You just described 150 years of Big Pharma Law.
Pharma, sprang up from taking wondrous compounds found in nature and isolated them or refined them into new compounds that they could patent, market, and sell to consumers.
Ibuprofen, for example, is crude oil.
Yet Ibuprofen is so easy to make that only 6 plants make it worldwide and when one goes offline the shortages are felt throughout the world. Might be a bit more difficult than just crude oil
6 plants are allowed to make it. Everyone else thought the licensing fee was too high.
Unless you are referring to natural botanical plants, in which case, Pine Trees and turpentine is a good alternative found. IANAL but it would still need to find a way around the Ibuprofen compound patent.
> 6 plants are allowed to make it. Everyone else thought the licensing fee was too high
What licensing fee? It's an old, generic medicine. Anyone who wanted to set up an Ibuprofen manufacturing plant could do so relatively easily.
The reason more plants aren't coming online is that Ibuprofen is a couple pennies per pill at retail prices. There isn't money in making more ibuprofen.
If there wouldn't be money in it, they wouldn't have invested 200 Millions in a new plant in 2017
Then there must have been a market opportunity.
I bet there won't be much opportunity left after that plant comes online.
What licensing fee? There aren't any patent protections on Ibuprofen anymore. It's a generic for a very long time.
Also last time there was a shortage, one american BASF plant went down and they had trouble for almost a year before they could resume production
"Ibuprofen, for example, is crude oil."
In what sense? Ibuprofen is a specific chemical compound, crude oil is anything but that - it's a mixture of a huge number of chemicals.
I don't think the pharma industry is a moral exemplar either. But this seems like a simple error that will just distract from your point. Others in the thread have given better examples.
FWIW I at least am willing to pay someone else to make my Ibuprofen from the crude oil so I don’t have to. Sounds like it’d be messy.