Activism may be the key to getting vaccines to the world
Collected
A lot more than 3 million people have died of covid-19. Countless others have grown to be ill, and the numbers continue to rise. Many public health experts predict that it will take ranging from a year and three years to make sure truly global vaccine access. Tragically, those last in line overwhelmingly live in the most impoverished communities and countries.
A major reason for the delay in rolling out vaccinations is that rules protecting intellectual property are slowing production. Vaccines such as for example those for the coronavirus typically require around 200 individual components, almost all of which are patented by various corporations. Globally, these patents and other intellectual property concerns fall under the protection of “TRIPS” - the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights - which is overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The necessity to make more vaccines faster is clear. This is why a broad coalition - from the South African and Indian governments to nonprofits such as for example Oxfam, Public Citizen and ActionAid to 170 Nobel laureates and former heads of state - are demanding that the WTO issue a “TRIPS waiver.” This step would temporarily suspend WTO intellectual property protections, allowing more companies and countries to create coronavirus vaccine components. Up to now, the idea has been met with, at best, ambivalence by representatives from key economic powers, including the European Union, Canada, Brazil and america. Meanwhile, major pharmaceutical companies and lobbies largely oppose a TRIPS waiver.
This coronavirus is a more recent virus. But debates around corporate power, intellectual property, pharmaceuticals and global inequalities have long histories. For over four decades, activists been employed by for a fairer global regime of medicine production and distribution. Today’s campaign for a TRIPS waiver marks an essential moment in the long struggle by globally minded activists to forge systems of international governance that serve the interests of the world’s most impoverished and marginalized.
The present day pharmaceutical industry took form in the late 19th century. World War II and its own aftermath catalyzed growth, as corporations such as for example Pfizer became international powerhouses. As multinational drug company sales ballooned, so, too, did attention to corporate practices. Critics claimed pharmaceutical companies engaged in manipulative marketing, pushed “inessential” medications and charged astronomically high drug prices, especially in the global South. These specific critiques mixed with wider scrutiny of multinational corporations arising in the 1970s - from environmentalist and consumer activist campaigns to demands from some global South countries for a fresh international economic order.
As part of this wave of organizing aimed at reining in multinationals, in 1981, a global band of public medical researchers, policy thinkers and anti-corporate campaigners created a fresh research and policy advocacy organization, Health Action International (HAI). Highlighting issues of inequality and corporate power, HAI espoused a transformative vision, including calling for the elimination of patent protections for “essential medicines” and backing massive efforts to market the development and distribution of generic drugs.
While groups like HAI can apply political pressure, they don't have the energy of national states. Thus, alliances between activists and governments could be crucial. Regarding pharmaceuticals, an early on example of this alliance found its way to 1982. Swamped by high drug costs amid grave poverty, the Bangladeshi government issued a fresh law banning some “nonessential” medicines, tightening regulations, lowering prices and promoting domestic medicine manufacturing.
While Bangladesh represented a minuscule percentage of the global pharmaceuticals market, multinational drug companies plus some Western governments vehemently opposed the brand new law. They feared that Bangladesh’s challenge to Western capitalist interests could spur other countries to take similar actions. In response to the pressure campaign against the Bangladeshi government, HAI members joined other civil society groups to lobby their house governments to avoid targeting Bangladesh. These efforts worked - Bangladesh maintained regulations, domestic drug production increased and prices dropped.
Such successes proved rare. In particular, the rise of fervently pro-capitalist neoliberal politics all over the world in the 1980s stymied activists’ efforts. As a pharmaceutical representative told the World Health Organization secretary general in 1988, while the “late ‘70s and early ‘80s may have been characterized as an interval of confrontation … now we are entering an interval of accommodation.”
The ascent of pro-corporate politics hit a fresh peak in 1995 with the launch of the WTO. Signatory countries gave the WTO a broad mandate to create norms across a wide array of economical sectors, from services to agriculture. Probably the most dramatic of the brand new WTO agreements was TRIPS.
TRIPS set global enforcement standards for intellectual property. It included rules standardizing the lengths of patents and eliminating countries’ ability to treat domestic companies differently from multinational ones. TRIPS also included opportinity for robust enforcement. A country or countries believing that another country’s policies violated WTO rules could employ “dispute resolution” mechanisms to press for compliance, including trade sanctions.
Within a couple of years of the WTO’s launch, tensions around intellectual property and pharmaceuticals access erupted. The reason: the HIV/AIDS pandemic. By the late 1990s, new medicines finally came online that held real promise. However, charges for these new medicines made them prohibitively expensive to the populations most looking for them.
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South Africa was one of the countries hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. In 1997, the brand new democratic government passed a law targeted at ensuring wide distribution of medicines. It included provisions such as for example compulsory licensing that challenged the predominance of intellectual property rights.
In response, a group of 41 drug companies, along with pharmaceutical industry lobbies, sued the South African government. Several global North governments also blasted regulations. Both the companies and governments accused South Africa’s law of violating TRIPS. Much like the Bangladeshi case, the firms and rich country governments feared a slippery slope; if South Africa succeeded in defying TRIPS, it might bring about the agreement becoming toothless.
The actions of governments like the United States and the pharmaceutical industry provoked immediate global outrage. Social movements and advocacy groups around the world mobilized. In South Africa, the Treatment Action Campaign brought together people coping with HIV, unions, faith groups and nonprofits to mount protests and file lawsuits defending regulations. In the United States, activists disrupted public events featuring Vice President Al Gore (then campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination), accusing the Clinton administration of participating in a “morally reprehensible” defense of profits over people.
A major reason for the delay in rolling out vaccinations is that rules protecting intellectual property are slowing production. Vaccines such as for example those for the coronavirus typically require around 200 individual components, almost all of which are patented by various corporations. Globally, these patents and other intellectual property concerns fall under the protection of “TRIPS” - the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights - which is overseen by the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The necessity to make more vaccines faster is clear. This is why a broad coalition - from the South African and Indian governments to nonprofits such as for example Oxfam, Public Citizen and ActionAid to 170 Nobel laureates and former heads of state - are demanding that the WTO issue a “TRIPS waiver.” This step would temporarily suspend WTO intellectual property protections, allowing more companies and countries to create coronavirus vaccine components. Up to now, the idea has been met with, at best, ambivalence by representatives from key economic powers, including the European Union, Canada, Brazil and america. Meanwhile, major pharmaceutical companies and lobbies largely oppose a TRIPS waiver.
This coronavirus is a more recent virus. But debates around corporate power, intellectual property, pharmaceuticals and global inequalities have long histories. For over four decades, activists been employed by for a fairer global regime of medicine production and distribution. Today’s campaign for a TRIPS waiver marks an essential moment in the long struggle by globally minded activists to forge systems of international governance that serve the interests of the world’s most impoverished and marginalized.
The present day pharmaceutical industry took form in the late 19th century. World War II and its own aftermath catalyzed growth, as corporations such as for example Pfizer became international powerhouses. As multinational drug company sales ballooned, so, too, did attention to corporate practices. Critics claimed pharmaceutical companies engaged in manipulative marketing, pushed “inessential” medications and charged astronomically high drug prices, especially in the global South. These specific critiques mixed with wider scrutiny of multinational corporations arising in the 1970s - from environmentalist and consumer activist campaigns to demands from some global South countries for a fresh international economic order.
As part of this wave of organizing aimed at reining in multinationals, in 1981, a global band of public medical researchers, policy thinkers and anti-corporate campaigners created a fresh research and policy advocacy organization, Health Action International (HAI). Highlighting issues of inequality and corporate power, HAI espoused a transformative vision, including calling for the elimination of patent protections for “essential medicines” and backing massive efforts to market the development and distribution of generic drugs.
While groups like HAI can apply political pressure, they don't have the energy of national states. Thus, alliances between activists and governments could be crucial. Regarding pharmaceuticals, an early on example of this alliance found its way to 1982. Swamped by high drug costs amid grave poverty, the Bangladeshi government issued a fresh law banning some “nonessential” medicines, tightening regulations, lowering prices and promoting domestic medicine manufacturing.
While Bangladesh represented a minuscule percentage of the global pharmaceuticals market, multinational drug companies plus some Western governments vehemently opposed the brand new law. They feared that Bangladesh’s challenge to Western capitalist interests could spur other countries to take similar actions. In response to the pressure campaign against the Bangladeshi government, HAI members joined other civil society groups to lobby their house governments to avoid targeting Bangladesh. These efforts worked - Bangladesh maintained regulations, domestic drug production increased and prices dropped.
Such successes proved rare. In particular, the rise of fervently pro-capitalist neoliberal politics all over the world in the 1980s stymied activists’ efforts. As a pharmaceutical representative told the World Health Organization secretary general in 1988, while the “late ‘70s and early ‘80s may have been characterized as an interval of confrontation … now we are entering an interval of accommodation.”
The ascent of pro-corporate politics hit a fresh peak in 1995 with the launch of the WTO. Signatory countries gave the WTO a broad mandate to create norms across a wide array of economical sectors, from services to agriculture. Probably the most dramatic of the brand new WTO agreements was TRIPS.
TRIPS set global enforcement standards for intellectual property. It included rules standardizing the lengths of patents and eliminating countries’ ability to treat domestic companies differently from multinational ones. TRIPS also included opportinity for robust enforcement. A country or countries believing that another country’s policies violated WTO rules could employ “dispute resolution” mechanisms to press for compliance, including trade sanctions.
Within a couple of years of the WTO’s launch, tensions around intellectual property and pharmaceuticals access erupted. The reason: the HIV/AIDS pandemic. By the late 1990s, new medicines finally came online that held real promise. However, charges for these new medicines made them prohibitively expensive to the populations most looking for them.
Advertisement
South Africa was one of the countries hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. In 1997, the brand new democratic government passed a law targeted at ensuring wide distribution of medicines. It included provisions such as for example compulsory licensing that challenged the predominance of intellectual property rights.
In response, a group of 41 drug companies, along with pharmaceutical industry lobbies, sued the South African government. Several global North governments also blasted regulations. Both the companies and governments accused South Africa’s law of violating TRIPS. Much like the Bangladeshi case, the firms and rich country governments feared a slippery slope; if South Africa succeeded in defying TRIPS, it might bring about the agreement becoming toothless.
The actions of governments like the United States and the pharmaceutical industry provoked immediate global outrage. Social movements and advocacy groups around the world mobilized. In South Africa, the Treatment Action Campaign brought together people coping with HIV, unions, faith groups and nonprofits to mount protests and file lawsuits defending regulations. In the United States, activists disrupted public events featuring Vice President Al Gore (then campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination), accusing the Clinton administration of participating in a “morally reprehensible” defense of profits over people.
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com