May 23, 2021 9:58 am
The only way to end the covid-19 pandemic is to vaccinate enough people around the world. The slogan “no one is safe until we are all safe” summarizes the epidemiological reality we have to deal with. A new outbreak in any country could unleash a vaccine-resistant variant of sars-cov-2, leading us all back to some form of lockdown. To make matters worse, we are still a long way from producing the 10-15 billion doses of the vaccine needed to stop the spread of the virus. By the end of April, only 1.2 billion had been manufactured worldwide. At this rate, hundreds of millions of people in developing countries will not be immunized before 2023.
This is why it is excellent news that the United States government has decided to support the request, made by at least one hundred countries to the World Trade Organization (WTO), to temporarily suspend the rules on intellectual property, which have made possible monopolies in the vaccine production. The WTO should immediately negotiate an agreement to give governments and companies the legal guarantees necessary to increase the production of vaccines.
In the fall of 2020, when he was still president of the United States, Donald Trump had allied himself with leaders of other rich countries to block the negotiations on the suspension of patents. But in recent months, many have lobbied his successor, Joe Biden, to put an end to this counterproductive filibuster. The proposal to suspend the patents has won the support of two hundred Nobel laureates, former heads of state and government, many lawmakers in the United States and Europe.
The lack of vaccines in developing countries is largely the result of attempts by their manufacturers to protect their profits. Pfizer and Moderna, which have developed highly effective messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines, have refused to respond to the many requests from companies that would have the capacity to make their own vaccines. And none of the drug companies that developed covid vaccines have shared their technologies with poor countries through the World Health Organization’s Technology Access Pool.
These companies recently promised to deliver doses to the Covax (Global Access to Covid-19 Vaccines) organization, which will assign them to the most at-risk people in the poorest countries. These promises may perhaps allay companies’ pangs of conscience, but they will not solve the problem of the supply imbalance. The only ones who can do this are governments.
If they were committed to producing vaccines with the same force with which they come up with justifications, the problem would have already been solved.
In recent weeks, drug company lobbyists have lobbied Washington politicians to get them to block the WTO proposal. If these companies committed themselves to producing vaccines with the same force with which they come up with spurious justifications, the supply problem might already have been solved. Industry executives argue that a patent suspension would not help, because the WTO framework is already flexible enough to allow access to the technologies needed to make vaccines. They also argue that it would be an ineffective measure, because developing countries do not have the means to do so. They also say the suspension would set a terrible precedent, discouraging scientific research and doing China and Russia a favor. It is worthwhile to examine these statements one by one.
After years of awareness campaigns and millions of deaths from the HIV / AIDS pandemic, the WTO countries agreed on the need for a “compulsory licensing”, that is, that companies should be allowed to produce a drug under patent without the need the authorization of the person who registered it. But the drug companies have done everything possible to undermine this principle. It is partly because of the greed of the pharmaceutical industry that we need a patent suspension. If the intellectual property regime for drugs had been more generous, the production of vaccines and therapeutic tools would have already been increased.
To argue that developing countries do not have the tools to produce covid-19 vaccines is nonsense. Some companies and organizations – such as the Serum Institute in India (the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world) and Aspen Pharmacare in South Africa – have reached agreements with the European and US pharmaceutical companies that own the patents, and have managed to produce the vaccines without too much trouble. . Many other companies and organizations around the world could do the same. They just need access to technology and technical skills. According to Suhaib Siddiqi, former director of the chemistry section of Moderna, many factories could start producing mRNA vaccines within three to four months.
The pharmaceutical companies also say that the suspension of patents is not necessary because the rules of the WTO are already “flexible” enough. They argue that companies in developing countries have not applied for “compulsory licensing”, suggesting that they simply want to draw attention to themselves. But this alleged lack of interest is a consequence of the fact that Western pharmaceutical companies have done everything possible to create a legal tangle of “exclusive” patents, copyrights, agreements and trade secrets that the flexibility of the WTO rules does not will never be able to unravel. Since mRna vaccines require more than a hundred components developed around the world, and many of them are protected by some form of intellectual property, coordinating the necessary licenses for this supply chain between different countries is next to impossible. Furthermore, the WTO rules on compulsory export concessions are even more complex. For example, Biolyse, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, cannot manufacture and export generic versions of the vaccine developed by US Johnson & Johnson to poor countries because it has rejected its request for voluntary authorization.
Washington has so far failed to set up a diplomatic strategy on vaccines
Another factor driving supply chain shortages is fear. Many developing countries fear that the United States and the European Union would cut their aid or impose sanctions should they decide to use compulsory licenses to unblock production. But if the WTO agreed to suspend the patents, governments and companies that want to make vaccines would be safe from lawsuits, injunctions and other appeals by the large multinationals that hold the patents.
This brings us to the third false claim: patent suspension would reduce profits and discourage research and development. In reality, such a decision by the WTO would not cancel the legal obligation to pay compensation and other forms of compensation to the owners of intellectual property. But by preventing monopolists from arbitrarily blocking increases in production, the suspension of patents would incentivize pharmaceutical companies to sign voluntary agreements.
Even in the event of a patent suspension, therefore, vaccine manufacturers would make a lot of money. Pfizer and Moderna profits generated by the covid-19 vaccine are expected to be $ 15 billion and $ 18 billion respectively in 2021, even though national governments have funded much of the essential research and advanced funds to do so. so that the vaccine hit the market.
Finally, there is the last argument: the suspension of patents would help China and Russia to access US technologies. This is also false. To begin with, vaccines are not a US creation. Cross-country collaborative research on mRNA and its applications has been going on for decades. The Hungarian scientist Katalin Karikó made the first fundamental discovery in 1978 and since then research has continued in Turkey, Thailand, South Africa, India, Brazil, Argentina, Malaysia, Bangladesh and other countries, for example at the National Institutes of Health of the United States. And then the genius has already come out of the lamp. The mRna technology used in the vaccine produced by Pfizer is owned by Biontech (a German company founded by a Turkish immigrant and his wife), which has already granted the Chinese pharmaceutical company Fosun Pharma a patent to make its vaccine. There are indeed examples of Chinese companies stealing valuable intellectual property, but this is not the case. Not to mention that China is already well on its way to developing and manufacturing its mRNA vaccines.
Those concerned with geopolitical aspects should focus on the fact that Washington has so far failed to put together a diplomatic strategy on vaccines. The United States has blocked exports of doses, even those it is not using. Only after a second wave of infections hit India hard did they decide to give up unused doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Meanwhile, Russia and China have shipped vaccines and are committed to transferring technology and knowledge, forging alliances around the world.
While infections increase in some countries, the chances of new variants emerging is a risk for everyone. The world will remember which countries have lent a hand and which have created obstacles. Covid-19 vaccines have been developed by scientists around the world, thanks to fundamental scientific activities supported by various governments. It is right that the inhabitants of the planet benefit from it. It is a moral question but it is also something that suits everyone. We must not allow pharmaceutical companies to put profit above human lives.
(Translation by Federico Ferrone)
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