Ah, patents! The bedrock of innovation and human
advancement! Also the bedrock of profiteering off
the sale of goods humanity desperately needs!
We've got a vaccine! And that's a great way to start off 2021, even though time is just a
manufactured mode of organization that ceased to mean anything in 2020.
Having a vaccine is great news. It's needed news.
But it's brought up an important, if weird, question:
Who gets to own it?
Hey guys, I'm Sana. I'm not vaccinated, yet, and today we're talking about vaccine patents and
how they could stand in the way of eradicating COVID-19 from the face of the Earth.
And since you're here, be sure to subscribe to AJ+ and like this video. It'll keep me employed. Thanks.
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Something really remarkable
happened in the early 1950s.
In a post-WWII,
smack-dab-in-the-middle-of-the-Cold-War world,
this man, Dr. Jonas Salk, created a vaccine for a
viral disease that had plagued humanity for thousands
of years: polio.
-The newest miracle: the Salk anti-polio vaccine.
He became an overnight celebrity, but he wasn't
doing it alone. His contemporary, Dr. Albert Sabin,
created the oral vaccine for polio a few years later.
Between the work of these two men, we've seen the
near elimination of polio. And also between these
two men, we've seen how effective and powerful
putting people over profits can be.
See, neither Salk or Sabin patented their vaccines.
And Sabin, who donated his vaccine to the
World Health Organization, is credited for having
near eliminated polio globally.
- Unless the oncoming generations of children
are vaccinated with the oral vaccine on a much
larger scale than they are now, it will come back,
because there're still many millions and millions
of people who are not protected against polio, and the
virus could start spreading and circulating again.
-Who owns the patent on this vaccine?
-Well, the people I would say. There is no patent.
Could you patent the sun?
-Now of course, you can't compare a vaccine to the sun. One is created by the human mind and medical
innovation and the other can give you cancer and wrinkles because you decided sunscreen was
too much effort.
It's never too much effort. It takes like a second, guys.
Please, please wear sunscreen.
But, in both those interviews, Salk and Sabin underscore
two of the strongest arguments against patenting
a vaccine: We cannot eradicate a viral infectious disease
without mass, and thus accessible, vaccination.
And that vaccines are for the benefit and
continuation of human life.
Patenting a vaccine means you're establishing a
monopoly over something deemed an invention,
intellectual property. That means you have exclusive
rights to it, and then you can sell your intellectual
property to buyers at a cost determined by you.
The argument for patenting is pretty straightforward: Patenting breeds medical innovation because it
creates a competitive race with financial rewards. And without financial incentives, why would anyone
even disclose their vaccine?
Like what's the point of saving humanity then if you're not making money.
And that's because the vaccine landscape has
changed since Salk and Sabin's time.
As we gear up for the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines,
it's becoming more and more apparent how much of
role money plays in the vaccine industry.
And that hurts my heart, man. Vaccines, I'm out here defending you against anti-vaxxers and you're
focused on making profits? Come on, guys.
Come on.
In October of 2020, India and South Africa, two
countries hit hard by COVID, put forward a proposal
calling on the World Trade Organization to suspend
patents on the COVID vaccines.
Their argument was, hey, we don't want these rich countries to monopolize the vaccines and technology
transfer. We want more collaboration. We want sharing.
That would mean that, instead of waiting in line for their turn, more countries and companies can start making
the vaccine, often at a lower cost, instead of just it being in the hands of a handful of players.
And that would mean not only accessible and widespread inoculation, but also speeding up
the timeline in controlling this pandemic,
which could send an estimated 150 million
people around the world into extreme poverty by 2021.
But where's the money in that?
Their call received pushback from not only the
pharmaceutical industry, but also straight-out
rejection from high-income countries, such as the
United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Norway,
which made the usual "won't somebody think of the incentives?!" argument.
This artificial scarcity and profit-privileging is just par for the course at this point for pharmaceutical
companies and the rich countries that house them.
Vaccine development is now more commonly handled
by governments and pharmaceutical companies,
rather than the nonprofits of the past.
Some of the top vaccine patent holders are the United States and the UK pharmaceutical company
GlaxoSmithKline, and that monopoly does have an impact on actual human lives.
In 1998, 40 pharmaceutical companies, including
GlaxoSmithKline, blocked the South African goverment
from buying cheaper medicine for HIV/AIDS,
while millions in the country were suffering
from the virus.
The pharmaceutical companies spent millions
building a legal case to deny treatment to poor people
because the poor bring no profits!
This resulted in international backlash, which caused
them to step back a bit, but not before their
incredibly brave and noble quest to keep lifesaving
drugs from the poor had resulted in thousands of
possibly preventable deaths.
See, in practice, the mantra that intellectual property advocates point to, that competition
breeds innovation, isn't so true because it can actually stifle innovation and collaboration.
Competition makes pharmaceutical companies more protective of and reliant on their tried-and-true
cash cows, to the point where innovation is more often seen as a risk that should be avoided.
This also skews the research of pharmaceutical companies. Since profit is the main driving
force, more than the desire to save human lives, research is then conducted to maximize profit,
more than develop new and better treatments. And that also means focusing on what's new and
sexy in the disease world, and what's inflicting the rich especially.
I mean, would we even have had a polio vaccine
had the American president at the time
not believed he had polio?
The world hasn't seen a new class of antibiotic in nearly four decades simply because it just
isn't profitable to develop a new one, even when we have drug-resistant superbugs spreading.
And you don't have to take my word for it.
Multiple studies conducted to understand this trend
away from innovation found that, since 1999,
the "average novelty of drugs has declined."
Innovative drugs are less likely to be approved by
the FDA, and so pharmaceutical firms are more likely
to work on "incremental" changes to drugs
than innovative treaments.
This means it only makes sense to develop new drugs when you know their approval
and subsequent sale will be
Then, there's the money. Like, the real money-money.
It's estimated that in 2021, Pfizer alone could be
making about $14 billion in profit
from the COVID-19 vaccine.
And you might say,
well, OK Sana. But that money will then go to more needed research and development of other
vaccines and treatments for diseases!
Mmm, not quite.
Almost every major company that's been working on
a COVID vaccine has had its research and development
funded by governments. Check out this BBC chart,
which highlights how much out of the total funding
came from governments. Look closely at
Moderna and BioNTech, which is partnered with Pfizer.
Plus, a lot of money that Big Pharma also makes
in profits goes towards marketing, not just
research and development.
And, pharmaceutical companies these days privilege treatment over prevention anyways.
That's because preventing diseases isn't as profitable as
getting you hooked on the drugs you need to treat
your diabetes or heart disease or high cholesterol.
Unless of course that preventative treatment is something billions of people will absolutely
need to function in society and keep the economy going.
Also, like, the way patents function and play out in the United States is so gross
and so obviously driven by the desire for profit.
Patents do have expiration dates in this country,
about 20 years after they're first approved.
After that, we see generic brands pop up, like CVS or
Walgreens, and they're cheaper.
But Big Pharma still has ways around it, whether extending the patent by up to five years through
some really lame loopholes or making "pay-to-delay" deals with generic brands, in which they pay off
smaller companies not to manufacture generic versions so that the original drug stays firmly and artificially
high-priced. And yeah, that's very illegal in some states.
And when all that fails, they just straight up try to block cheaper distribution, like in the South Africa case.
It's possible to rid the world of a disease if the will
is there. Look at how smallpox was eradicated
in 1979 after a successful worldwide vaccination
and distribution campaign.
That took about 20 years, but today we have the incredible advancements in development, tracking
and distribution technology needed to eradicate diseases like COVID-19 in way less time.
There's no doubt that patents hold certain protections and privileges with the way things are set up right now.
But if we walk away from this pandemic not only without valuing human life, but also without
understanding what it takes to put that value into practice, what was it all for?
This pandemic will not be the last one, we know that. And how we choose to respond to COVID-19
and the vaccine will determine how prepared we will be for the next one.
Hi guys, hope you're all ready to hang in there for the
long haul because ... we may have a vaccine, but
this is going to last a little while.
Thanks so much for watching.
So what do you guys think about waiving patents?
Let us know in the comments.
Don't forget to like, share and subscribe.
And we'll see you next time.