Patent Laws discourage New uses for Old drugs (Score 1)

Pharmaceutical companies cannot afford to fund the necessary studies to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of their drugs for new and different uses as patent protection applies to the drug not the use. For example the patent on Prozak has expired, shortly before its expiration, there were very promissing studies on its effectiveness as part of a therapy on recovering stoke patients. These vital studies however will not be continued because there is no way to recover the cost of the study through the sale of the drug. I am a recovering stroke paient and I attribute a great deal of my recovery to this drug, yet further exploration of it's life restoring capability will likely never be performed and hundreds of thousands of people will suffer needlessly. We have orphan drug laws to fund research for curable but rare diseases, we need something similar for new uses of old drugs. Bruce Kusens