The Politics of President Biden’s Support for the TRIPS Waiver Proposal
To anyone familiar with the global pharmaceutical industry’s considerable political influence, President Joe Biden’s announcement on May 5, 2021, that the US intended to support the TRIPS waiver proposal, must have seemed like a startling change of tune. President Biden’s statement was followed by a similarly unexpected statement from the European Commission (EU)’s head the […]
Corporate Vaccination Camps: FAQs for Employers
INTRODUCTION When the Government of India (GoI) first launched its Covid-19 vaccination program on 16 January 2021, only the GoI could procure and distribute vaccines. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (“MoHFW”) had already issued its ‘Covid-19 Operational Guidelines’ on 28 December 2020, outlining the GoI’s vaccination strategy and related guidelines. The guidelines did […]
A Jab of Indemnity
“I’d like my free market pricing with a side of sovereign indemnity, please.” Should vaccine manufacturers be indemnified by the Indian Government against serious adverse reactions arising from their vaccines? This is the latest slithering twist in the high-stakes game of snakes and ladders that is India’s vaccination programme. It started with reports in mid-May […]
How the Vax was Won | Part 2: Follow the Money
RECAP OF PART 1 (IDEALS v. DEALS) Critics of the monopoly-based ideology underpinning the modern global intellectual property (IP) regime believe it is not geared towards equity, and as a result, poorer countries are being denied access to Covid-19 vaccines and drugs, in a repeat of what happened in the AIDS and Ebola epidemics. Countries […]
How the Vax was won: Intellectual Property and Access to Medicines in a Public Health Crisis
INTRODUCTION The bargain implicit in a patent – the Faustian pact, as Bently and Sherman put it – is classic: a limited monopoly granted by the State in exchange for public disclosure of an invention. Over the years, perhaps nowhere has this pact fuelled as much academic and policy debate as in the pharmaceutical industry. […]
