“The fabulous vaccine success should be a moment to celebrate U.S. property rights and innovation,” says The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board—but many policymakers in the U.S. and globally see “an opening for government to confiscate and redistribute.” This might thwart future cures and vaccines—including for the next pandemic.
Getting a COVID-19 vaccine this week? Thank strong IP laws, which protect innovators and enabled them to rapidly launch 800+ R&D programs targeting the virus with unprecedented speed and collaboration.
But governments and organizations around the world want to “suspend intellectual property protections on COVID vaccines and treatments, which they say is necessary to expand global access,” says the WSJ.
However: “Pharmaceutical companies are ramping up manufacturing as fast as they can, including in low-income countries” and “sharing their IP.” But suspending patent protections, explains the editorial, will not enhance India and South Africa's capacity to make advanced vaccine products.
This could lead to “subpotent” and counterfeit medicines, putting patients at risk—a lesson learned from the HIV/AIDS crisis during the Bush administration, explains former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb in another Wall Street Journal opinion piece this week.
The successful global collaborations between innovators and partners around the world have demonstrated the importance of following this model to ensure the fullest use of all resources to produce effective vaccines to meet the need in record time.
And it could put future innovation at risk, too. “Novavax and Moderna have been investing in vaccine research for years—more than 30 in Novavax’s case—and their COVID shots are their first success. Companies won’t continue to invest if they aren’t allowed to make a profit,” continues the WSJ editorial board.
BIO supports “strong, efficient, and effective efforts to see that successful COVID products get to patients everywhere in the world that need them,”we said in a recent letter to President Biden. But policies must also “continue to support innovative biotech research and development endeavors aimed at bringing this pandemic to an end as soon as possible.”
More Health Care News:
The New York Times: The Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are very effective in real-world conditions at preventing infections, the C.D.C. reported
“Consistent with clinical trial data, a two-dose regimen prevented 90 percent of infections by two weeks after the second shot. One dose prevented 80 percent of infections by two weeks after vaccination.”
