MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-11-19 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] vaccines politics and WHO
|
Opinion | A Global Covid Vaccine Heist
The Editorial Board
5-6 minutes
The World Trade Organization headquarters in Geneva.
Photo: denis balibouse/Reuters
Breakthroughs on vaccines and new treatments are finally offering the
world a path to end the Covid-19 pandemic. They’re a tribute to private
U.S. corporate innovation, but now developing countries led by India and
South Africa are making a damaging bid to waive patent protections for
these life-saving advances.
The attempt will surface Friday when these countries offer a resolution
at the World Trade Organization meeting to waive patent protections for
Covid vaccines, therapies and other technologies. They say this is
needed to ensure poor countries have equal access, but their effort
would harm everyone, including the poor.
“There are several reports about intellectual property rights hindering
or potentially hindering timely provisioning of affordable medical
products,” India and South Africa wrote last month in a WTO proposal
that has drawn support from Pakistan, Argentina and Venezuela. America’s
left and many nonprofit activists are backing the resolution.
Their complaint is that wealthy countries have locked up most of the
world’s vaccine supply next year and are hoarding virus therapies and
diagnostic tests. They want the WTO to grant free and unrestricted
access to the intellectual property of private companies. Otherwise,
they warn, the global pandemic will continue to rage.
This is a false choice. Private companies in the U.S. and to a lesser
extent in Europe, with the financial support of their governments, have
produced most virus breakthroughs. The Trump Administration’s Operation
Warp Speed has spent more than $10 billion to advance vaccine clinical
trials, manufacturing and distribution.
The U.S. government has also agreed to compensate private companies for
vaccines and therapies in return for obtaining the earliest available
dosages. For instance, the feds have allocated $1.5 billion to support
the manufacturing and delivery of Moderna's vaccine candidate in return
for 100 million initial doses. America’s taxpayers have essentially paid
for early access.
Nonetheless, companies plan to share the fruits of their investment and
innovation with the world’s poor. A World Health Organization initiative
funded by wealthy countries has reserved 450 million vaccine doses for
92 developing countries with populations of 3.9 billion. Gilead has
voluntarily agreed to license its antiviral remdesivir royalty-free to
developing countries.
Many companies are willing to license their IP at low or even no cost
but want contractual agreements to ensure it is developed safely and not
pilfered. But India and South Africa want to obtain this technology
without paying for it and then use their generic-drug manufacturing base
to produce, distribute and sell copycats worldwide.
This is theft, not sharing. Vitiating patents will stifle innovation and
make it harder to end this pandemic and the next one. It’s not clear
developing countries even have the ability to manufacture large-scale,
complex technologies like Moderna’s mRNA vaccine or Eli Lilly’s
monoclonal antibody cocktail—let alone distribute them.
The latter requires a strong health-care infrastructure and meticulous
planning. Pfizer’s vaccine must be shipped and stored at ultra-cold
temperatures. Even if governments of poorer countries were given free
life-saving therapies and vaccines, most of their people wouldn’t get
immediate access. Unlike the U.S. and Europe, most governments in the
developing world also don’t provide liability protection to vaccine
makers for adverse side effects. “Manufacturers won’t agree to
procurement contracts or ship vaccine without liability protection,” a
New England Journal of Medicine article recently explained.
Europe and the U.S. oppose the patent heist at the WTO, but they may be
outnumbered at Friday’s meeting. China seems conflicted. It also wants
access to the West’s vaccine technology. But it has developed vaccines
of its own that it aims to distribute to poor countries to build goodwill.
Vaccines and therapies aren’t a free global good. They require billions
of dollars in investment and years of risk-taking. U.S. companies are
willing to share what they’ve developed but their patents deserve
protection as an asset that is now helping the world eliminate the Covid
scourge.
--
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that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
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