Why the vaccine patents should be released immediately

In the early 2000s, a nun at Nazareth House in Cape Town showed me a plaque on the wall of the orphanage. The names of little children who died in their care were engraved on it. They were all orphans who had died from HIV-related causes.

 The nun explained the deep despair they felt watching the babies suffer and how they tried to work out a way to give them a diluted version of adult antiretroviral therapies (ART) in a desperate attempt to save the children’s lives.  

By then, more than 4.3 million children under the age of 15 had died since the initial outbreak of the HIV pandemic. Yet, there were no pediatric anti-retroviral treatments available for children.  

Of course, the pharmaceutical companies had worked very hard at developing treatments for adults with HIV/Aids but had no interest in developing any for children. Why?

The answer was simple: Money.

HIV was first identified in the gay community of North America. As the epidemic ravaged through populations of gay men, the pharmaceutical companies knew that developing drugs that could help would mean big money for them. 

As we all know now, the virus was quickly identified all over the world- in particular in the developing world- where it soon entered the heterosexual community. Women and children, in particular, contracted it at alarming rates. Despite the fact that millions of children were contracting the virus and dying from it, pharmaceutical companies had no interest in spending money on developing pediatric formulas. It was largely a developing world phenomenon (very few babies in the Northern Hemisphere ever contracted HIV), and they knew there was very little money to be made from any pediatric formula. So, babies (like the ones in Nazareth House) continued to die.

It was only after the Clinton and Elizabeth Glazer Foundations donated huge amounts of money to pharmaceutical companies to develop these formulas that babies finally received the life-saving treatments they desperately needed.  

Last week I wrote about the global inequalities of health care and how they are impacting access to COVID-19 vaccines for South Africa and the rest of the developing world. The President announced on Monday night that the government has now procured 20 million dosages of the vaccine. We don’t know at what price, but I’m sure it was some huge amount which the country can scarcely afford.

Of course, if we are struggling, most other African and developing countries are going to find it near impossible to get the funding to buy enough vaccines to secure herd immunity for the foreseeable future. Thus, Africa and the developing world will yet again be left behind.

It seems to me that this is the one time that there is an absolute moral imperative for the developers of the vaccines to release the patents immediately so that the vaccines can be made cheaply and at scale all over the world for the good of our common humanity.

It is of course true that patents exist because pharmaceutical companies spend enormous amounts of money to develop new drugs, thus the need to recoup that money after the drugs are approved for use.

However, these are not normal times. We are facing a global disaster on a scale not known for centuries.

In any case, unlike other drug developments, pharmaceutical companies were given huge amounts of money by governments, companies, and philanthropists to develop the COVID-19 vaccines. Early last year it was reported that the US government had spent $2.6 billion on the development of a vaccine in addition to the $7 billion provided by private companies.

The EU facilitated a global fundraising effort which ran into the billions of dollars. Many philanthropists (like Madonna, Dolly Parton, and yes, Bill Gates) also donated millions of dollars for vaccine development.

So, there can be absolutely no argument for companies to claim that they need to recoup development money.  

Strangely enough, Pfizer (according to reports in the New York Times and other sources) declined funding contracts for development. Presumably, they did not want to be faced with the moral pressure to not charge top dollar after the development of the vaccine. However, even if they received zero funding, they can easily dip into their Viagra piggy bank.

Although without question a very unpleasant condition for men, I think we can all agree that erectile disfunction does not constitute a life-threatening condition nor that it would qualify as a global pandemic.

Yet, in the late 1990s (at the same time that millions of babies were dying of HIV), Pfizer discovered that there was another…well… upside to a drug for high blood pressure that they were testing. Ka-ching!! It is estimated that Pfizer has made about $27.5 billion since 2003 from Viagra, which played just a small part of their (on average) $50 billion annual revenue. So, there is no shortage of money.

In any case, the mRNA technology used in the vaccine had already been developed for other uses in cancer patients. So, they will clearly recoup a lot of money through other applications and uses.

I have no doubt that the scientists and lab technicians who worked around the clock to develop a COVID-19 vaccine did so because they care about saving the lives of millions around the world. 

Now it is up to the CEOs- with the support of the share-holders and world leaders- to take a courageous stand and, for once, do something truly altruistic for the betterment of humanity and release the patent so countries can manufacture it fast and affordably. 

In 2001 South Africa won a landmark case against pharmaceutical companies to import and manufacture generic HIV drugs cheaply and fast.

It is time for us to take a stand again.

Let us remember the millions of babies who died unnecessarily from HIV, and let us not allow millions of people in the developing world to die from COVID whilst a few (vaccinated) CEOs and share-holders continue to line their pockets from the proceeds of their life-saving vaccines.