Giving up patents on the Covid-19 vaccine won’t get shots any faster. This slows down new vaccines.
WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said friday a total waiver of corporate patents on the Covid-19 vaccine under the auspices of the World Trade Organization – sought by many developing countries and supported by President Joe Biden to fight disproportionate access to therapies – will not be enough to speed up the delivery of vaccines to countries where it is lagging behind.
On this small point, at least, we agree: the nations that led the petition to waive patent rights at the WTO, India and South Africa, were not able to provide any evidence that the international system of enforcement of intellectual property rights under the law has hampered the development, production or distribution of Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.
And it’s hard to imagine that such evidence will be available, as intellectual property facilitates – not inhibits – the pharmaceutical industry’s response to the pandemic.
Normally, fierce rival companies have been able to cooperate in vaccine production precisely because inventors know their property rights are – and will remain – guaranteed. For example, Johnson & Johnson invited Merck to participate in the manufacture of its viral vector vaccine, while Pfizer and BioNTech, which jointly developed their breakthrough mRNA vaccine, are similarly working with French drug giant Sanofi to stimulate its production.
The suspension of intellectual property rights will not get gunshots any faster at this point and would in fact undermine efforts to increase vaccine production.
And generic drug makers are already working around the clock on a contract basis with innovative companies to produce vaccines. For example, India’s largest generic maker, the Serum Institute, produces billions of doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine for low-income countries, while South Africa’s largest generics company, Aspen Pharmacare, produces hundreds millions of doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.
The petition from India and South Africa to revoke intellectual property protections, had it been in place, would have made such collaborations impossible.
The suspension of intellectual property rights will not get gunshots any faster at this point and would in fact undermine efforts to increase vaccine production. As Okonjo-Iweala herself pointed out last week, although it will take time to negotiate a comprehensive change in WTO treaties, the capacity to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines already exists in Pakistan, Bangladesh. , Indonesia, Thailand, Senegal and South Africa, but is currently inactive despite existing frameworks giving manufacturers in those places the right to start.
The EU has meanwhile offered a counter-proposal lift or minimize export restrictions on vaccines and vaccine components, commit to providing vaccines to countries in shortage at cost, and allow more countries to take advantage of existing rules of the WTO which allow countries to license intellectual property without the consent of patent holders, essentially allowing production capacity to be increased without giving up patent rights altogether.
Normally, fierce rival companies have been able to cooperate in vaccine production precisely because inventors know their property rights are – and will remain – guaranteed.
So while the allure of renouncing intellectual property is tempting in the short term, it jeopardizes our ability to develop new drugs and fight future pandemics.
The Biden administration, however, announced its support for such a petition earlier in May and progressive groups applauded, saying the suspension of intellectual property would speed up and make global vaccine deployment more equitable by allowing more manufacturers. to produce vaccines developed by Western companies.
And, certainly, the rapid and equitable distribution of Covid-19 vaccines is absolutely essential to end this pandemic. But sacrificing the innovation ecosystem to achieve this goal would be myopic policy.
There are already very real challenges to immunizing the world, including a widespread lack of proper refrigeration (not to mention the ultra-cold storage required for some vaccines), a shortage of trained professionals to administer them and conduct follow-up assessments, and a lack of patients. compliance with the two-dose schedule for the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna jabs.
In addition, there have already been counterfeiting issues and a lack of confidence in the government that have come into play. In Mexico and Poland, the authorities have identified counterfeit versions of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. In Malawi, the New York Times reported that “people are asking doctors how to get the AstraZeneca vaccine out of their body.”
Leaders in the developed world should focus their efforts on helping other countries overcome challenges, rather than debating the intricacies of intellectual property law at the WTO.
Suspending intellectual property rights will not remove any of these barriers and will likely exacerbate them. Without certain quality controls implemented by the original patent holders, especially in places with existing levels of government or industrial corruption, we might see ineffective vaccines made using substandard processes and then administered. without adequate refrigeration, professional handling or guidance and follow-up required.
At this time, leaders and policymakers in the developed world should focus their efforts on helping other countries overcome these challenges, rather than debating the intricacies of intellectual property law at the WTO. The latter is a waste of precious time, especially since without intellectual property protection there might never have been vaccines to discuss – at least not yet.
Take Moderna’s vaccine: just two days after Chinese authorities publicly disclosed the genetic sequence of Covid-19 in January 2020, Moderna already had sequence its vaccine candidate, mRNA-1273 – which ultimately proved 94.5% effective and became one of the first vaccines approved for emergency use in the United States and the European Union. (By comparison, creating viable vaccines against smallpox, chickenpox, typhoid fever, and polio took decades.)
The explosion in biopharmaceutical research – and the number of new drugs brought to market to fight Covid-19 – are directly linked to a strong system of intellectual property rights.
Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine is the result of 10 years of work, which required at least $ 2 billion investors. Investors were prepared to support Moderna for so many years – and potentially lose billions in the process – because they knew both that its technology could revolutionize medicine and that the technology would be protected by intellectual property rules.
Investments in Moderna have paid off – but only 12 percent investigational drugs entering clinical trials are ultimately approved by the US Food and Drug Association. As the average cost of developing a new drug approaches $ 3 billionIt is clear that no company would do research and development without the promise of intellectual property rights, which give companies exclusive ownership of their inventions and a chance to recoup the investments that made the drug possible.
Moderna’s success should be a clear lesson for all policymakers: rapid global public health responses to tomorrow’s pandemics are based on spurring research and clinical development of new drug candidates and clinical pathways today. .
The explosion in biopharmaceutical research – and the number of new drugs brought to market to fight Covid-19 – are directly linked to a strong system of intellectual property rights.
The WTO waiver on patent rights for Covid-19 vaccines – not to mention requirements for broader technology transfers, which Okonjo-Iweala appeared to be demanding on Friday – could shatter that system. It is unrealistic to assume that revolutionary innovations will simply emerge without strong and reliable protections for those who risk the time and money to develop them.