The World Trade Organization Is No Impediment to Vaccine Production or Distribution

James BacchusIn a sign of their increasing frustration with global efforts to ensure that all people everywhere will have access to COVID-19 vaccines, a number of developing countries have asked other members of the World Trade Organization to join with them in a sweeping waiver of the intellectual property rights relating to those vaccines. Their request raises anew the recurring debate within the WTO over the right balance between the protection of intellectual property rights and access in poorer countries to urgently needed medicines.The proposed waiver brings back bad memories for all in the WTO of the long and contentious dispute between developed and developing countries over the compulsory licensing of HIV/AIDS drugs nearly two decades ago. And it does so at a time when the very last thing the WTO needs amidst an existential crisis is yet another acrimonious debate over perceived trade obstacles to public health.As discussed in mynew Cato Free Trade Bulletin (published today), India and South Africa have asked the members of the WTO to waive protections in WTO rules for patents, copyrights, industrial designs, and undisclosed information (trade secrets) in relation to the “prevention, containment or treatment of COVID-19…until widespread vaccination is in place globally, and the majority of the world’s population has developed immunity….”They and other developing countries want to give all WTO members the complete freedom to refuse to gra...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs