{"id":26010,"date":"2022-03-31T12:49:28","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T16:49:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=26010"},"modified":"2022-04-01T11:42:02","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T15:42:02","slug":"congress-mustnt-tolerate-wto-and-biden-administration-proposal-targeting-u-s-pharmaceutical-patent-protections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/26010\/congress-mustnt-tolerate-wto-and-biden-administration-proposal-targeting-u-s-pharmaceutical-patent-protections\/","title":{"rendered":"Congress Mustn’t Tolerate WTO and Biden Admin Proposal Targeting U.S. Pharmaceutical Patent Protections"},"content":{"rendered":"

This week, the Biden Administration’s United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai appeared before the Senate Finance Committee<\/a> and House Ways and Means Committee<\/a>, offering an important opportunity to rally opposition to the administration’s agreement with a misguided proposal in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend patent protections for Covid vaccines, treatments and other therapies created by U.S. pharmaceutical innovators (through what’s known as the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property, or “TRIPS”).<\/p>\n

Don’t let the esoteric nature of the treaty fool you – this is an extremely dangerous proposal to attack U.S. patent rights.\u00a0 As The Wall Street Journal<\/i> observed<\/a>,<\/span> \u201cthis may be the single worst presidential economic decision\u201d since the Nixon Administration.<\/p>\n

That assessment is well-founded.\u00a0 Strong patent protections provide the foundation for U.S. pharmaceutical innovation, and explain why the U.S. leads the world by accounting for an astounding two-thirds of all new drugs<\/a> introduced worldwide.\u00a0 The Covid vaccines and treatments at issue provide just the latest example.\u00a0 Contravening that obvious causal relationship, however, some WTO members demand<\/a> that the U.S. surrender those vital patent and other intellectual property (IP) protections for Covid vaccines, diagnostics and other treatments.\u00a0 Worse, some misguided politicians here in America who should know better echo those potentially destructive demands<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That would tragically and needlessly undermine the very policies that prompted pharmaceutical innovators to devise and develop the vaccines already providing relief to the world, and leave us less capable of addressing current and future diseases and pandemics.\u00a0 Ironically, President Biden himself has historically supported patent and other IP rights, including sponsorship of the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act<\/a> that proved so invaluable in promoting innovation, and which The Economist<\/em> magazine labeled<\/a> \u201cpossibly the most inspired piece of legislation to be enacted in America over the past half-century.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also important to note that more rational actors like the European Union, United Kingdom, Canada, Switzerland and Japan oppose the proposed TRIPS patent suspension.\u00a0\u00a0 In contrast, WTO members India and South Africa, which back the effort targeting U.S. patent rights, have even joined international rogues China and Russia<\/a> to create their own joint “vaccine center.”\u00a0 That betrays the bad faith of their broader effort.<\/p>\n

India and South Africa have joined with China and Russia (and Brazil) to establish a joint BRICS vaccine center.<\/p>\n

The proposed TRIPS waiver targeting U.S. drug innovators and patent protections is also unnecessary, because treatments are already being provided<\/a> to impoverished nations across the world, and patent rights are already being licensed at abnormally low prices or even free of charge.\u00a0 To the extent that difficulties in immunizing impoverished populations remain, as emphasized<\/a> by the Africa Centres for Disease Control, the problems center on local logistical<\/a> distribution problems and vaccination hesitancy among the unvaccinated, not supply shortages.\u00a0 Indeed, biopharmaceutical manufacturers already possess the ability to produce 20 billion<\/a> vaccine doses in 2022.<\/p>\n

More broadly, lawmakers and American consumers must consider the dangerous signal that suspending patent rights for pharmaceutical innovators would send, and the long-term disincentives that would follow if pharmaceutical patent rights were weakened rather than protected.\u00a0 Pharmaceutical innovation demands billions of dollars in sunk costs of investment and testing, not to mention potential product liability lawsuits for any error.\u00a0 To suddenly signal that those costs and risks won\u2019t be sufficiently and fairly rewarded through ensuing patent protections would have catastrophic effects over both the short and long terms.\u00a0 That will increasingly become the reality if we accept policies that deprive innovators and investors of the incentives to create drugs that save millions and even billions of lives.<\/p>\n

American patent protections are the leading reason why we continue to produce the overwhelming share of new drugs worldwide, including the Covid vaccines themselves.\u00a0 The WTO and Biden Administration must recognize and respect that reality, and Congress must act to stop this potentially catastrophic WTO proposal.<\/p>\n

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This week, the Biden Administration’s United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai appeared before the Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee, offering an important opportunity to rally opposition to the administration’s agreement with a misguided proposal in the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend patent protections for Covid vaccines, treatments and other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[5149,2871,2872,5057,167,5169,5170,5172],"class_list":["post-26010","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-covid","tag-intellectual-property","tag-ip","tag-patents","tag-trade","tag-trips","tag-vaccines","tag-world-trade-organization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26010","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26010"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26010\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26014,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26010\/revisions\/26014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}