There is an alternative way of financing and incentivizing research that, at least in some instances, could do a far better job than patents, both in directing innovation and ensuring that the benefits of that knowledge are enjoyed as widely as possible: a medical prize fund that would reward those who discover cures and vaccines. Since governments already pay the cost of much drug research directly or indirectly, through prescription benefits, they could finance the prize fund, which would award the biggest prizes for developers of treatments or preventions for costly diseases affecting hundreds of millions of people.
我们可以为投资和激励研究找到一种替代方法，它至少在某些方面可以比专利要做得好得多，不管是引导创新还是确保知识的利益可以被尽可能多的人享受到。这就是一个用来奖励发现治疗方法和疫苗的人的医疗奖励基金。因为政府已经直接或间接地支付了很大一部分药物研究的开支，它们可以通过处方利润来融资建立奖励基金，给予开发出影响数以亿计人的代价高昂的疾病的治疗或预防方法的人最高的奖励。