By saying that it is in favor of lifting patents on vaccines against Covid-19, Wednesday, May 5, the Biden administration weighs heavily in this debate which occupies the rich countries producing vaccines, the poorest nations which lack doses and pharmaceutical laboratories. How to justify this measure? Would it effectively help fight the pandemic? Decryption.
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The argument of research financed by public money
Defenders of the levy first make a practical argument. The current production of vaccines does not seem to be sufficient in view of the global challenge of controlling the epidemic. “It is essential that the entire pharmaceutical industry (…) is mobilizing urgently by obtaining the necessary licenses from the companies which produced them ”, estimated, in February, in a petition, Richard Benarous, former director of the department of infectious diseases of the Cochin Institute, and Alfred Spira, member of the Academy of medicine. “To deprive itself of the skills of thousands of scientists and vaccine production chains all over the world would be absurd”, abounded Lucas Chancel, co-director of the Laboratory on Global Inequalities at the Paris School of Economics (PSE), in a forum at the World.
Laboratories needed public money to develop vaccines
This camp gladly recalls that the laboratories needed public money to develop vaccines so quickly. Under the authority of Donald Trump, the United States has devoted $ 14 billion (12 billion euros) to Operation Warp Speed, a public-private partnership that has enabled the development of these products. Interviewed in February by the Huffington Post, the secretary general of the French Communist Party, Fabien Roussel, considered that this effort by the taxpayer gave the “Right to ask this industry to release patents”.
How would this lifting of patents go?
Traditionally, innovations are protected. In the medical field, a laboratory can obtain exclusivity on its discovery for about twenty years, during which it will be the only one able to offer a treatment based on this innovation. It is only after this deadline that generic drugs appear and the cost of treatment decreases.
Concretely, within the framework of a lifting of patents, the States would grant licenses to local actors, without the holders of these patents having a say. This would make it possible, on paper, to increase the number of production sites and thus reduce the gap which is widening between the rich countries and the poorest States.
The question of production … and its quality
According to pharmaceutical companies, patent protection is not the factor that prevents vaccine production. Once the recipe has been sent to a partner, he still has to be able to put it into production. Emmanuel Macron himself, while saying he was in favor, Thursday, “That there is this opening up of intellectual property”, considered that even if we transfer “Intellectual property to pharmaceutical manufacturers in Africa, they have no platform to produce messenger RNA [ARNm] “. Manufacturers insist that vaccines require, in addition to highly qualified technicians, state-of-the-art equipment: bioreactors, centrifuges, cold rooms, etc.
India, Bangladesh and South Africa say they can produce vaccines in months
Yet pharmaceutical companies in countries like India, Bangladesh and South Africa say they can produce vaccines in a matter of months. “We have all the reactors and purification tools necessary for the production of mRNA vaccines. If we get the antigen [la substance qui, introduite dans l’organisme, engendre des anticorps], production can start immediately ”, Abdul Muktadir, president of the Bangladeshi company Incepta Pharmaceuticals, argued in an interview on the site Health Policy Watch, 1er April.
Manufacturers also cite the supply difficulties caused by the arrival of new competitors. “We are already under pressure to supply ourselves. So, if there are more players asking for raw materials, that will not improve the situation ”, estimated the boss of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, during a round table organized by the international federation of manufacturers and pharmaceutical associations (IFPMA), on April 23. His company, moreover, pledged in October not to prosecute other companies that would use its patents.
For his part, Stephen Ubl, president of the American Pharmaceutical Federation (PHRMA), ruled that the lifting of patents could “Promote the proliferation of counterfeit vaccines”.
A threat to innovation?
Some go further in the criticism, and think that such a measure would jeopardize a capacity for crucial innovation in health. A German government spokesperson said on Thursday that “The protection of intellectual property is the source of innovation and must remain so”. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission – who said on Thursday that the EU is “Ready to discuss” of the lifting of patents – had told the New York Times, in April, that it was necessary to “Retain the ingenuity of the private sector”.
If the patents were lifted, pharmaceutical companies “Would no longer have any incentive to invest the next time there is an emergency”, warned Farasat Bokhari, an economist specializing in competition and health issues at the British University of East Anglia. ” A suspension [des brevets] is the simple but false answer to a complex problem ”, estimated the IFPMA on May 5. For the federation, the “Real challenges” are “The elimination of trade barriers, the fight against bottlenecks in supply chains and against the scarcity of raw materials and ingredients, and the desire of rich countries to start sharing doses with poor countries”.
For the IFPMA, patents would rather guarantee the goodwill of manufacturers, since “The international intellectual property system has given laboratories the confidence to engage in more than two hundred technology transfer agreements aimed at increasing the supply of vaccines against Covid-19 through unprecedented partnerships”. The federation deduces that “The only way to ensure a rapid increase in equitable access to vaccines (…) remains the pragmatic and constructive dialogue with the private sector ”.
