Perhaps the Pharamacist/biotech person will be talking about the way patents have affected botany, agriculture and gardening. How varieties of plant, including many that have been available for many years now have to be registered and maintained on a register (at a cost only affordable by huge companies) before they can be sold. And of course they cannot be sold except by the owner of the patent. Many long established varieties of flowers, fruits and vegetables are now very rare and indeed threatened by extinction leading to increased vulnerability to desease in the few strains remaining. The only way to keep them going is to create organisations which will propogate and pass them on free since, unregistered, they cannot be bought and sold.
Perhaps alternatively, if code could be patented only if it were published for all to see (and improve and register their improvements) it could be a good thing?