Vaccinating policy

IP regimes should not outweigh public health interests

The global pharmaceutical industry is racing to create a vaccine for coronavirus and the winning companies are certain to generate billions of dollars in revenue and wealth for shareholders. But the bigger concern once the vaccines enter the market is balancing intellectual property (IP) regimes with public health interests. In a recent article, Joseph Stiglitz, Arjun Jayadev, and Achal Prabhala have argued that current IP regimes, which enable Big Pharma monopolies to extract large profits from consumers, are unnecessary and they make the case for the benefits of “open science” instead. They point to the World Health Organization’s Global Influenza