Letters to the editor

Patents, copyrights need new ideas

Tom Giovanetti argues effectively that night is day in his defense of patent and copyright protection (“Intellectual property and its discontents,” Commentary, Thursday). The key point that he somehow manages to overlook is that patents and copyrights are direct and explicit forms of government intervention in the market. They are government-granted monopolies that allow companies to charge huge markups over the free-market price for protected items (drugs, movies, books, etc.).

We all understand that the government provides this protection to serve a public purpose — promoting innovation and creative work — but the question is whether these archaic institutions (both patents and copyrights originated with the feudal guild system) are the best mechanism to provide incentives.

In my research, I have shown that patent-supported research by the drug industry can be easily replaced with the savings to Medicare and Medicaid from having drugs sold in a competitive market, with the government still left with money to refund to taxpayers. I have also shown how an individual “artistic freedom” voucher would be far more efficient than copyright protection in supporting creative work.

Patents and copyrights may have been well-suited for the feudal system, but we need some new thinking for the Internet age.

DEAN BAKER

Co-director

Center for Economic and Policy

Research

Washington

Reasonable compensation

I read with interest the letter to the editor of Jai Singh (Monday). It seemed to me the writer addressed two questions:

How much is enough compensation and who is responsible to do no harm? The first question is the most difficult in our society, so let me ask: How much is enough, say in a range of $50,000 to $250,000 — far below mid- to high-level executives?

Before you answer, consider that in order to be an OB-GYN, you need to complete high school (four years), undergraduate school (four years), medical school (four years), a hospital internship (one year) and OB-GYN residency (three years).

Regardless of the cost of this training or who is paying, that is 16 years of one’s life locked in study, just to get started. Maintaining and upgrading skills and knowledge is a lifelong task a physician must continue on his or her uncompensated time to continue to be effective.

Physicians must put patients first (depending on urgency), before sleep, family and other interests.

Now, what do you expect for your $5 to $10 co-pay? Would you work and pay a staff of employees if you received 60 cents on the dollar for your efforts? Maybe we should let the government take over the management of health care. You take what you get, if and when you can get it, with no legal recourse, but it’s free.

The second question is relatively easy. Physicians are only bound to honor contracted patient relationships for a specific period of time. From the physician’s point of view, voting with your feet is respected the world over — change your attitude or change your environment.

Withholding of services is time-honored as well, from a newly wed bride to “Who is John Galt?”

From the patient’s point of view, doing no harm is managing the risk of what and how much you put in your body from mouth to lungs to veins, as well as the amount of exercise and protection you give it.

This is just one more symptom of the huge disconnect we have between rights and responsibilities in a free society. The marketplace will sort it out.

RON SCHOCH

Chantilly

Stop clearing forests

There is one thing on this Earth that reduces carbon dioxide: green plants (“Warming alarmists,” Commentary, Sunday). They use carbon dioxide and give back oxygen in its place. Fly over any country you flew over years ago. It doesn’t look as green as it used to down there.

Changing cars and changing our driving habits won’t fix things. The world must stop clearing land and destroying forests.

CHARLES KERN

McLean

More than anti-Turkish bias

Philip Terzian’s equivocal pseudo-support for Turkey’s eventual membership in the European Union (“A knock on the door,” Commentary, Thursday) betrays a deep-seated anti-Turkish bias in his thinking.

After running through a list of obstacles to Turkey’s membership in the EU — heavy-handed military, the lack of a penal-code reform, human-rights violations, etc. — he concludes these are merely technical matters. The question “Is Turkey part of Europe?” is fundamental to Turkey’s accession, he writes. “The answer is unsettled,” he declares.

European identity has much to do with culture, ethnicity and religion, all of which are obstacles for Turkey, according to Mr. Terzian. He embellishes his argument with the unsubstantiated statement that Orthodox Christians are under siege in Turkey. To add more salt to the wound, he recycles the old saw that Turks were liquidating Christian Armenians and ethnically cleansing Greeks less than a century ago. In his nakedly biased outlook, Turks are unfit to be Europeans for cultural, genetic and religious reasons.

But there is still hope for Turkey. “On Turkey’s eastern border lies Armenia, a democratic Christian nation where a European language is spoken, and the economy is considerably freer than Turkey’s,” writes Mr. Terzian — stretching one’s credulity to the extreme. “Landlocked Armenians suffer from a petulant Turkish blockade of their border — not to mention refusal to acknowledge the genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks,” he intones. Neither does he ignore the Cypriot Greeks. “One EU member, Cyprus, currently suffers the illegal occupation of a third of its land by Turkey,” he writes.

Mr. Terzian envisions a Christian Europe reaching to touch Christian Armenia and redefining the European continent to embrace Muslim Turkey and civilize the Turks. The fundamental question is not whether Turkey is a part of Europe. Mr. Terzian must know that Turkey was the sick man of Europe in the late Ottoman period. The fundamental question is the accuracy of Mr. Terzian’s assertions. His claims that the Ottomans committed genocide against Armenians, that Turkey invaded Cyprus illegally, that Orthodox Christians are under siege in Turkey, and that Armenian economy is freer than Turkey’s are all demonstrably false. Asserting them as a device to qualify Armenia for EU membership because Armenia and Greek Cyprus, as fellow EU members, will rehabilitate the genetically defective Turks is beyond bias. It is unmitigated bigotry.

ALI F. SEVIN

Fort Washington