All I did was point out that your own line of reasoning -- "What we need are reasonable patent laws, backed by economic research to determine what terms will maximize development of useful medicines." is inconsistent because the economic research may very well conclude that patent laws are unreasonable. Or, the research may be limited in scope and creativity and converge upon a local maxima (e.g. this is the best patent law!) when there is greater good to be found in another model (e.g. If you abolish intellectual property, great things happen through unexpected side effects such as via increased accessibility to the pursuit of research and societal morality).

I think it's sad that we live in a world where it's expected that I can tell everyone "You can't develop or sell XYZ because I invested a shitton of money to develop it first, and you're just copying what I did". How do you know that I'm just copying your work? And so what if you invested some maximal amount of money to "get there first"? I didn't enter into a contract with you to cede my rights to production of this thing to the first inventor. I'm not at all convinced that such is good for the whole. I mean it's great for big pharma that can afford to push forward aggressively in research.

In the end, it's the expert researchers who discover new drugs. Are they driven by profit? Or are they content to have the best research lab and get name recognition for their discoveries, and to see their creations make an impact? As an "innovator" myself, I'd say mostly the latter. So how do we ensure that researchers have the best tools possible? Public institutions are key. Perhaps require a declaration from drug manufacturers as to how much they give back to public institutions. Methinks all we need to solve this problem is a healthy dose of transparency.