Is Bill Gates Lying?
Intellectual Property Rights and the fight to vaccinate the world
In an interview with Sky News on 28 April 2021 when asked if lifting patent protections would help get more vaccines to the poor nations of the world. Some of these nations have yet to vaccinate even one person against COVID-19.
He said, “No. There are only so many Vaccine Factories in the world, and people are very serious about the safety of Vaccines. And so moving something that has never been done, moving a vaccine from, say, a J&J factory into a factory in India. That’s novel. It’s only because of our grants and expertise that can even happen at all. The thing that is holding things back, in this case, is not intellectual property. It’s not like there is some Idle vaccine factory with regulatory approval that makes magically safe vaccines. You gotta do trials on these things, and every manufacturing process has to be looked at carefully. There are many issues about intellectual property having to do with medicines, but not in terms of how quickly we’ve been able to ramp up the volume here. You know I remember how shocked people were when we said we were going to do second sources in these developing county’s factories but a, ya know that was a novel thing we got all the rights from the vaccine companies they didn’t hold it back they were participating I do a regular phone call with the pharmaceutical CEOs to make sure that is going at full speed.”
So, is he lying or just uninformed? It is Bill Gates; do we think he is uninformed?
In a March 1st, 2021 article in the AP, Maria Cheng and Lori Hinnant, titled “Countries urge drug companies to share vaccine know-how,” highlight a Bangladesh Vaccine Factory, “one of three factories that the associated press found on three continents whose owners say they could start producing hundreds of millions of COVID-19 Vaccines on short notice if only they had the blueprints and technical know-how”
In a 24 April 2021 article in the Guardian, Stephen Buranyi, in an article titled “The world is desperate for more COVID vaccines — patents shouldn’t get in the way,” tells us of John Fulton the Vice-president of Biolyse who responded to the question this way. “We’ve been passed over. We’ve got this production capacity, and it’s not being put to use. If we had started this last year, we could have shipped millions of doses by now. This is supposed to be like a wartime effort, everyone in it together. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
On the show Rising, Krystal Ball provides this detail from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, “US tax dollars funded every new pharmaceutical in the last decade.” By Fred Ledley, Ekaterina Cleary, and Matthew Jackson. https://youtu.be/kZ5DavuOkcM
Advocates for the sharing of IP rights so more COVID-19 vaccines can be disseminated quicker to poorer nations.
Doctors without Borders
“The Gates Organization dampened early enthusiasm by saying that I.P. is not an access barrier in vaccines. That’s just demonstratively false.” Manuel Martinez, Doctors without Borders.
The World Health Organization
Every sane individual with a basic understanding of viral infections.
Those against it.
Monopolistic, multinational, billion-dollar corporations and the folks who own them.
© 2021, T. Mark Mangum
T. Mark Mangum, a product of the unimaginable worlds of Star Wars, Star Trek, Conan, and the Lord of the Rings. Lover and writer of fiction tales. He is a Veteran, a father of six, and a game enthusiast.
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