The Biden Administration allows politics to upend a pragmatic pandemic response
Not only will this policy do nothing to help save lives globally, it could have a damaging impact for American patients.
Not only will this policy do nothing to help save lives globally, it could have a damaging impact for American patients.
Last week, the Biden Administration announced that it will support a waiver of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement, which would waive intellectual property (IP) protections for COVID-19 vaccines. Not only will this policy do nothing to help save lives globally, it could have a damaging impact for American patients.
The White House claims that it is necessary to waive IP rights in order to speed up COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution, especially in developing markets. But as PhRMA President and CEO Stephen Ubl explained last week, this move “will undermine our global response to the pandemic and compromise safety. This decision will sow confusion between public and private partners, further weaken already strained supply chains and foster the proliferation of counterfeit vaccines.”
Let’s break down several key concerns with the IP waiver.
The bottom line is that there are real challenges to getting more shots in arms, including last-mile distribution and the free flow of inputs and finished products, but these challenges won’t be addressed with an IP waiver. As Drs. Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb recently wrote, the Biden administration’s decision sets “a bad precedent that would do no immediate good and substantial long-term harm.”
The biopharmaceutical sector will remain focused on our shared objective of getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible and ending the pandemic. We encourage President Biden to do the same by rethinking his approach on IP rights, because the only way we will be able to save lives today is by working together.