“The Berlin Declaration calls for intellectual property rights to be respected ‘since society depends on them to stimulate innovation and the scale up of supply.’”
Two major trade organizations representing global vaccine manufacturers are officially backing a proposal submitted to the G20 and G7 countries in July that they claim offers practical solutions for future pandemics to avoid the inequities that have been highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Berlin Declaration was proposed in July 2022 by the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA) and calls on industry to commit to “reserve an allocation of real-time production of vaccines, treatments and diagnostics for priority populations in lower income countries and take measures to make them available and affordable.” The People’s Vaccine Alliance issued a statement last week criticizing the Berlin Declaration as “a continuation of a consistent ‘third way’ campaign by the biopharmaceutical industry to maintain exclusive intellectual property (IP) protections and monopoly control over the medical technologies.”
But the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO) and Developing Countries Vaccine Manufacturers’ Network (DCVMN) said the Berlin Declaration represents lessons learned from the current pandemic response, which they admit has been inadequate from an access perspective. The joint statement issued today said: “By supporting the vision for equitable access in pandemics, vaccine innovators and manufacturers acknowledge that while innovation, business to business voluntary collaboration and manufacturing scaling up succeeded in an unprecedented way during COVID-19, efforts to achieve equitable access were not fully realized.”
The three implementation priorities of the Berlin Declaration are: 1) Drive innovation in advance of the next pandemic; 2) Aim for faster manufacturing scale-up for high-volume global supply; and 3) Plan ahead for affirmative equitable access and delivery of pandemic products. As part of point one, the Declaration calls for intellectual property (IP) rights to be respected “since society depends on them to stimulate innovation and the scale up of supply.”
The People’s Vaccine Alliance last week called the IFPMA’s proposal an attempt to “whitewash its own failures” and said the focus on country readiness is misguided. The Alliance argued that “it was difficult for governments of developing countries to run vaccination campaigns or prepare the health system when they did not know when they would receive vaccines, how many doses would be arriving, and of which vaccines.”
Also last week, a bipartisan group of senators led by Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Tom Carper (D-DE) wrote to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai asking the Biden administration to guard U.S. pharmaceutical companies’ IP rights related to COVID-19 vaccines. The senators’ statement added: “Strong protections for intellectual property are the bedrock of American innovation, as evidenced by the record development of multiple vaccines to combat COVID-19.”
The World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) Council for Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) also met informally last month to discuss extending the waiver of IP rights for COVID-19 vaccine-related technology to diagnostics and therapeutics. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber’s Global Innovation Policy Center (GIPC) urged the Biden Administration to oppose such a move in favor of “real solutions.”
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One comment so far.
Anon
October 25, 2022 10:09 amI have to wonder if those of the Liberal Left will continue their hypocrisy in view of ‘world equity’ and their pocketbooks (in the best Martha’s Vineyard example) a la innovation protection (as a form of personal property) and the countering commune-centric views.