[The top Democratic recipients of Big Pharma cash in Congress are
echoing industry talking points in opposition to a push to suspend key
intellectual property protections.] [[link removed]]

DEMOCRATS BANKROLLED BY BIG PHARMA ARE REFUSING TO BACK COVID VACCINE
PATENT WAIVER  
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Jake Johnson
May 4, 2021
Common Dreams
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_ The top Democratic recipients of Big Pharma cash in Congress are
echoing industry talking points in opposition to a push to suspend key
intellectual property protections. _

Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.) speaks during a news conference in the
Capitol Visitor Center on Friday, July 24, 2020. , Tom
Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images

 

The leading Democratic recipients of pharmaceutical industry cash in
Congress are refusing to endorse calls for a temporary suspension of
patents for coronavirus vaccines and therapeutics, an indication of
Big Pharma's influence as it lobbies aggressively
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in Washington and elsewhere
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to maintain monopoly control over production.

_HuffPost_'s Daniel Marans reported
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late Monday that 110 House Democrats have signed on to a letter—led
by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.)—calling on President Joe Biden to
support India and South Africa's proposed vaccine patent waiver at the
World Trade Organization (WTO), which is set to consider the idea
again this week. The letter is set to be unveiled on Tuesday.

Citing the latest campaign finance data from the Center for Responsive
Politics, Marans noted that "none of the nine House Democrats among
Congress' top 25 recipients
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of donations from pharmaceutical industry PACs in the 2020 election
cycle have signed the letter."

"Democratic Reps. Scott Peters (Calif.) and Ron Kind (Wis.)—Nos. 7
and 19, respectively, on the top 25 list—have actually solicited
support for another letter
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to Biden asking him to not waive the intellectual property rules,"
Marans pointed out.

In addition to Peters and Kind, the other top House Democratic
recipients of pharmaceutical industry cash during the 2020 campaign
cycle were Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (N.J.), Richard Neal (Mass.), Anna
Eshoo (Calif.), Robin Kelly (Ill.), Brad Schneider (Ill.), Kurt
Schrader (Ore.), and Raul Ruiz (Calif.).

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), the top recipient of pharma PAC money among
Senate Democrats, has refused to join Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and
nine other colleagues
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in urging Biden to endorse the patent waiver, which would lift a key
legal barrier preventing generic manufacturers
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from mass-producing vaccines for the developing world.

During a virtual event last week, Coons invoked
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the January 6 insurrection to justify his opposition to temporarily
suspending restrictive intellectual property (IP) protections and
echoed pharmaceutical industry warnings
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the proposed waiver would harm the United States' global
competitiveness.

Other Democratic opponents of the patent waiver have similarly framed
the issue in ways that closely resemble pharmaceutical industry
messaging, as Marans reported Monday.

"A spokesperson for Rep. Robin Kelly of Illinois (No. 17) provided a
statement that mirrored what the pharmaceutical industry itself
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been saying in opposition to the temporary waiver: That it would not
alleviate the current shortage of vaccines," Marans noted.

"It is not clear that the currently proposed broad TRIPS waiver is the
fastest method to accomplish this, given manufacturing intricacies and
access to raw materials," spokesperson Rachel Kingery said.
"Congresswoman Kelly believes U.S. companies should step up domestic
production, assist other nations in the development of effective
Covid-19 vaccinations, and increase funding to COVAX to protect global
health."

While acknowledging that a patent waiver would not be sufficient in
itself, experts have disputed pharmaceutical industry talking points
that try to divert attention way from IP protections by blaming other
factors for production shortages and massively unequal global
distribution, such as lack of technical know-how and inadequate
manufacturing capacity
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in developing countries.

"Many people are saying, 'Won't they need the secret recipe?' That's
not necessarily the case," Tahir Amin, a founder of the nonprofit
Initiative for Medicines, Access, and Knowledge, told
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the _New York Times_ on Monday. "There are companies that feel they
can go it alone, provided they don't have to look over their shoulder
and feel like they are going to take someone's intellectual property."

And as _The Intercept_ reported
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last week, "Factory owners around the globe, from Bangladesh to
Canada, have said they stand ready to retrofit facilities and move
forward with vaccine production if given the chance."

 
"Abdul Muktadir, chair and managing director of Incepta, a
pharmaceutical firm based in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has told reporters
that his firm has the capacity to fill vials for 600 million to 800
million doses of vaccine per year. He has reportedly reached out to
Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax," _The Intercept_ noted.
"Other firms in South Korea
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and Pakistan
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have also reportedly expressed an interest in producing vaccines or
vaccine components."

On Wednesday and Thursday, WTO member nations will meet to discuss the
patent waiver as the Biden administration privately debates whether to
throw U.S. support behind the idea, which rich nations have blocked
for months.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden's top medical adviser on the Covid-19
pandemic, told
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the _Times_ in an interview Monday that he "always respect[s] the
needs of the companies to protect their interests to keep them in
business, but we can't do it completely at the expense of not allowing
vaccine that's lifesaving to get to the people that need it."

"You can't have people throughout the world dying because they don't
have access to a product that rich people have access to," Fauci
added.

Led by the Free the Vaccine [[link removed]]
coalition, activists plan to march on the National Mall in Washington,
D.C. on Wednesday to demand that Biden and other world leaders to end
their opposition to the patent waiver and provide all of the resources
necessary to ensure vaccine access in developing countries.

"Millions in the Global South will not get Covid-19 vaccines until
2024," the coalition says on its website
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"The Biden administration has an opportunity to make vaccines
available by supporting the TRIPS Waiver at the World Trade
Organization, as proposed by India and South Africa. Furthermore, the
U.S. can and should invest money in scaling up global vaccine
manufacturing."

Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch told
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_HuffPost_ Monday that "the greed of pharma means that they are
effectively blocking the manufacture of the necessary supply."

"Biden is getting quite good marks—even from a lot of
Republicans—about how he's taken on Covid," Wallach said. "All of
that positivity and the health gains could be lost if they're not
paying attention and a vaccine-resistant variant ends up brewing
someplace else, inevitably spreading worldwide and we all end up on
lockdown again."

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel
free to republish and share widely.

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