• Joe Biden spoke on Wednesday for the lifting of patents on anti-Covid vaccines, which should allow other countries to produce and market them in order to make them accessible to as many people as possible.

  • An idea denounced by several entities, foremost among which are pharmaceutical laboratories.

  • In view of the global economic and political issues that are playing out around this question, the United States will therefore not be able to take this decision without the approval of European countries.

On Wednesday, the United States announced that it was in favor of lifting patents on anti-Covid vaccines.

A decision deemed "historic" by the boss of the WHO and to which Emmanuel Macron said - for the first time - Thursday "completely favorable".

If the stated objective is noble: wanting to make the vaccine accessible to as many people as possible, the announcement however provoked an outcry from pharmaceutical laboratories and in the research sector.

A major opposition that could well prevent the immediate lifting of the famous patents.

Although the proposal comes from the United States, where most of the vaccines are produced, it will be difficult to apply if its European counterparts do not follow, said Martin Blachier, a public health doctor.

Why is the lifting of patents on anti-covid vaccines presented as a lever in the fight against the epidemic?

The argument put forward is that this would make it possible to produce vaccines more easily, on a massive scale and at less cost.

Indeed, raising a patent means removing the intellectual property on a therapeutic molecule.

This means that anyone who is able to manufacture and market it can copy it as many times as they want.

The large producing countries of generic vaccines like India and South Africa could therefore start to produce and sell in their country and the whole world the vaccine "Pfizer bis" or the vaccine "AstraZeneca Bis".

These two countries are already used to exploiting molecules once the patent has fallen.

Regarding the lower price, the margin levels on vaccines like AstraZeneca or Janssen are not very high or zero.

It's a little different with RNA vaccines, but these countries should be able to develop RNA platforms very quickly.

Why did the announcement of the United States provoke an outcry from pharmaceutical companies and the world of research?

First of all, the laboratories assure that dropping patents today will not increase production because they are limited by the lack of raw material anyway. Such an approach would therefore just fuel a manufacturing competition between countries, without there being more vaccines. For example the CureVac vaccine, which is the third RNA vaccine can no longer be produced because there are not enough nucleotides, which are used up by Moderna and Pfizer.

On the other hand, we risk opening a legal door which scares the pharmaceutical industry very, very much, 100% of the 

business model of which

is based on patents. Because if we consider that there are no more patents for Covid and well maybe there will be no more for HIV and other endemic diseases. In this scenario, we are sure that overnight all research programs come to an end and that no more molecules will be produced over the next ten years.

Indeed, the pharmaceutical industry is financed by the financial system: laboratories raise funds on the markets to launch development programs.

The patent is the only guarantee to have a profitability for a certain time.

So if we remove them, we kill a system that has been in use for fifty years and which makes it possible to produce a lot of molecules and which States are not able to replace.

Can the United States make this decision alone, without European countries?

Although most vaccines are American, the decision must be collective in membership with European countries and cannot be taken unilaterally.

Either everyone decides at the same time, or it just doesn't happen.

And since we will never have everyone in agreement, it may never happen.

I think the United States knows this and that this statement is mostly political.

Moreover, if the United States lifts our patents without agreement, that means that we can also lift patents on their own products and produce all the molecules made by American laboratories.

Because if we do not respect the patent of others, the others will not respect yours.

At that time, it is the patent war, therefore the end of intellectual property and finally the end of research.

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