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The watchdog | Patent protections allow pharmaceutical companies to monetize their innovations, but are they solely responsible? By Matthew Liu 26 minutes ago Pharmaceutical companies protecting their profits with patent protection laws, which prevent other countries from producing generic versions of the COVID vaccine, are the biggest obstacles to more efficient global distribution vaccines. Credit: Chase Sutton
More than half of American adults are fully vaccinated. The relaxed restrictions on masking and gathering have given Memorial Day weekend and early summer a semblance of normalcy. Yet in many other countries this is far from the case. India and Nepal have seen an increase in the number of cases and deaths over the past month, and many countries still have not administered a single dose of the vaccine.
In May, President Biden called for the lifting of patent protection on COVID vaccines to alleviate the vaccine shortage, but no action has been taken since. The United States, along with other G7 countries, has pledged to donate one billion vaccines to developing countries. Yet many organizations, including the United Nations, argue that this is not enough. Despite the decline in cases in the United States, many countries will continue to suffer. Even if you aren’t concerned about COVID-19 outbreaks and deaths in other countries, vaccination delays will prolong the pandemic. This increases the risk of mutations, some of which are said to be resistant to current vaccines, spawning new epidemics in the United States, threatening to prolong a pandemic that has already decimated American society.
The biggest obstacle to more efficient global vaccine distribution are pharmaceutical companies using patent protection law to prevent other countries from producing generic versions of the COVID vaccine, thereby protecting their profits. It is often argued that the innovation of pharmaceutical companies justifies their profits. However, for the health and safety of Americans and the world around, President Biden must ignore Big Pharma, export more vaccines to countries in need, and most importantly, forgo COVID patent protections.
The argument that pharmaceutical companies developed the technologies behind the COVID vaccine couldn’t be further from the truth; the American people played an important role in its creation. The main mRNA technology in the vaccine was primarily developed here at Penn. This technology would not have been developed without grants from NIH, which is funded by taxpayer dollars. On top of that, Moderna received nearly $ 1 billion from the government’s Advanced Biomedical Research and Development Authority to develop the vaccine.
In addition to paying for its development, we are paying for the vaccine itself. Although the vaccine is free, the US government has paid pharmaceutical companies to mass produce the vaccines, so our taxes go directly to pay for them. In other words, the vaccines were publicly funded, but it was the pharmaceutical companies that benefited. COVID vaccines have been Pfizers’ main source of revenue so far in 2021, resulting in pre-tax profit of $ 900 million. This pandemic profit cycle could continue, as the booster shots (which pharma executives predict we’ll need) will mean another opportunity for big pharma to line their pockets.
Profit on health and safety, the culture of win-win in the pharmaceutical industry is not limited to the COVID vaccine alone. Pharmaceutical companies have used innovation as an argument to protect profits and price hikes for decades. Yet every new drug approved by the FDA from 2010 to 2016 was associated with research funded by the NIH. Like the COVID vaccine, most of the basic research was done at universities like Penn, and the patent rights were then sold to drug companies. Since the American people have helped fund vaccine and drug development, affordability for Americans and American health and safety must come first. The federal government has spent billions of dollars on bailouts during the last two recessions: the COVID-19 recession of 2020 and the recession of 2008. However, their top-down approach, in which big corporations and the wealthy have received the bulk money, allowed them to return to pre-recession productivity, while very little support went to the working class. Allowing pharmaceutical companies to put profits before safety is just another example of how the average American has been ignored during this pandemic.
The steps that need to be taken to ensure a more equitable distribution of vaccines and drugs are clear. For this vaccine, exporting more vaccines to developing countries is a start, but ending the pandemic requires relinquishing the COVID vaccine patents. For future medicines and vaccines, more emphasis should be placed on safety, affordability and equitable distribution rather than on the benefits up front.
University scientists also have a leverage effect since they are the ones who initially hold the patents. They must therefore also ensure that the distribution is not falsified by pharmaceutical companies that are only looking for profits and that the benefits of these scientific advances are fairly reaped by all. Profits are not simply made in a vacuum; they have far-reaching consequences. This applies to the current COVID vaccine, as well as future vaccines, inventions and discoveries which, if left unchecked, will repeat the inequitable distribution and, therefore, the inequitable recovery of the COVID pandemic.
MATTHEW LIU is an aspiring student from Allentown, Pa. Studying biochemistry, chemistry, and neurobiology. His email is [email protected].
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