Arsenic, Patents, and the World. In the Pipeline:

Arsenic, Patents, and the World. In the Pipeline:: "The US researcher who formed PolaRx and filed the patent, Raymond Warrell (now chairman of Genta), stands up for it in the Nature Medicine article, and like it or not, he has a point, too, saying that the patent stimulated interest in the compound: 'Without the patent, it would have remained a curious Chinese drug, not available to anyone else.' I should note that there may well be room to argue about the validity of the patent, from prior-art concerns, but no one (as far as I know) has seen fit to challenge it. But I can say for sure that without intellectual property protection in the US and Europe, no drug company would have touched the compound. Without industrial input, the drug would have either never reached the market at all (arsenic trials were a hard sell at the FDA), or would have likely come on more slowly. (That ticking patent clock does keep an organization moving, I can tell you). And now its success in the market has other companies working on improved versions of the therapy. This is how our world works, and (for better or worse) there's no requirement that it be aesthetically appealing."