I&#x27;m going to repost a comment I made elsewhere that may shed some light:<p>Maybe we need a charity that builds a research war chest to threaten companies like this with redevelopment. It costs a lot to replicate a pill and go through the FDA hoops, and once a private company does, the price just gets competed down to the point where it doesn&#x27;t cover sunk the redevelopment costs--so in some scenarios no one bothers.<p>Instead, a charity doesn&#x27;t have to take profit into consideration and can just threaten: drop your price or we&#x27;ll persue independent redevelopment. With only the credible threat of spending on independent redevelopment, they could devalue a lot of these orphan drugs, and then buy up the rights&#x2F;trade secrets to them for open release.<p>Competing businesses can&#x27;t do this, because they can&#x27;t pose a credible threat, because following through wouldn&#x27;t make business sense. A charity can have non-business aims.