COVAX: G20 leaders to back voluntary vaccine licensing | DW News

Leaders of twenty major industrial and emerging countries are holding a health summit aimed at boosting access to coronavirus vaccines. They're expected to recommend more voluntary licensing of vaccine production.
At present, it's only a handful of companies and their partners that are allowed to make the jabs. It's a fundamental principle of intellectual property law but - critics say- it's costing lives. South Africa and India have led calls for patents to be waived. More than 100 countries - including the US, agree. But Germany rejected the proposal, saying it would hinder innovation.
What are the arguments for and against? Those in favour say suspending patents would save lives and help economies re-open. They say pharma companies have benefited from government investment. The critics say patent waivers would hamper innovation, and slow any response to a future pandemic. They say production capacity is the real issue and point out that some pharma companies are already selling their vaccines to poorer countries at cost.

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[patricktwo]

Profit driven public health systems means the $ is worth more than your life.

[gauravrai]

So innovation is driven by only monetary gain? I think if that's the case then we have already failed.

[padmawangmo]

Soo money and innovation is more important then lives🙂🙂🙂

[andrewtlk]

It's all about the money. Profits drive policy. Just like how the military industrial complex has driven policy for some countries.

[nev]

Beautiful. Honestly this would lessen my 'hesitancy.' Science should be based on SCIENCE not profit.

[heesingsia]

Voluntary licensing is a great compromise. The main companies can still make a cut from the final product produced on other sites. The issue now is if there are enough companies who have the ability to manufacture as well as control the quality of the vaccines.

Even if this was agreed yesterday, it will still be months at least before those new sites start rolling out the vaccines

[godschild]

The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
-Ronald Reagan

[joanignasi]

No matter how it's done it's essential to vaccinate as many people as soon as possible no matter where they live. It's not only the moral thing to do but the smarter thing to do, if we want to avoid new variants that would seriously compromise the effectiveness of the current vaccines.

[dempsey]

So many cynical people don't realize how much money and technology went into developing these vaccines.

[Starship]

Bill Gates will be so happy along with Epstein

[stennan]

Since the mRNA technology behind the leading vaccines can be used to create medicines for other purposes, it would be very helpful for other companies/countries if the patents were dropped. For the innovators who developed the technologies they of course don't want to loose the exclusive right to develop more treatments for other diseases.

[photorreia]

The grotesct is the norm, the pandemy only put a light on it.

[abadepill]

Up to world leaders to make choice want to save lives and economy or pharmaceutical companies

[godschild]

“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” -- CIA Director William Casey, 1981

[bobfearnley]

Q: "What have we learned from the pandemic?" A: "The science part. Not the political part." Well, we can't make use of science if the politics are in denial or being dismissive of science

[osterlaich]

Think revoking the patent of all medicine as punishment for big pharma is a sensible approach.

[ysr]

People who denied to share the formula... Lack of humanity... They look only for profits..

[shreyastasamal]

In India you barely have any institute supporting science for science. Everyone is working for for profit and barely support stsrtups. Hence, brain drain and it leads to death of innovation.

[blackeyedpeasfreak]

This is actually really difficult topic, on the one hand ofc you want to first help your own suffering citizens and the other hand you also want to help people in need around the world... But the bigger picture is, that those leading innovative companies could only manage to produce these vaccines in that short time but still with decent quality due to investments and secureness from private and governmental sectors.. So if you would take that from the those companies it basically would slow down the motivation and innovation for uprising problems in the future... So I understand Germany and other countries who are against it... And also This WHO person clearly tries to play with words since the west is sharing permanently with other countries... The only difference is that it gets exported instead of locally produced

[mohad]

Do anyone remember the G20 meeting where EU membres (France, Germany, ...) were praising solidarity ? Karl Marx said Barbarians have no idea about moral issues, because growing up in cold Mountains where everything is rare they only know selfishism...🤣No need of hypocrites just be yourself at least everyone will with whom to deal with 🤑...