Tournament: Nov-Dec Topic | Round: 1 | Opponent: Opponent | Judge: Judge
~World Trade Organization, No Listed Publication Date. https://www.wto.org/english/tratop'e/trips'e/intel1'e.htm~~
Intellectual property rights are customarily divided into two main areas:
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to be found between the legitimate interests of right holders and of users.
1AC – Pandemic Response
The intellectual property system is fundamentally mismatched with emergency pandemic conditions – creating a broad precedent that weakens restrictions on generic vaccines in response to pandemics not only stops immense suffering from COVID surges in India and South America – it also lays the groundwork for future pandemics that are inevitable. Ensuring we are ready for next time is vital
Lindsey 21 ~Brink Lindsey has written on a wide range of topics including trade policy, globalization, American social and cultural history, and the nature of human capital. His current research focuses on economic growth and the policy barriers that impede it. "Why intellectual property and pandemics don’t mix." https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/03/why-intellectual-property-and-pandemics-dont-mix/~~
Although focusing on these immediate constraints is vital, we cannot confine our attention to
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employ other, more direct means to incentivize the development of new drugs.
This is particularly true in the United States – our Covid response was slow as mismanaged – ensuring we are ready next time is key to saving hundreds of thousands of lives the next time around
Lewis 21, Tanya Lewis, 3-11-2021, "How the U.S. Pandemic Response Went Wrong—and What Went Right—during a Year of COVID," Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-u-s-pandemic-response-went-wrong-and-what-went-right-during-a-year-of-covid/
When the World Health Organization first called COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11
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of these tests, and the FDA has been slow to approve them.
Loftus and Hopkins 21 ~Peter Loftus writes about the pharmaceutical industry and healthcare from Dow Jones' Philadelphia bureau. His coverage areas include large drug makers such as Merck and Eli Lilly, and the latest developments in drug research. He occasionally writes about non-pharmaceutical news from the Philadelphia region. Jared S. Hopkins is a New York-based reporter for The Wall Street Journal covering the pharmaceutical industry, including companies such as Pfizer Inc. and Merck and Co. He previously was a health-care reporter at Bloomberg News and an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune."Covid-19 Vaccine Makers Press Countries to Oppose Patent Waiver." https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-vaccine-makers-press-countries-to-oppose-patent-waiver-11622021402~~
Developing countries lacking access to the cutting-edge treatments—or unable to afford
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send doses, through an international initiative called Covax, to developing nations.
COVID highlights just how vulnerable we are to both natural pandemics and man-made biological weapons – the deciding factor in effective response is ensuring people can be vaccinated as fast as possible
Lyon 21 ~Regan F Lyon, 7-1-2021, "COVID-19 Response Has Uncovered and Increased Our Vulnerability to Biological Warfare," OUP Academic, https://academic.oup.com/milmed/article/186/7-8/193/6135020~~
The 2018 National Biodefense Strategy (NBS) articulated a collaborative plan to prevent,
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defense strategies, and offer areas for improvement to restore our bioterror security.
Reducing IP restrictions on medicine is essential for expanding access – especially in developing countries, where lack of capital and domestic industry makes the same people who are most vulnerable to diseases the least likely to have access to expensive brand-name drugs
Baird 13 ~Sean, Boston College of Law. Magic and Hope: Relaxing Trips-Plus Provisions to Promote Access to Affordable Pharmaceuticals. Boston College Journal of Law and Social Justice, 33(1), 107-145, 2013, http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/jlsj/vol33/iss1/4, accessed 7-31-21~
TRIPS-Plus provisions in U.S. FTAs impede access to pharmaceuticals for
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relaxing data exclu- sivity and compulsory licensing provisions for various drugs.207
Only 0.9 of the developing world has the vaccine – capacity to produce it exists, but intellectual property restrictions are preventing production. Expanding access is key – it stops mutations and variants that take us back to square one on COVID
Erfani et al 21 ~Parsa Erfani MD Candidate at Harvard Medical School. "Intellectual property waiver for covid-19 vaccines will advance global health equity." https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n1837~~
By late June 2021, 46 of people in high income countries had received
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choking of low and middle income countries (LMICs) through poor health.
Preventing pandemics should be our main priority – climate change and a host of other factors make them more common and more dangerous, so ensuring we are as ready as possible is key
CAN 17, California Nurses Association, January 2017, "SARS, EBOLA, AND ZIKA: What Registered Nurses Need to Know About Emerging Infectious Diseases," accessed via Google Cache
~ INTRODUCTION ~ Infectious diseases are a part of life, from the bubonic plague
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access to healthcare is extremely limited due to their states’ limitations on Medicaid.
Because ought implies moral judgment, the standard is morality. The debate should determine what proposal is best suited to preserve human life and happiness.
That must be the moral frame – moral judgements that don’t try to maximize human life and happiness are either overly subjective or can’t be effectively used for political decisions – only an explicitly consequentialist decision process ensures moral outcomes
Greene 10 ~Joshua, Associate Professor of Social science in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. The Secret Joke of Kant’s Soul published in Moral Psychology: Historical and Contemporary Readings, accessed: www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~lchang/material/Evolutionary/Developmental/Greene-KantSoul.pdf~
What turn-of-the-millennium science is telling us is that human
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religion, they don't really explain what's distinctive about the philosophy in question.
Last is actor specificity – governments are constantly weighing different policies to make the best possible choice, which means moral side constraints that outright ban actions on abstract principles can hurt more people and prevent good policy.