A disastrous deal for public health
American negotiators are on the verge of giving away perhaps the most important technology of the 21st century — mRNA vaccine development platforms — for free. Representatives from the United States, India, South Africa and the European Union (aka the Quad) recently cut a deal to waive intellectual property protections on COVID-19 vaccines. If the agreement is approved by the other members of the World Trade Organization, it will allow other countries to copy the platforms that American companies spent billions of dollars developing. These platforms, initially used to vaccinate much of the world against SARS-CoV-2, have the potential to combat everything from cancer to HIV.
Giving away the underlying mRNA technology won’t accelerate global vaccinations — the stated reason for the waiver. Instead, this move would enrich America’s competitors, while harming the United States’ world-leading biotech companies, their workers, and patients around the world. Countries like Russia — and any allies they chose to share the technology with — would love nothing more than to be gifted American innovations on a silver platter. It’s a senseless, self-defeating strategy.
The Quad’s deal is the result of a determined influence campaign by India and South Africa, which petitioned the WTO in October 2020 — before the FDA had even approved any vaccines — to let countries ignore IP protections on COVID-related vaccines and therapeutics. Both countries argued that patent laws would slow the global distribution of vaccines.
But IP protections have done nothing of the sort. Wealthy countries have donated so many doses that the developing world actually faces a glut of vaccines.
The African CDC, for example, recently said the main barriers to vaccinating the continent were logistical challenges and vaccine hesitancy — and asked that all vaccine donations be paused until later this year. African nations like Zambia, Chad and Uganda had used less than a third of the doses they received by late January.
Meanwhile, India’s Serum Institute — the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer and the leading supplier of COVID-19 vaccines to low-income nations — has stopped vaccine production on account of waning demand. The Institute still has 200 million doses sitting in storage as of late April.
Vaccination rates remain far too low in some regions, but that’s because of a shortage of medical infrastructure and trained staff, not a shortage of vaccines. Roads from ports or capitals to distant provinces are often in poor condition, and in the worst cases, barely passable or nonexistent. Red tape and corruption can maroon vaccine doses in storage facilities.
Far from holding up distribution, vaccines exist because of intellectual property protections. America dominates the world in medical research, producing roughly two-thirds of the world’s new medicines, precisely because our IP laws ensure innovators can earn fair returns on their investments.
It’s these protections that encouraged American biotech companies to spend billions of dollars in recent decades in a bid to create mRNA platforms that could treat or inoculate patients against cancer, HIV and a host of other scourges. Once these platforms were developed, tweaking them to create the world’s most effective COVID-19 vaccines was relatively easy. Moderna scientists famously invented their jab in just two days.
Given the amazing versatility of these platforms, it’s no mystery why India and South Africa, which have two of the biggest generic drug industries in the world, are so eager to get their hands on American mRNA technology.
Both countries can even be forgiven for this transparent attempt to enrich themselves at the expense of American businesses. What’s unforgivable is that American negotiators are willing to go along with the charade — and scapegoat IP laws for vaccination bottlenecks that health care authorities in developing countries freely admit are caused by logistical and cultural issues, not a vaccine shortage.
The Obama administration, which we both served in, faced a similar narrative in 2016 when the United Nations’ High-Level Panel on Access to Medicines — which was convened the previous year — issued a report lamenting the “misalignment between public health objectives ... and intellectual property protection.”
In response, the State Department under the leadership of John Kerry, and ultimately President Obama proudly defended strong IP protections, noting that “intellectual property rights and trade are essential to medical innovation, which is fundamental to promoting global health ... Indeed, there can be no access to drugs that have not been developed: support for innovation is essential.”
The IP waiver is a distraction from the real obstacles to the worldwide vaccination campaign. It’s disappointing that U.S. negotiators in Geneva are pretending otherwise.
Kappos served as the undersecretary of commerce for intellectual property and director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office from 2009 to 2013. Locke served as the U.S. ambassador to China and the U.S. secretary of commerce under President Obama, and from 1997 to 2005, as the governor of Washington.