Vaccines, the patent war
Vaccines and patents: facts, positions and differences.
The production of vaccines , and their distribution, is turning into a dispute between the right to protection of intellectual property and the right to health. At the moment, it is the rigid line of the WTO that has sided in favor of patents to win. However, a movement is underway involving states (India and South Africa in the lead), NGOs and civil society that is trying to undermine one of the pillars on which world trade is based.
Who is the director of the WTO
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria's former finance minister and former World Bank number two, took over as director of the WTO on March 1, 2021. United States President Joe Biden supported his candidacy, allowing him to overcome the stalemate posed by the veto of Donald Trump , who had blocked his appointment by supporting, instead, Yoo Myung-hee , current Minister of Commerce of South Korea. The director of the WTO for years has been chairing Gavi , the international organization that guarantees access and distribution of vaccines in developing countries . Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, at the time of his appointment at the top of the WTO, had made it clear the need to guarantee everyone access to vaccines and treatments against Covid.
Dialogue with Big Pharma: the choice of the WTO
The director of the WTO, between the defense of patents and liberalization, has chosen a sort of " third way " of dialogue with companies: "Preserving intellectual property but favoring agreements with companies to increase production". Seven countries – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Turkey, Chile and Colombia – with the informal support of the USA, asked Okonjo-Iweala to start "direct talks", direct dialogues, with Big Pharma, in order to facilitate and promote partnerships. The third way of the WTO is similar to the agreement between Sanofi and Pfizer , essentially a co-production agreement between the company that holds the patent and a company to which the production is contracted, negotiating, clearly, under the conditions of the patent holder. . A clue to the orientation of the director of the WTO is in the fact that in March she discussed the global vaccine production chain with representatives of the pharmaceutical industry, such as the International federation of pharmaceutical manufacturers and associations (Ifpma), of which they are part. the big vaccines such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, but also Novartis, Sanofi, Bayer, Roche and so on.
The letter from the NGOs
More than 200 civil society organizations have sent a long letter to the director of the WTO calling for the vaccine to be made a global common good . The 243 NGOs, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Médecins sans frontières and Fairwatch, fear that the commercial logic with which the purchase and sale of vaccines is treated could endanger the lives of millions of people in the poorest countries. “Global vaccine supplies – the letter reads – cannot end up relegated to the mercy of purely commercial interests or the exclusive right of pharmaceutical companies to keep the technology in their hands. The stakes are too high ”.
The concerns of NGOs
Civil society organizations say they are concerned that bilateral agreements would be industry-controlled, leaving companies to choose whether to agree or not, and under what conditions. " The" third way "you are talking about – the NGOs write to the director of the WTO – is once again based on the will of the companies ». One of the most critical issues is that companies have benefited from large chunks of public money to do research and development, and will receive even more for the purchase of the vials. The risk, Oxfam and Emergency denounce, is that with the current pace of vaccine production, most poor nations will have to wait until 2024 to immunize their population.
The appeal of the Nobel Laureates and former heads of state
More than 170 Nobel Laureates and former heads of state and government have signed and sent an open letter to US President Joe Biden to support the proposal to suspend pharmaceutical companies' intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines. Among the first signatories are the Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz , the one for peace Michail Gorbachev , the former Prime Minister Romano Prodi and Mario Monti , the former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the former President of France François Hollande , former Spanish Prime Minister José Zapatero. The initiative is coordinated by the People's Vaccine Alliance (Pva). "So that – reads the letter – all the influence that the United States can exert on a global level to temporarily suspend the intellectual property of the pharmaceutical industry, giving an impulse to the production of vaccines that remain deficient all over the world, is brought into play. , especially in developing countries ”.
The 118 countries against the dogma of patents
On 2 October 2020, India and South Africa asked the World Trade Organization for a suspension of intellectual property protection . Now 118 countries are supporting the proposal of India and South Africa while seven countries, the USA, the European Union, Switzerland, Canada, Brazil, Japan and Australia have asked the WTO to dialogue with Big Pharma. Director Okonjo-Iweala opted for meetings with Big Pharma.
Albert Bourla (Ceo Pfizer): "The vaccine will become a public good"
Who seems to sleep soundly is Albert Bourla , president and CEO of Pfizer . "I'm not worried. The vaccine will become a global public good because we have produced enough doses . There is always a bit of rhetoric – he says in an interview with Corriere della Sera -. But it is not true that intellectual property rights hinder production. The hindrance is that we have moved at the speed of light. There was nothing, we had to start from scratch , accepting the risk of failure. It was a miracle ”.
Roberto Rustichelli: "It is possible to use the patent without the owner's authorization"
The issue is also deeply felt in Italy. "We must, in particular, ask ourselves whether it is socially and ethically sustainable that access to essential health products finds a limit in the existence of a patent, as well as whether it is acceptable that a few large pharmaceutical multinationals can autonomously decide how much to produce and who to sell ". This is said by Roberto Rustichelli , president of the Competition and Market Authority, during the webinar "Competition and industrial property rights in the prism of sustainability" organized by Centromarca. The " temporary suspension of the validity of patents " no longer seems like a blasphemy. And also the question of the extraterritoriality of the companies to be expropriated could be resolved by resorting to Article 31 of the TRIPS Agreement (Agreement on Commercial Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) signed in Marrakesh in 1994. "This law allows States, in case of emergency national, to make use of the patent without the prior authorization of the owner – concludes Rustichelli -, with the consequence that the legal possibility of producing vaccines already exists in our legal system, guaranteeing not only the supreme interest of public health, but also the 'equality in access to vaccines provided for in Article 3 of the Constitution ”.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/vaccini-la-guerra-sui-brevetti/ on Sat, 17 Apr 2021 08:55:08 +0000.