Biden’s OK of Global Theft of America’s Intellectual Property is Wrong, Dangerous; Pharmaceutical CEO on Biden’s Support for COVID-19 Vaccine Waiver: ‘It just seems self-defeating’, and related stories

AP Photo/Evan Vucci 

Biden’s OK of global theft of America’s intellectual property is wrong, dangerous:

Three U.S. companies — Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson — created and manufactured the world’s most effective mRNA COVID vaccines in record time. An increasing majority of Americans have now been inoculated, but much of the developing world remains in desperate need of vaccines. Americans naturally want to help. The question is how.

Last month, President Biden advocated removing international intellectual property rights (IPR) protections for American-made COVID-19 vaccines. This, he said, would help make the vaccines more plentiful and available in needy countries. It’s a short-sighted approach and doomed to fail.

Mr. Biden wants to waive the World Trade Organization’s “Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights” (TRIPS) agreement for U.S. vaccines and let foreign countries issue “compulsory licenses“ allowing their domestic pharmaceutical companies to manufacture the medicines without adequately compensating the companies that invented them.

Practically speaking, countries such as India and South Africa are unlikely to manufacture the vaccines. They lack an advanced infrastructure for cold supply-chain distribution and many other crucial resources required by these products’ capital-intensive, state-of-the-art manufacturing process.

But the Biden policy is bad for many other reasons. --->READ MORE HERE

Pharmaceutical CEO on Biden’s support for COVID-19 vaccine waiver: ‘It just seems self-defeating’:

In May, the Biden administration reversed course and decided to back the idea of waiving intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines.

The move was meant to ensure more of the world can become inoculated. “Extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures," U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said at the time.

David Ricks, CEO of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly (LLY), told Yahoo Finance that “this is a counterproductive move.”

“It just seems self-defeating,” Ricks said. “By next summer, we'll have enough vaccines to vaccinate the world anyway. Why don't we just focus on that?”

Many in the pharmaceutical industry – as well as the European Union – have pushed against the effort to waive the patent protections, instead reportedly proposing an alternative focused on speeding up production. (The EU and others have argued that waiving patents won’t do much to help accelerate production in the short term.) --->READ MORE HERE

Follow links below to related stories:

The WTO’s survival hinges on the COVID-19 vaccine patent debate, waiver advocates warn

Anticipating Patent System Change-Ups Under Biden

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