Inheritance of ideas

In the midst of a raging debate over IP rights, the million-dollar question is who owns the vaccine? Is it the pharma firms, the country origin, the university they are developed in or the people?

Who owns the vaccine? The pharmaceutical companies and the countries they belong to or the universities that helped develop them? Or if one may dare ask, in the testosterone filled debate over intellectual property (IP) rights, the people?

Everyone agrees that the pandemic is humankind’s biggest challenge in over a century. Everyone also agrees that this pandemic does not respect borders and that no one is safe until everyone is vaccinated. But talk about an IP waiver so that people are vaccinated at the earliest, and the landscape swiftly turns into quicksand. Responses vary from a Gatesian rap on the knuckles