I learned something new today when I was doing a deep dive into the reason our government gives Harvard so much money. I never heard of the Bayh-Dole Act. I've come to realize that that’s not an accident.
In 1980, Congress passed it under the banner of “innovation.” What it really did was hand over the keys to the kingdom. Before that, when federal agencies like the NIH funded research, any resulting discoveries were public. That made sense—we paid for them.
After Bayh-Dole? Universities and nonprofits were allowed to patent inventions developed with taxpayer funding and license them to private corporations. The public still funds the research, but the profit? That’s private now.
Here’s how it plays out:
- Your taxes fund university research.
- A breakthrough happens.
- The university sells the patent to Pfizer, Merck, etc.
- The drug hits the market at $10,000 a dose.
- You pay for it again through insurance premiums, taxes, or out-of-pocket.
This isn’t hypothetical. It’s exactly how some of the most expensive drugs in the world were created.
If only we had something built into the law.
Oh wait. We do have that. It’s called march-in rights, and it's written right into the Bayh-Dole Act.
It’s just never been used. Not once. Not even when insulin prices tripled. Not even when cancer drugs bankrupted patients. Not even when drugs sit on a shelf for years unused.
Why? Because everyone’s getting paid. Universities get licensing royalties. Corporations get exclusive patents. Politicians get campaign contributions. And we're paying for it all. TWICE!!
Posted by JKRUOK
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I asked ChatGPT for an example of companies taking advantage of the Bayh-Dole Act.
Example: Xtandi (prostate cancer drug)
* Xtandi was developed at UCLA using federal funding from the NIH and the Department of Defense. So, yes, taxpayers paid for the research.
* Under Bayh-Dole, UCLA patented the drug and licensed it exclusively to a pharma company.
* That company later sold the rights to Astellas, a Japanese drugmaker, which now sells Xtandi in the U.S. for over $150,000/year per patient.
* The same drug costs less than half in other countries.
* And when people pushed the NIH to invoke march-in rights because of the absurd pricing?
* → NIH said no.
So Americans paid for the invention, don’t own the patent, and now pay the highest price in the world to access it. And the government has the legal right to fix it, but won’t. I can’t see any good reason, other than the obvious bad reasons, this happens.