Op-Eds

America is the world’s most innovative country. Or at least it was. By many measures, that title now belongs to China. The authoritarian powerhouse issued more patents than the United States for the first time in 2019, and it has left us in the dust ever since.

President Biden recently set a goal of slashing cancer death rates by at least 50 percent in the next 25 years — and announced billions of dollars in new research funding to make it a reality. It’s a plan with sky-high ambitions, a real “cancer moonshot,” as the president has branded it.

In their quest to lower drug prices, some US leaders have identified a convenient scapegoat: patents.