as such there should be no, self-interested impediment to genome research. The only barriers should be those of conscience. The Human Genome Project is one of the government funded projects that makes all its research freely and publicly available. They are not driven by profit and offer information on their discoveries for free enabling others to build upon their findings. The problem with patents is that companies claim ownership without regard towards moral issues. It is purely in the pursuit of their profits that they decide not to allow others to build on their findings and make the process of discovering treatments far more difficult. An example of this is the Myriad company which, whilst holding patents on BRCA 1 & 2, genes connected with breast cancer, prevented the University of Pennsylvania from using a test for these genes which was substantially cheaper than the company’s own screening procedure. 1 Instead of protecting their research investment, companies should have a moral duty to facilitate in any way they can to the development of cheap, available treatments and screenings for diseases which are so dangerous to so many people. 1. Spektor, Michelle, "Genes Are Still Patentable, Federal Appeals Court Rules", Science Progress, 17 August 2011,
Immoral to own a human life

Patenting genes and DNA fragments is immoral because of their significance for human life and welfare. It is immoral to own building blocks of the human life. Commercialization of human genes degrades value of human life. Once we give people the possibility to put an ownership tag on genes (basics of life), there is people who value human life merely based on monetary value. Bidding for the best gene, highest price and making the basics of life the same as buying a car. Andy Miah in his essay on Ethical Issues in Genetics argues: "Evidence of such disaffection has appeared most recently from the emergence of Ron's Angels, a company set up for the auctioning of female eggs and male sperm to infertile couples seeking 'exceptional' children. Whilst numerous companies of this kind now exist, Ron's Angels is interesting not simply for having arranged a standard and reasonable price for such genes; far from it. Rather, as indicated above, eggs and sperm are awarded to the highest bidder."1 Thus making the perception of human life what people believe is "fair to pay" and creating a race to figure out the cheapest ways of buying parts of the human body. 1 10) Miah, A., Patenting Human DNA. In Almond, B. & Parker, M. (2003) Ethical Issues in the New Genetics: Are Genes Us?
Genes are intellectual property thus patentable

Of course genes should be treated different from any product or other invention; genes are the very basis for human life and to claim that anyone has the right to be regarded as the ‘owner’ of a particular gene, which we all share in our bodies, shows a venal disregard for humanity. If companies want to patent treatments which target specific genes, then that’s okay, but not the genes themselves.The University of Colorado explains: “Inventions include new processes, products, apparatus, compositions of matter, living organisms, and/or improvements to existing technology in those categories can be patented. Abstract ideas, principles, and phenomena of nature cannot be patented.”1 1. Patents FAQPatents FAQ, University of Colorado,
Patenting enables knowledge sharing

In the twenty years of a patent’s duration, any prospective research is carried out in fear of recriminations and law-suits from the patent-holder. Laboratories offering patented genetic tests for research studies have been asked to “cease and desist” unless they refer materials to or get a license from the patent holder 1. Where one company has the right of exploitation, they possess a monopoly and inevitably will be able to charge what they like. It is only after countries threatened or actually invoked provisions of the WTO Treaty, for example, that companies offered to decrease the price of their Aids medicines for African countries 2. Those provisions would have permitted the governments to grant compulsory licenses.Further on, gene-patent holders can often control the useof ‘their’ gene; if they have the claim for the test, they can prevent a doctor from testing a patient’s blood for a specific genetic mutation and can stop anyone from doing research to improve a genetic test or to develop a gene therapy based on that gene 3.So any further research is in the mercy of the patent owner. Even if information is public, if it is not possible to use it and build upon it without permission. It is therefore possible for the patent holder simply to horde patents and prevents any research using that patent to the detriment of science, medicine and the patients who could be benefiting. 1. Cook-Deegan R., Gene patents, The Hastings Center,   http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Publications/BriefingBook/Detail.aspx?id=2174, accessed 07/20/2011 2. BBC News, “Brazil to break AIDS drug patent”, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6626073.stm, accessed 15/9/2011. 3. CRS Report for Congress, Gene Patents: A Brief Overview of Intellectual Property Issues, 2006, http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/crs/RS22516_061003.pdf, accessed 07/21/2011
Patenting drives up the cost of therapies and renders them unaffordable to the poor

Firstly, it is not self-evident, that people have a right to use and possess something, such as medicine that they did not create.So why should people have the right to use a product that someone else discovered through the power of their own cognitive abilities. Actually demands to not patent and just research for the greater good are contradictory to the government taking care of all their people. The best way for the government to encourage medical research that provides these benefits is through patents. Patenting of genes is therefore a right that is based on the right to ownership of your own thoughts and should therefore be granted to the companies / individuals. There is no consistent legal basis for deciding that genes are not patent-eligible without deciding that many other ‘natural products’ are also ineligible.
Patenting inhibits research and therapeutics

Patenting in general is creating more possibilities for patients than if there was no patenting and less competition for development. Even if treatments and diagnostics for some diseases are expensive, they are at least there and are beginning to benefit the people that need them most. If the government is that concerned for the well-being of its poor patients, the issue of private and public dis-allocations is far more troubling than patents. However, if the government does believe that such a treatment in necessary for the greater good of the country, which happens in very few cases, there still are mechanisms to loosen patent rights.  The Hastings Center explains that governments and other organizations can encourage research on needed therapies, such as a malaria vaccine, by setting up prizes for innovation related to them or by promising to purchase the therapies once they are developed 1. Other measures rely on voluntary action. Patented drugs can be sold at little or no mark-up in poor countries. Scientists and their employers can decide not to patent an invention that might prove useful to other researchers, or they might patent it but license it strategically to maximize its impact on future research and its availability to people in need. For example, when the scientist Salk believed he has developed a vaccination that should be basic health care, he decided not to patent his polio vaccine, which saved millions 2.Also, companies like GlaxoSmithKline have initiatives for having drugs made more available and affordable to poor countries 3. Governments and NGOs can also contribute. Experts in research analysis (Professors Walsh, Cohen, and Charlene Cho) concluded that patents do not have a “substantial” impact upon basic biomedical research and that “...none of a random sample of academics reported stopping a research project due to another’s patent on a research input, and only about 1% of the random sample of academics reported experiencing a delay or modification in their research due to patents 4.”Most of the newly developed gene therapies / genes are not that essential to be for free for everyone and further on for those few, that are, there are different methods of abuse prevention. 1. Cook-Deegan R., Gene patents, The Hastings Center,   http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Publications/BriefingBook/Detail.aspx?id=2174, accessed 07/20/2011 2. Josephine Johnston, Intellectual Property in Biomedicine, The Hastings Center, http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Publications/BriefingBook/Detail.aspx?id=2186, accessed 07/21/2011 3. IB Times, “GSK lead initiative to help poorer countries”, http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/20110606/gsk-lead-initiative-to-help-poorer-countries.htm accessed 07/20/2011 4. CRS Report for Congress, Gene Patents: A Brief Overview of Intellectual Property Issues, 2006, http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/crs/RS22516_061003.pdf, accessed 07/21/2011
Government money can go directly to bank accounts

This is exactly why simply giving money to the poor is a bad idea; not everyone who is poor will have a bank account. Indeed those who are the poorest are by far the least likely to have one. In India only 21% of the poor have a bank account.[1] [1] Glassman, Amanda, and Birdsall, Nancy, ‘Can India Defeat Poverty’, Foreign Policy, 8 January 2013
Providing money directly is efficient and eliminates corruption

Providing money may in the long term reduce corruption for the reasons outlined but in the short term it may mean more corruption. With India’s program there have been accusations that the government is only enrolling people in districts that support the ruling party.[1] [1] Thakur, Pradeep, ‘Why divide india into UID, NPR states?’, The Times Of India, 6 January 2013
Giving out money does not encourage people to take responsibility

Dependency is potentially a problem for any form of transfers with the intention of eliminating poverty while it is slightly different to be dependent on transfers of food the effect is the same. Direct transfers can however be made conditional upon the recipients doing what the government wants them to. In Brazil for example small cash transfers have been made conditional upon parents keeping their children in school.[1] There is little reason the conditions could not include earning some money from other sources if it is suspected that individuals are becoming dependent. [1] Economist, ‘Give the poor money’, 29 July 2010
Money cannot be targeted to meet specific needs

This is simply creating individual responsibility. A few will spend the money badly but most will realise that they need it for necessities. The whole point of the system is that it is flexible rather than limiting in the way other subsidy systems are. It should be considered that while some may misspend their money as suggested on drugs others may find ways of investing it so that they make more money and pull themselves out of poverty which then saves the government in the long term. Ultimately however it is the government that controls the flow of money; if someone is misspending it they can always halt the transfers.
It is wrong to assume that the individual always knows best

There are of course some occasions where the individual may use their money unwisely, but if they do then this is their choice. Those who receive aid are as deserving of being free to choose how to use their money as any wage earner. This choice only comes from providing cash rather than subsidies.[1] [1] Glaeser, Edward, ‘Cash Is Better Than Food Stamps in Helping Poor’, Bloomberg, 28 February 2012
Giving money to the poor is the fairest way of eliminating poverty

One of the reasons why poverty does not get eliminated is that it is governments who provide the subsidies that are intended to do just that. Many countries spend their money for subsidies poorly, for example in Indonesia before fuel subsidies were combined with cash subsidies in 2005 the top income decile received more than five times the amount of fuel subsidy as the bottom decile making the policy highly regressive despite it being politically sold as a subsidy to the poor.[1] No matter the intention such subsidies are clearly not fair. When the government provides lots of different subsidies for different things; fuel, food, housing etc., and especially when some of them are universal, it is clear that it will never be possible to distribute the money fairly on the basis of need. [1] ‘Winds of Change East Asia’s sustainable energy future’, The World Bank, May 2010, Pp93-5
Government money can go directly to bank accounts

Direct cash transfers can obviously be done very simply through simply handing out cash but this is clearly open to corruption. Instead money should be sent directly to the poorest’s bank accounts. In India the proposal is that the payments will be linked to the new biometrics based ID system that assigns a unique number to everyone based upon physical traits[1] (although this is not yet fully implemented) this will reach the whole population including those who currently have no identity papers.[2] This will enable those who get these ID to set up a bank accounts to enable the cash to be transferred to them as it will in effect be giving them with new ID. [1] Glassman, Amanda, and Birdsall, Nancy, ‘Can India Defeat Poverty’, Foreign Policy, 8 January 2013 [2] Majumder, Sanjoy, ‘World’s biggest biometric ID scheme forges ahead’, BBC News, 13 February 2012
Providing money directly is efficient and eliminates corruption

Most methods of attempting to eliminate poverty through state intervention are bureaucratic and inefficient and therefore inevitably are not very helpful. The subsidies India has previously provided to the poor is a case in point. In reference to food subsidies that provide for a 50% subsidy for those below the poverty line a 2010 study by the Asian Development Bank found that in rural areas 73% of recipients were above the poverty line so should not have been receiving the subsidy.[1] Providing money directly into bank accounts on the other hand is efficient as it is transferred electronically and can be set up to transfer without any human intervention. For the same reason it is very difficult to embezzle because it is going straight to a bank account from central government funds without passing through anyone’s hands. [1] Jha, Shikha, and Ramaswami, Bharat, ‘How Can Food Subsidies Work Better? Answers from India and the Philippines’, ADB Economics Working Paper Series, No.211, September 2010, p.13
Providing money directly works.

All the evidence is that providing money directly to those who need it works much better than providing a mishmash of subsidies and credits decided by government. Providing money directly has been working with limited programs around the world, most prominently with Brazil’s Bolsa Familia which has meant millions of children get primary education because of a small cash incentive.[1] In India the state already spends a huge amount on inefficient poverty reduction programs. If all the money that is spent on these programs was transferred to providing for the direct cash payments equally among the 70million households below the poverty line then it would provide a monthly transfer of 2,140 Rs; more than the poverty line income for rural households.[2] [1] Economist, ‘Give the poor money’, 29 July 2010 [2] Kapur, Devesh, et al., ‘More for the Poor and Less for and by the State: The Case for Direct Cash Transfers’, Economic and Political Weekly, 12 April 2008, p.3
Giving out money does not encourage people to take responsibility

The beauty of direct cash transfers is that it simply adds a new income stream but this is also its Achilles heel. Providing direct cash transfers will create dependency upon the transfers and reduce the incentive to be earning money from elsewhere. There are several reasons for this. First because the transfers from the government will be reliable, unlike much of the income the poorest have, the transfers will become the recipients main form of income. This will mean that there is less incentive to be earning money from other sources, which would often mean hard work, so as a result both harming the individual as they do not earn as much and the economy as they will not be contributing to the economy. Secondly people will take up less work in order to qualify for the transfers; there is no reason to work more if that is simply going to mean that money you would have got from the government is taken away. The advantage of in-kind transfers is that they help avoid expectations of long term assistance or the state essentially providing everything.[1] Dependency has happened with food aid in Ethiopia where more than five million people have been receiving food aid since 1984; far from getting better the food security situation has if anything been declining during this time and there could be much better use made of Ethiopia’s own resources; only 6% of the country’s irrigable land is used for agriculture.[2] [1] Holmes, Rebecca, and Jackson, Adam, ‘Cash transfers in Sierra Leone: Are they appropriate, affordable or feasible?’, Overseas Development Institute, Project Briefing No.8, January 2008, p.2 [2] Elliesen, Tillmann, ‘Imported Dependency, Food Aid Weakens Ethiopia’s Selfhelp Capacity’, Development and Cooperation, No.1, January/February 2002, pp.21-23
Money cannot be targeted to meet specific needs

Governments have accepted, in documents like the universal declaration of human rights, that one of their primary roles is to provide a basic standard of living for their citizens. When the state simply hands out some money this responsibility is not fulfilled. The state is simply leaving the poor to fend for themselves with a little extra money. Governments provide subsidies in kind or for specific products and services for a reason; those are the things that are necessities rather than luxuries. If money is transferred directly then the person who is getting the money can use the government’s money on anything. Some may use it on the things the government was providing before but others will spend the money badly on tobacco, alcohol, or drugs. Subsidies however can be targeted at the things that the poor really need. This means the state provides subsidies for food, free or cheap housing and healthcare, fuel for cooking and heating etc.
It is wrong to assume that the individual always knows best

With subsidies at least the government knows what their money is being spent on. This is not the case with cash; it just gets taken and can be spent on anything. As already mentioned the most obvious examples are where the individual uses the money they are given on drugs or other harmful products not what they need. Yet there are times where individuals may simply not have their own best interests at heart for various reasons, particularly because they know no better. This does not just happen in economic situations but also in public heath. For example development agencies know that cooking on open fires in homes leads to thousands of deaths every year and is costly in terms of fuel. So thousands of clean smokeless stoves have been given out yet they are not being used despite them being cheaper to run and potentially a life saver.[1] [1] Duflo, Esther, et al., ‘Up in Smoke: The Influence of Household Behavior on the Long-Run Impact of Improved Cooking Stoves’, MIT Department of Economics Working Paper, No.12-10, 16 April 2012
Giving money to the poor is the fairest way of eliminating poverty

Subsidies are much fairer than providing cash. Subsidies can be directly targeted to provide the things that the poor need rather than letting the poor buy what they want. The government should not be providing money that is then being spent on cigarettes, instead it should be spent on food, heating, or the children’s education. Yes some subsidies are poorly targeted but this simply shows that these subsidies are poorly implemented, not that they cannot be the solution to poverty.
The Republican Party is, yet again, suffering from the inability of the mainstream and liberal media to accurately cover political debate they constantly wish to portray healthy discourse as split and schism

The Republicans are simply left with nothing to say and nowhere to go. As is traditionally the case for politicval parties following a long period of dominance they tend to degenerate into internecine squabbling while they thrash out a new platform for government; one thing that is clear is that they haven’t found it yet. The approach they are taking both in terms of fighting their battles in public and demanding a certain orthodoxy of their candidates that is, frankly, unelectable suggests that they need at least another four years to work through their ideas. The media are not bringing some liberal bias to this they are even masking many of the divisions. However, the reality is the party is divided and, more astonishingly, those division take place within an incredibly narrow ideological spectrum.
The leadership of the Republican Party simply has nothing to do with its membership as a result no candidate has, or can, capture the imagination.

It’s difficult for a predominantly working class party to get all that excited about the choice between a range of millionaires. The Bush presidency made it all too clear that the interests of the rich are the primary interest of the party and that it fails to deliver on areas such as a commitment to smaller government. As party activists becomes ever more obsessed with issues such as gay marriage or the flag-burning amendment, it simply fails to address the concerns of most Americans to whom it has little to say. Until it has a clearer and reasonable economic message, there is little it has to say and less worth listening to