COVID-19 Vaccine IP Waiver Will Benefit Foreign Rivals Like China, Critics Warn

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The Epoch Times

WASHINGTONโ€”The debate is growing over whether developed countries including the United States should temporarily waive intellectual property (IP) and patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines to expedite global vaccination efforts.

The Biden administration on May 5 announced that it would support the waiver of those protections for vaccines โ€œto expand vaccine manufacturing and distributionโ€ around the world to end the pandemic.

Experts, however, believe waiving patents wouldnโ€™t resolve the vaccine shortage problem, due to the complexity of producing the mRNA-based vaccines. They also argue that the move would allow countries such as China to exploit American innovation and technology to their advantage.

โ€œThere is absolutely no need or compelling rationaleโ€ for the IP waiver, according to Stephen Ezell, vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a technology think tank.

Once a country forces the disclosure of know-how, there would be no control over who has access to it, he told The Epoch Times.

This will not only affect the COVID-19 vaccines, but also non-COVID-related drugs and therapies using mRNA technology.

โ€œWhatโ€™s absurd is their assertion that such a waiver wouldnโ€™t lead to China getting their hands on technologies innovative companies have invested billions to develop; and instead of China getting through stealing it, our own government would be complicit in compelling its handover,โ€ Ezell said.

Traditional vaccines put a weakened or inactivated germ into peopleโ€™s bodies to trigger an immune response. Vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna, however, use messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) that teaches cells how to make a protein to trigger an immune response when someone gets infected.

The mRNA vaccine technology established a new platform for vaccine and gene-therapy industries, and while some Chinese firms have also started to develop their vaccines using this new technology, Western companies are still leaders in this space. China also doesnโ€™t have any prior experience in industrial-scale production of mRNA vaccine, according to Sean Lin, a microbiologist and a former lab director of the viral disease branch of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

BYย EMEL AKAN

Read Full Article on TheEpochTimes.com

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