COVID-19 has dominated headlines over the past year, in various flavors: stories of affected individuals, the death toll, and the race to a vaccine. Recently, there’s been a lot of discussion about patent rights. Those who are anti-pharma and/or anti-patent rights believe that Big Pharma is evil and filled with greedy, conniving individuals who take advantage of the health of the population for fat stacks of cash. Certainly there are bad actors, but, working in the pharmaceutical industry, I detest Purdue Pharma and Martin Shkreli as much as anyone else.
My beliefs aside, some people think that patent protection is a tool that pharmaceutical companies use to take advantage of human suffering in exchange for profit. These are the people who have cheered on news that the Biden administration has proposed waiving intellectual property (IP) rights on the COVID vaccine. For example:
It’s almost as if the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry are diametrically opposed to the health and well-being of the planet. (source)
Is this really an effective strategy to bolster vaccine production? Probably not. Derek Lowe’s commentary expands on a number of reasons on why waiving IP rights may not amount to much. First and foremost is that patent protection is not the bottleneck in vaccine production.
- Supplies are limited. Some vaccines rely on an ingredient that comes from the bark of a rare Chilean tree (source). Abolishing patents won’t make these trees grow faster.
- Skilled personnel is limited. “There aren’t enough workers to meet this year’s big production push.” (source)
- Manufacturing facilities are limited. Like Rome, these aren’t built in a day.
Furthermore, I strongly believe that patent protections are a net good. It takes a ton of time and effort to produce a new drug. Lots of failures happen along the way, and this must be factored in for the cost of a new drug. If there is no incentive to do this cutting edge research, who would reasonably spend decades and millions of dollars to receive little in return?
Patents work on a quid pro quo system. Governments allow a time-limited monopoly on the manufacture, use, and sale of a certain product in exchange for the patent holder publicly disclosing the technology. Later scholars and researchers can use this information to develop newer technologies, thereby furthering the overall innovation, technological advancement, and economic success of our country.
Lowe writes:
Remember, a patent is not a secret. You have to disclose how your invention works and how to make it work in order to be granted one, and others can go ahead and get to work on how to make you obsolete based on that information.
Also remember that for many drugs, by the time the patent issues, it often has eaten up most of its lifetime. The clock doesn’t start ticking from approval; it starts from the application priority date. I have found over the years that many people outside of R&D do not realize these two points. (source)
One may point to the fact that pharmaceutical companies will be making a lot of money on the vaccines themselves. As Lowe responds, “Good for them.” If you worked extraordinarily hard to produce something that many others failed at, why shouldn’t you be compensated?
$26 billion [Pfizer’s estimated earnings from the vaccine] is a small fraction of the economic damage that’s been done during the year because of the pandemic, and these vaccines are really the only way out of it. Add to that the incalculable social and psychological damages, and it’s a damned cheap price for all of the vaccines put together. Remember, there was no guarantee that any of these things would work – several large and very competent drug companies (Merck, GSK, Sanofi) failed in their own vaccine efforts. (source)
All in all, I think there is a strong overlap of those who are against Big Pharma and those who want COVID patent rights to be waived. In response to the anti-pharma individuals, Lowe states:
So let me just say that I have not worked the past thirty-something years of my life to poison people, to keep them sick, or to bury cures so no one can find them. I have seen good friends, colleagues, and beloved members of my own family succumb to the very diseases that I have researched treatments for, and if I could have done something for them, I would have. I know it’s fun for passionate activists and grandstanding politicians to pretend that that they’re battling hordes of Vile Inhuman Pharma Fascists, but folks, it’s actually mostly a bunch of people like me. That’s not to say that we don’t have some real bastards in this business, but guess what? So do you, in yours. We stock the buildings with people, and they’re not all gems. (source)
The prima facie argument might be about increasing vaccine production, but waiving patent protection is not the solution. Those of us in pharma aren’t out to “get people” or track people via microchips. I entered this field because I care about making a difference in the world, leaving a net positive impact. By helping secure patent rights for potential new therapeutics, I can say that I’m making a difference in helping sick people get better.