Hacker News Reader

Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

The fact that these animals have been hunted to extinction should be evidence that their horn has no medicine value. If it worked we'd have rhinoceros farms.

View on HN

I'm sure people are happy to operate rhinoceros farms solely for the monetary value, which we know the horn does have. The problem is elsewhere.

You massively underestimate the complexity of animal husbandry in some species.

Next week: How I can show that the dodo had no nutritional value.

The problem is also more than just "medical value". There are collectors who would prize a trophy on their desk/wall.

I wonder why. Lion farms for the sole benefit of hunters exist, why not other species.

They do exist for a number of species including black rhino. For many of these species they need open habitat, but the right to hunt them is paid for by sportspeople which in turn goes to the conservation of the open habitat.

Not necessarily. Rhinos would only be farmed if they could be patented. Of course rhino horn has no medical value, but it could still be hunted to extinction even if it did.

On this topic silphium went extinct despite being highly useful medically [1].

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silphium

Lots of things are farmed that are not patented.

From your own source, "The identity of silphium is highly debated."

-_-

That is because silphium was exploited to extinction, much like the rhino.

Rhinos would only be farmed if they could be patented.

That makes me wonder percentage of the world's farming is done under a patent.

Actually quite a large percentage. Plant patents are a huge business [1].

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeders%27_rights

How does this argument even remotely make sense? Most manufactured drugs are not patented.

Most manufactured drugs were once patented. How many potential drugs that are not patentable have been brought to market in the last 50 years?

I don't feel like I even need to engage with the second part of your argument, because the first still doesn't make sense. They're not patented now, and yet they're still manufactured. Why?

The major cost of bring a drug to market is not the manufacturing cost, it is the testing required to sell it. This is why except for a few very old drugs all generics (out of patent medicines) were once patented drugs. The whole purpose of the patent is to allow the pharma company to charge enough initially to make a profit before they are faced with competition. Without a patent you just can't bring a new drug to market.

In regards rhinos I was responding to the claim that if the rhino horn had real medicinal value it would be farmed. It could be possible (very unlikely) that rhino horn does have real medicinal value, but there is no way of ever showing this without a patent on rhino horn. Without a patent you can't farm rhinos for medicinal purposes because you can't ever show rhino horn has medicinal value (i.e. No pharma company will invest the money required to show this without a patent).

You can't use the fact that rhinos are not farmed to prove that rhino horn has no medicinal value when there are other possible reasons that rhinos are not farmed for medicinal purposes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com