Covid-19 Patent Waiver Will Cost Lives, Not Save Them
By Joe Crowley
Anyone wondering why Democrats fared better than expected in the midterms should direct their attention to President Joe Biden's recent string of legislative victories.
These accomplishments helped Democrats win crucial votes in key states and maintain control of the Senate. But if they want to hold onto the White House, it's important that President Biden and congressional Democrats avoid any policy stumbles before 2024.
One such stumble would be the president and his allies throwing their support behind the World Trade Organization's proposal to waive intellectual property protections on therapeutics and tests related to Covid-19. It would allow our global competitors -- including China -- to help themselves to U.S. patents and other intellectual property.
The stated goal of the proposal is to improve access to Covid-19 therapeutics and diagnostics in the developing world, similar to the WTO's nullification of IP protections for vaccines in June. But there's little evidence that such access is lacking or that this reform would improve it. What it would do is harm the research ecosystem that has made the U.S. the world's leading source of medical breakthroughs.
The very idea that patents are inhibiting access to Covid-19 tests and therapies is unfounded. Since the beginning of the pandemic, pharmaceutical firms have voluntarily licensed their Covid-19 therapies to manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries around the world.
Simply put, suspending IP for valuable Covid-19 technologies isn't likely to save lives. But it will certainly compromise the Biden administration's efforts to improve healthcare access and encourage domestic biotech innovation.
Currently, getting a new medicine to market requires a massive investment -- $2.6 billion, on average. Patents help ensure that when a new drug passes government-mandated clinical trials -- about 90% don't -- investors have a chance to recover their development costs and pay for the numerous failures that came along the way.
If federal officials start calling patents into question, the result will be a future deprived of cutting-edge medicines for everything from cancer and heart disease to diabetes and Alzheimer's. It's also a future in which the world will be far less ready to handle a global health crisis like Covid-19.
Had patent waivers been the norm before the pandemic, America's scientists and drug manufacturers would have lacked the basic infrastructure to invent, mass produce, and distribute the vaccines and therapies that are now bringing this emergency to an end.
Indeed, a new Progressive Policy Institute paper notes that strong, codified IP protection has "contributed to a long-term upturn in scientific research and invention, a public good well worth preserving; which makes this next decision one that raises some systemic questions."
By weakening IP protections, the WTO's expanded waiver would deal a blow to a $1 trillion domestic industry that supports millions of U.S. jobs. It would also enable other countries -- friends and foes alike -- to piggyback off American innovation, hurting our economic competitiveness.
President Biden's historic strides in expanding healthcare access and bolstering America's biotech economy are legacy accomplishments. Rejecting an expansion of the WTO waiver gives his administration the opportunity to continue that legacy of supporting American ingenuity and prosperity, and restoring our nation's position as a leader in global health.
Joe Crowley represented New York's 7th and 14th congressional districts from 1999 to 2019.
