{"id":185195,"date":"2021-05-17T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=185195"},"modified":"2025-01-10T15:06:15","modified_gmt":"2025-01-10T15:06:15","slug":"government-money-thats-gone-into-vaccine-development-is-being-privatized-by-a-handful-of-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/05\/government-money-thats-gone-into-vaccine-development-is-being-privatized-by-a-handful-of-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Government Money That\u2019s Gone into Vaccine Development Is Being Privatized by a Handful of Companies\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

CounterSpin Interview with James Love on Bill Gates & Vaccine Politics<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

12 May 2021 – Janine Jackson interviewed<\/i> Knowledge Ecology International\u2019s James Love about Bill Gates and vaccine politics\u00a0 for the <\/i>May 7, 2021, episode<\/i><\/a> of <\/i>CounterSpin<\/b>. This is a lightly edited transcript.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Janine Jackson: <\/b>A recent New York Times<\/b><\/em> story<\/a>, \u201cPressure Mounts to Lift Patent Protections on Coronavirus Vaccines,\u201d reported that President Biden and drug makers face demands from \u201cliberal activists and global leaders\u201d to suspend intellectual property rights on vaccines, as people continue to die and suffer myriad long-term harms from a virus for which vaccines exist.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible to overwork Plato\u2019s metaphor of shadows on the cave wall, where you get caught up in the image of the image of the thing and lose track of the real. But when you read, \u201cThe debate on waiving an international intellectual property agreement that protects pharmaceutical trade secrets is both a political and a practical problem for President Biden, who has vowed to restore the US as a leader in global health,\u201d you might wonder where the people are, the dead and the sick and the ones who don\u2019t even know they\u2019re sick, and their families and loved ones?<\/p>\n

There is assuredly a human interest story to be found elsewhere, maybe with big, poignant photographs. But what\u2019s lost by not bringing those voices into this straight news story, where an investment banker is cited on the \u201cterrible, terrible precedent\u201d opening access to vaccine production would set: \u201cWhat it would say to the industry is: \u2018Don\u2019t work on anything that we really care about, because if you do, we\u2019re just going to take it away from you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

And then, finally, what\u2019s this all to do with Bill Gates? Joining us now to put it together is James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International<\/a>. He joins us by phone. Welcome back to CounterSpin<\/b>, Jamie Love.<\/p>\n

James Love: <\/b>Thank you very much. It\u2019s a pleasure.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

New York Times (3 May 21)<\/p><\/div>\n

JJ: <\/b>We\u2019re recording on May 6, and things are shifting as we speak. There has been, I understand, a waiver<\/a> on those intellectual property rights. I\u2019ll ask you, then, just to kind of drop us in where we\u2019re at.<\/p>\n

That same New York Times<\/b> story<\/a>, which I\u2019m just using to stand in for a lot of coverage, talked about debate inside the White House, that some advisors to President Biden say there\u2019s a moral imperative to act, to get more vaccines out to more people, but \u201cothers say spilling closely guarded but highly complex trade secrets into the open would do nothing to expand the global supply of vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n

So that seems to be the gist of the argument. I wonder, before you even talk about Bill Gates, can you talk about this idea that, oh, everybody wants everyone to get vaccines, but somehow loosening patent protections or IP rights isn\u2019t the way to get there?<\/p>\n

JL: <\/b>The Times<\/b> story you talked about, there\u2019s two different things that we\u2019re talking about: One is the issue of the patents themselves, which are not secret. Patents are granted; they\u2019re published and anyone can read them. That\u2019s one of the important things about a patent. Trade secrets have to do with the know-how, how to manufacture a vaccine. And those things are often kept secret by a company.<\/p>\n

So in the current environment, where you\u2019re trying to increase the manufacturing and the supply of vaccines so you can vaccinate more people around the world and do it faster, both of these things are important.<\/p>\n

The patent is an exclusive right; it allows somebody that has ownership of an invention to prevent anyone but themselves from practicing that invention, so that can make it illegal to manufacture a vaccine, for example.<\/p>\n

If you acquire somehow, either by paying for the patent or having the government override the patent right through a compulsory license to that patent\u2014where the government forces the owner of the patent to give a license to someone to manufacture\u2014then you still are faced with this problem of, do you know how to manufacture it? Where\u2019s the know-how? And that\u2019ll often involve a lot of things that you could describe, in some cases, as \u201ctrade secrets.\u201d So both of these things are important for scaling the vaccine response.<\/p>\n

\"Medium:<\/p>\n

Medium<\/strong> (3\/20\/21<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

JJ: <\/b>So then what about the idea that allowing access to them actually wouldn\u2019t change the global supply of vaccines, which is an argument that\u2019s been put forward by, among other people, Bill Gates, who as you\u2019ve written<\/a> and talked<\/a> about recently, is a real powerful force in this sphere?<\/p>\n

JL: <\/b>I think most people would agree that if you somehow got rid of the barriers that patents present, by forcing people that own the patented inventions to allow third-party generic manufacturers to use those inventions to make a generic vaccine, and also shared the know-how, that would, in fact, definitely expand the production and supply of vaccines.<\/p>\n

I think that what Bill Gates\u2019 opinion is that that\u2019s a bad idea. He would argue that breaking down the strong protection of patent rights and know-how would be bad in some ways, because he thinks the private ownership of both the know-how and the inventions is a positive. He thinks they\u2019re what makes the world go around. He\u2019s a strong advocate of strong monopolies on both inventions and know-how. He thinks that\u2019s necessary in order to get private investment.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a pretty weak argument in this particular case because every single vaccine that\u2019s on the market today has had the backing of governments in the development. Even the Pfizer vaccine\u2014which, the Pfizer CEO likes to claim<\/a>, didn\u2019t get any research contracts from the US\u2014they started out with 400 million euros from Germany and another 100 million in support from European connections and a $1.95 billion advance purchase contract from the United States. And that\u2019s not really completely a story of free enterprise; that\u2019s a story of governments really putting money into developing a vaccine.<\/p>\n

For Moderna\u2019s vaccine, for the Novavax vaccine, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the\u00a0 Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, all of those other vaccines had even more support from governments. And you can say the same thing about some of the vaccines in development or from other countries, like Russia or Cuba.<\/p>\n

What you have right now is a lot of government money that\u2019s gone into vaccine development being privatized by a handful of companies, and those companies saying, \u201cYou know, we\u2019re going to decide who is allowed to manufacture and who\u2019s not allowed to manufacture, and how fast things go and what prices we want to charge.\u201d But there\u2019s massive economic dislocation worldwide. You have kids out of school, you have people losing businesses, you have people getting evicted, defaulting on loans, mental health problems and everything else.<\/p>\n

To the companies, it\u2019s not like they\u2019re not making any money. Pfizer this year says they\u2019re going to make $26 billion<\/a> in selling their vaccine, Moderna claims they\u2019re going to make about $20 billion<\/a> selling a vaccine that the US government paid for, and the CEO of Moderna is said now to be worth over $5 billion<\/a>. So I don\u2019t think we have to really worry too much about these companies not making money.<\/p>\n

JJ: <\/b>And not being inspired to do more or to innovate, or whatever, supposedly, the inhibition is going to be.<\/p>\n

JL:\u00a0 <\/b>At the beginning of the pandemic, most of the companies, with the notable exception of Pfizer, but a number of companies claimed that they were going to operate on a nonprofit basis. As we go deeper and deeper into the pandemic, and now Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, even AstraZeneca, are all talking about raising prices<\/a>. In some cases, they\u2019re turning around numbers like tenfold increases in the price of their products. As you move down the road, Pfizer suggests<\/a> you might need to be vaccinated every single year. When you\u2019re talking about vaccinating the entire planet, that becomes pretty expensive.<\/p>\n

JJ: <\/b>There\u2019s plenty to be said about how being wealthy, however you get there, evidently conveys expertise, at least according to US news media, and to many other actors in society. Part of the reason that people have a distorted or misleading understanding of the balance of arguments, in terms of vaccinating people, has to do with media coverage and the outsized voices of people like Bill Gates.<\/p>\n

I wanted to ask you, just finally, about media coverage. If we\u2019re talking about Gates\u2014he\u2019s an expert on malaria, he\u2019s an expert on public education, now he\u2019s an expert on vaccines. And if you just look at sources, I\u2019m not sure the voices we\u2019re hearing are the voices that we actually necessarily need to hear. What\u2019s your thinking on that?<\/p>\n

JL: <\/b>Well, there\u2019s the song, \u201cIf I Were a Rich Man,\u201d which is the notion that people think just because you\u2019re rich, you must know. And that\u2019s one issue that you have, but it\u2019s more than that. Gates personally\u2014and his foundation, which has some of his money\u2014spends a huge amount of money on public relations. They fund a lot of media organizations, they give money to BBC<\/b>, they give money to lots of organizations that cover public health, and so they tend to give very favorable coverage to the projects that Gates is involved in. They offer money to all sorts of organizations, whether or not they take it or not, so it\u2019s out there.<\/p>\n

We once approached one publication, the Washington Monthly, <\/b>about doing a story that involved Gates\u2019 support of media organizations. And the reporter came back and he said he talked to his editors\u2014and this is a really a small, niche publication in Washington, DC, one that we like, but it wasn\u2019t really a major one\u2014and the editor said, \u201cThat\u2019s a great story. But we also have a grant application out to the Gates Foundation, so we\u2019re just not going to write it.\u201d<\/p>\n

JJ: <\/b>Wow.<\/p>\n

JL: <\/b>And there\u2019s that kind of a problem. And then there\u2019s the fact that not just Gates personally, his expertise, but his organization\u2014they have consultants, they have organizations they fund that work on vaccines, he plays an important role in CEPI<\/a> and in COVAX<\/a>, too, the organizations who play a role in development and distribution of a vaccine for infectious diseases. He has consulting firms like McKinsey<\/a> or Boston Consulting Group<\/a> that work with them. And he knows the CEOs of companies, he has a lot of contacts and things like that.<\/p>\n

So when the pandemic hit, very few people in government knew anything about vaccines or anything about infectious diseases, and so Gates was a famous guy; he has some expertise. So people would be like, \u201cWhat does he have to say?\u201d And because he was giving away a fair amount of money\u2014or managing money; people like Warren Buffett<\/a> were donating money\u2014it seemed like he must be a pretty honest broker, because he\u2019s pretty free of any kind of conflict, unlike a company.<\/p>\n

But Gates himself has an ideological connection to strong intellectual property rights<\/a>. Ever since he was in college, he\u2019s always thought that strong intellectual property rights and strong privatization of government-funded research were good things, not bad things. He\u2019s been focused on that his entire life, and I don\u2019t think people realize how radical he is on those views. Even during the height of the AIDS pandemic, when there were very few people getting access to treatment, he was trying to block<\/a> every effort to expand access to generic HIV drugs, despite the fact that there were probably 9,000 people a day dying from the disease at the time.<\/p>\n

\"James<\/p>\n

James Love: \u201cPeople who have less power and less money around the world are the people last in line\u2014and that line is going to be pretty long if you don\u2019t speed up the production.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

So here we are, fast forward, it\u2019s a pandemic, it\u2019s Covid. And he\u2019s telling people, \u201cNo, no, don\u2019t worry about things. We\u2019ve got the manufacturing all ready to go, we\u2019re working with all the best people, all the best companies. We know more about this. The people that want more open sourcing of the vaccine are anti-capitalist, know-nothing activists. Listen to me, I\u2019ll give you better advice.\u201d So that was sort of the early role he was doing. And then he started to use his surrogates, like the Center for Global Development<\/a> and other groups, to lobby against<\/a> the TRIPS waiver. He personally<\/a> started lobbying against it.<\/p>\n

And when he was interviewed<\/a> on Sky News<\/b> about a different issue than the patent issue, he was asked about the know-how issue, he said he was opposed to sharing the recipe, or the know-how, how to make a vaccine, with developing countries and, more broadly, making it more public.<\/p>\n

And I think that\u2019s a ridiculously dangerous position to take, because the companies that are manufacturing vaccines right now are not remotely close to meeting demand, and if you go at the pace that they prefer, which is to keep the technology closer and control the pricing mechanisms, you\u2019ll have a slower rollout that exposes us to risks of new variants, and it means people who have less power and less money around the world are the people last in line\u2014and that line is going to be pretty long if you don\u2019t speed up the production.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s been difficult, because he has an outsized voice. And I think Gates is a smart guy; he\u2019s not the only smart guy around or smart woman around. I think people need to listen to other views. And, actually, Gates has sort of a mental block about these issues, and so some of his arguments just don\u2019t add up.<\/p>\n

JJ: <\/b>All right then. We\u2019ll end there for now, with an eye towards tracking it as we go forward. We\u2019ve been speaking with James Love. He\u2019s director of Knowledge Ecology International. They\u2019re online at KEIonline.org\/<\/a>. Thank you so much, Jamie Love, for joining us this week on CounterSpin<\/b>.<\/p>\n

JL: <\/b>Thank you very much.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Janine Jackson is FAIR\u2019s program director and producer\/host of FAIR\u2019s syndicated weekly radio show CounterSpin. She contributes frequently to FAIR\u2019s newsletter Extra!, and co-edited The FAIR Reader: An Extra! Review of Press and Politics in the \u201990s (Westview Press). She has appeared on ABC\u2018s Nightline and CNN Headline News, among other outlets, and has testified to the Senate Communications Subcommittee on budget reauthorization for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Her articles have appeared in various publications, including In These Times and the UAW\u2019s Solidarity, and in books including Civil Rights Since 1787 (New York University Press) and Stop the Next War Now: Effective Responses to Violence and Terrorism (New World Library). Jackson is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and has an M.A. in sociology from the New School for Social Research.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original – fair.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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