Waiving Patent Protections for Covid Vaccines

[conehead433]

President Biden is supporting the waiver of IP protections on vaccines. I get that there is a International health crisis that could be helped by such a move. The US Government helped fund the Moderna and J&J vaccines so technically we the taxpayers are or should be part owners. Such is not the case with Pfizer as they did not accept a dime from the US government. Stocks of the companies involved all took a big hit when this was announced. I don't think this is a good idea. The government decides your intellectual property is worthless? Hundreds of labs making the vaccine? What could go wrong.

U.S. backs waiving patent protections for Covid vaccines, citing global health crisis

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it supports waiving intellectual property protections for Covid-19 vaccines.

www.cnbc.com

 

[Brainonska511]

In this case, there is a lot of magical thinking going on. To repost what I had in another covid thread:

Waiving patents here misses the big picture. It's not patents holding back production, it's specialized manufacturing capacity and tech transfer that is. One article I saw a few weeks ago cited Moderna - all their people capable of facilitating tech transfers are already booked up. And the NYT, in their walkthrough of how the Pfizer vaccine is made, showed how the lipid/mRNA mixers are pretty bespoke and they haven't tried to scale it up much because of the massive effort required to revalidate the whole process with a larger/different instrument.

Freeing up the patent without having anyone available to facilitate kicking off production in new facilities at every step of the way with new teams is like giving someone a picture of a fancy dinner, giving them the list of ingredients and the directions, then telling them to make *exactly* the meal in picture.

And let's not get started in all the QC required. You want to really undermine confidence in vaccines: allow anyone to just do it. You'll have the Emergent mess, with even greater potential that stuff actually gets distributed instead of caught.

 

[uclaLabrat]

Agree. No one really understands that each drug that makes it to market is a moonshot. Waiving the patents isn't going to magically increase supply anymore than giving me Julia child's cookbook will turn my kitchen into French laundry.

I'm not terribly concerned about pharma's bottom line, they will have made enough to recoup their investment.

But even with the recipe/process, it takes a hell of a lot to get that product produced and documented and reviewed and released and approved.

I'm willing to see how it turns out, there's a lot of vaccine capacity out there (although better suited to more traditional vaccines, and the equipment for these mRNA lipid nanoparticles sounds like to doesn't scale AT ALL) but I'm not optimistic it's going to increase supply anymore than pissing in the ocean. Hope I'm wrong.

 

[Zorba]

Yeah, I doubt it will really make much difference.

That said nearly all the underlying technology and science into creating a coronavirus vaccine was paid for by the government. The government needs to get much better about asserting their rights with pharma.

Especially since the government covered all of the risk on this development.

 

[Moonbeam]

Life wants to live. In a competative system the will to live is pitted against someone else's will to live. This means that one of the best business models is to secure a livelihood by making something that helps others to survive and sell it for it's value to those who will better survive by having it. This need will create market value that competitive people will not willingly give up. It's not unlike selling drugs. People will to ease pain is up there with the will to survive. Only the inwardly rich are capable of real generosity.

 

[Brainonska511]

Yeah, I doubt it will really make much difference.

That said nearly all the underlying technology and science into creating a coronavirus vaccine was paid for by the government. The government needs to get much better about asserting their rights with pharma.

Especially since the government covered all of the risk on this development.

Pfizer didn't participate in Warp Speed.

 

[Thump553]

In this case, there is a lot of magical thinking going on. To repost what I had in another covid thread:

Waiving patents here misses the big picture. It's not patents holding back production, it's specialized manufacturing capacity and tech transfer that is. One article I saw a few weeks ago cited Moderna - all their people capable of facilitating tech transfers are already booked up. And the NYT, in their walkthrough of how the Pfizer vaccine is made, showed how the lipid/mRNA mixers are pretty bespoke and they haven't tried to scale it up much because of the massive effort required to revalidate the whole process with a larger/different instrument.

Freeing up the patent without having anyone available to facilitate kicking off production in new facilities at every step of the way with new teams is like giving someone a picture of a fancy dinner, giving them the list of ingredients and the directions, then telling them to make *exactly* the meal in picture.

And let's not get started in all the QC required. You want to really undermine confidence in vaccines: allow anyone to just do it. You'll have the Emergent mess, with even greater potential that stuff actually gets distributed instead of caught.

From what I've read and understand as a layman, you have hit the nail right on the head.

I'm surprised the stock market acted so negatively as Biden made it cystal clear prior to the election that he would waive the patents.

Unlike what Trump did, I strongly suspect this is the usual political game of chess. Waiving the patents alone will do little or nothing, there is a whole lot of new stuff and new techniques involved in these vaccines. OTOH (1) current supply is nowhere near meeting worldwide demand, (2) it is the interests of ALL countries-including those already vaccinated-to squash covid ASAP both to get the world economy back on track and to stop the spread before some new devastating mutuant emerges, and (3) India has a substantial portion of the world's capacity to produce vaccines.

I strongly suspect there are currently headed negotiations underway between all interested parties to expand production quickly. Moderna er al need to be intimately involved (regardless of the patent situation) and I'm sure in the end they will be very adequately compensated.

Personally I'd buy their stock on the current dip if I played that game.

 

[Leeea]

I was opposed to this, and still am.

Biden screwed up here.

However, the patent protections have not actually been waived. Rather, the Biden admin indicated it plans to support waiving them in the upcoming WTO meeting. The patents still stand for now, and Europe is opposed to waiving said patents.

 

[Brainonska511]

From what I've read and understand as a layman, you have hit the nail right on the head.

I'm surprised the stock market acted so negatively as Biden made it cystal clear prior to the election that he would waive the patents.

Unlike what Trump did, I strongly suspect this is the usual political game of chess. Waiving the patents alone will do little or nothing, there is a whole lot of new stuff and new techniques involved in these vaccines. OTOH (1) current supply is nowhere near meeting worldwide demand, (2) it is the interests of ALL countries-including those already vaccinated-to squash covid ASAP both to get the world economy back on track and to stop the spread before some new devastating mutuant emerges, and (3) India has a substantial portion of the world's capacity to produce vaccines.

I strongly suspect there are currently headed negotiations underway between all interested parties to expand production quickly. Moderna er al need to be intimately involved (regardless of the patent situation) and I'm sure in the end they will be very adequately compensated.

Personally I'd buy their stock on the current dip if I played that game.

With the extremely high demand, if there was useful capacity available on the manufacturing side, AND capacity available from the originators to assist in tech transfers, you'd see it happening now.

I think there is also a big misperception about what goes into making vaccines. It's not just a widget you can make on any assembly line, nor is it like making a small molecule drug.

 

[ivwshane]

I’m all for it!

I have yet to see anyone layout a good reason not to and I only see why it’s not as beneficial as one would think.

I’ll take it a step further and I think we (as in the US government and US tax payer) should be doing all we can to help as many people and as many nations as we can. A pandemic that continues to wage on isn’t good for moral reasons and it’s especially not good for economic reasons. The sooner the world recovers the sooner we all recover.

 

[Jhhnn]

I’m all for it!

I have yet to see anyone layout a good reason not to and I only see why it’s not as beneficial as one would think.

I’ll take it a step further and I think we (as in the US government and US tax payer) should be doing all we can to help as many people and as many nations as we can. A pandemic that continues to wage on isn’t good for moral reasons and it’s especially not good for economic reasons. The sooner the world recovers the sooner we all recover.

That would be Soshulism, & Soshulism is bad, Mkay? Well, it's actually more like Godless international Communism,which is even worse.

 

[Zorba]

Pfizer didn't participate in Warp Speed.

They still benefitted from decades of basic research paid for by the government. They also benefitted by having signed POs before starting phase 3 trials.

The US government paid for the research in how to make a coronavirus vaccine starting in 2003, without that there would be no COVID vaccine right now.

 

[WelshBloke]

I think there is also a big misperception about what goes into making vaccines. It's not just a widget you can make on any assembly line, nor is it like making a small molecule drug.

Thats true but places like India have huge experiences in making vaccines. They also have a massive need for them right now.
It can't but help to make it cheaper and easier for them to make it.

Continually through this crisis there's been a push back against any rocking of the boat of making as much profit as possible from vaccines.
Massive publicity about very low levels of risk from non profit vaccines, no mention of risk from the ones that are making big pharma lots of cash.

 

[Meghan54]

They still benefitted from decades of basic research paid for by the government. They also benefitted by having signed POs before starting phase 3 trials.

The US government paid for the research in how to make a coronavirus vaccine starting in 2003, without that there would be no COVID vaccine right now.

Remember, Pfizer's research was actually carried out by BioNTech in Germany, not Pfizer in the U.S.

The P.O.'s are pointless as the fact remains...when the vaccine was approved, buyers were standing in line with contracts, so the fact purchase orders were put in place early is rather meaningless...every drop of vaccine Pfizer/BioNTech produces will be sold immediately. Everyone with half a brain could and should have known this fact. And a P.O. is not cash or a payment....just a piece of paper stating someone will buy something at some future date for some price. And contracts get broken every day.

And your last assertion is conflated bullshit. Many of the technologies now used widely for vaccine design are rooted in longstanding programs to fight HIV and influenza. All of the leading vaccines are based on the SARS-COVID2 spike protein, the entity on the virus surface that drives infection of human cells. Decades of work, first on the corresponding HIV spike protein and then its counterparts from other viruses, including SARS, MERS, and seasonal coronaviruses, showed how best to design and produce the SARS-CoV-2 version.

The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna/NIH vaccines deliver the spike protein in the form of mRNA. This technology emerged during the past decade from university laboratories working on HIV and influenza vaccines, which then triggered Zika, Ebola, and coronavirus vaccine programs at the NIH and in the pharmaceutical industry. The Moderna mRNA vaccine, in particular, was made as a collaboration with the NIH’s Vaccine Research Center, funded by U.S. taxpayers since 1997 to create vaccines against deadly viruses and other human diseases. A method developed by Janssen, a pharmaceutical company, to present spike proteins to the immune system also emerged from an HIV vaccine program at Harvard University. AstraZeneca’s version of the adenovirus delivery system has a similar history. Decades of work on the corresponding HIV and influenza proteins, as well as coronavirus proteins, underpin the Novavax SARS-CoV-2 spike protein vaccine design. DNA vaccines are also in clinical trials, another method derived from research on HIV and other viral pathogens.

This is all said to show the assertion that the U.S. somehow single-handedly researched, developed, and sold COVID vaccines is bullshit. These vaccine developments have been funded by countries/entities worldwide, not just the U.S., and not in the last decade or two...but over decades of research built upon prior research built upon prior research. You gotta just let your jingoistic nationalism go.