As others pull together on a coronavirus vaccine, why is the UK siding with big pharma? | Nick Dearden
The UK has refused to support a WHO initiative to make Covid-19 treatments patent-free
The most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes," is how Boris Johnson described the search for a coronavirus vaccine just a month ago. At the time, the prime minister urged countries to pull together and share their expertise. Yet if his government's actions are anything to go by, it seems more interested in siding with big pharmaceutical corporations than turning vaccine research into a genuinely collective endeavour.
The last straw came on Friday, when the government refused to support a World Health Organization initiative to encourage countries to share research on coronavirus treatments and produce any final medicines patent-free. This would mean they could be distributed fairly according to need. The proposal, a voluntary scheme that would pool knowledge, intellectual property and data about coronavirus health technologies, is not particularly radical - but you wouldn't guess that from the recent protestations of pharmaceutical corporations.
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