The Drug Library

Ottawa Erin and I met up for lunch today and somehow got into a discussion about Pharmaceutical Patents....
Erin: So the length of a drug patent is moving up from 7 years to 20, which totally sucks.
Note: While the 20 years part is true, from my brief research I believe this actually happened in the early 2000's.
Me: Huh?
Erin: It means that it takes even longer for the generic drug to be made.
Me: Oh, so drugs will be harder to get and more expensive?
Erin: Yes, which is bad. I understand the whole encourage science, incentive for innovation thing, blah blah blah, but these are people's lives here.
Me: Well, I don't know about patents and inventions but I know that copyright lasts for the author's life and then 70 years.
Note: That is actually for the USA, I got confused. In Canada it is the author's life and then 50 years.
Erin: If you don't get to read a book that they wrote it isn't as big a deal. If you have to wait for drugs you could die.
Me: And you can go to the library, I guess there isn't a drug library.
Erin: Well there is, it's called an alley.