Big Pharma backs Biden Administration (Harris now) when patent waivers gets blocked

But in the international arena, they’re united in an effort to block developing countries from access to U.S. firms’ patented information on vaccines and drugs when the next pandemic hits.

U.S. negotiators working on a global treaty that aims to guide the world’s response whenever a new deadly pathogen emerges have rejected proposals to loosen patent protections, a step that could enable developing countries to quickly make their own versions of the vaccines and drugs.

For those countries and their advocates, it’s a striking stance — given what happened after Covid arrived: They shared data about new variants only to see the rich world hoard most of the vaccines.

“There’s a contradiction, [an] enormous amount of hypocrisy,” said James Love, director of Knowledge Ecology International, who advocates for wider access to health products, of the Biden administration’s position.

Love said the U.S. has used some of the same measures developing countries have proposed to limit intellectual property rights in the production of Covid vaccines at home.

Asked about the Biden administration’s stance, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services said it was seeking a balance.

“The U.S. wants outcomes that are effective and operationally viable to protect national and global health, promote innovation and promote access to medical countermeasures, strengthen investments in global health security, secure additional governmental commitments and responsibility for pandemic prevention and response, that are consistent with U.S. laws, policies and practices,” the spokesperson said.

The State Department declined a request to interview the chief U.S. negotiator, Pamela Hamamoto, who has said that strong intellectual property rights enabled the quick development of vaccines and therapeutics that saved millions of lives during the pandemic.

The U.S. position in the treaty negotiations — in contrast to Biden’s aggressive push to force drugmakers to lower their prices in the U.S. via pending Medicare price negotiations — shows there are limits to the president’s willingness to upend the patent system.

Unlike Medicare price negotiations, pharma views the erosion of intellectual property rights as an existential threat to its business model, said Lawrence Gostin, faculty director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. He has advised the White House and the World Health Organization, the U.N. body that convened the pandemic treaty negotiations.

“The Biden administration is willing to push the envelope, but they’re not willing to break the business model,” Gostin said.