Putting People Before Patents

Article

May 6

A revolution in global vaccine equity is underway. On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced its support for waiving coronavirus vaccine patent protections, backing a World Trade Organization proposal drafted by India and South Africa that would give trade secrets to drug manufacturers worldwide, allowing other countries to make these vaccines.

U.S. backing of the waiver is significant, but it still needs support from Britain and the European Union to change international intellectual property rules. And global health activists say the waiver isn’t enough, arguing that patent holders like Pfizer, Moderna and BioNTech should also supply technical processes and personnel to countries that use their intellectual property to make these vaccines, and that Biden should use his influence to scale up vaccine manufacturing around the world, according to the New York Times.

The Biden administration’s support for putting people dying from COVID-19 ahead of profits for pharmaceutical companies is, believe it or not, a small revolution in health care. America’s medical patent system is notorious.

Right after the administration’s announcement, shares for companies BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax crashed. Industry leaders promptly denounced the decision, claiming that the waiver would undermine the U.S. as a global leader in “biomedical discovery,” and discourage the industry from creating cures during the next public health crisis. These companies want to protect their patents for obvious reasons: They’ve made bank on the pandemic. Pfizer, as we covered in our last newsletter, has made $900 million off its vaccine so far. The desire to profit has meant that the bulk of Pfizer’s vaccines have gone to countries willing and able to pay, and left the Global South struggling at death’s door.

While progressives have long criticized for-profit health care in the U.S., the pandemic has revealed just how apocalyptic this model can be on a global scale. The response from Big Pharma underscores how necessary a new health care framework is for the U.S., one that is driven not by pharma shareholders but by serving people – at home and abroad.