1AC biopiracy 1NC Nebel T innovation DA consult WHO CP "3rd world" K case 1AR consult bad perfcon all 2NR innovation DA theory case 2AR consult bad perfcon
Greenhill
3
Opponent: Strath Haven AM | Judge: Eric He
1AC COVID 1NC T-Medicine innovation DA EU proposal CP consult WHO CP case 1AR consult bad all 2NR consult WHO CP theory case 2AR CP
Greenhill
6
Opponent: Presentation NR | Judge: Ishan Rereddy
1AC set col 1NC T-Framework innovation DA case 1AR all 2NR T-Framework case 2AR case T-Framework
Greenhill RR
1
Opponent: Strake Jesuit ZD | Judge: Panel
1AC Afropess 1NC cap K T-FW case 1AR condo all 2NR T-FW case 2AR case T-FW
Greenhill RR
4
Opponent: Northland Christian LB | Judge: Panel
1AC COVID 1NC innovation DA EU proposal CP consult WHO CP case 1AR condo bad consult bad all 2NR consult WHO CP theory case 2AR case consult WHO CP
Greenhill RR
5
Opponent: Harvard Westlake CC | Judge: Panel
1AC COVID vaccines 1NC innovation DA EU proposal CP consult WHO CP case 1AR consult bad all 2NR consult WHO CP case 2AR consult WHO CP
Greenhill RR
Finals
Opponent: Harker DS | Judge: Panel
1AC EU trade secrets 1NC T-WTO Nebel T (IP) neolib K case 1AR all 2NR case 2AR case
Loyola
2
Opponent: Sam Barlow EL | Judge: Julian Kuffour
1AC HIVAIDs 1NC T-Framework innovation DA COVID PIC util case 2NR COVID PIC case 2AR case
Loyola
3
Opponent: Orange Lutheran AZ | Judge: Asher Towner
1AC patents 1NC anti-realism NC innovation DA consult WHO CP 1AR condo bad consult bad all 2NR anti-realism NC condo bad consult bad 2AR condo
Loyola
5
Opponent: Saratoga AG | Judge: Ronak Ahuja
1AC US COVID 1NC innovation DA anti-realism NC consult WHO CP Nebel T 1AR condo bad consult bad all 2NR anti-realism NC theory 2AR AC NC
Loyola
Doubles
Opponent: Scripps Ranch AS | Judge: Panel
1AC Deleuze with util adv 1NC consult WHO CP comparative worlds util NC case 1AR consult bad ACC all 2NR theory util adv util NC case 2AR case NC
Loyola
Octas
Opponent: Carnegie Vanguard SR | Judge: Panel
1AC one and done w NCM 1NC Nebel T consult WHO adv CP case 1AR object fiat bad process CP bad all 2NR theory case 2AR case
Loyola
Quarters
Opponent: Strake Jesuit JX | Judge: Panel
1AC Korsgaard with util adv 1NC consult WHO CP util NC case 1AR consult bad condo bad all 2NR theory util NC case 2AR consult bad
Loyola
Finals
Opponent: Diamond Bar NC | Judge: Panel
1AC one and done 1NC Nebel T consult WHO neolib K case 1AR all 2NR consult CP case 2AR case CP
Nano Nagle
2
Opponent: Harker DV | Judge: Sam McLoughlin
1AC pandemics 1NC fisheries DA consult WHO CP anti-realism NC case 1AR all 2NR NC case 2AR case NC
Nano Nagle
3
Opponent: Los Altos BF | Judge: Michael Harris
1AC alienation with util advantage 1NC util consult WHO CP innovation DA 1AR condo all 2NR consult WHO CP condo case 2AR condo
Nano Nagle
5
Opponent: Harker AR | Judge: Lukas Krause
1AC COVID 1NC Nebel T consult WHO CP fisheries DA case 1AR condo RVI all 2NR case 2AR case
Nano Nagle
Quarters
Opponent: Southlake Carroll PK | Judge: Panel
1AC Jordan 1NC T-WTO Nebel T consult WHO CP cap K case 1AR consult bad condo bad all 2NR consult WHO CP theory 2AR CP
1AC Jordan 1NC T-WTO consult WHO CP cap K case 1AR all 2NR T 2AR T
Nano Nagle RR
Semis
Opponent: Sage MP | Judge: Panel
1AC Jordan 1NC T-WTO consult WHO CP cap K case 1AR all 2NR T 2AR T
St Marks
1
Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Sam Larson
1AC evergreening 1NC Nebel T fisheries DA epilepsy PIC consult WHO CP case 1AR condo bad consult bad PICs bad all 2NR DA theory case 2AR case DA
St Marks
3
Opponent: Westwood AG | Judge: Kristiana Baez
1AC biocolonialism 1NC innovation DA consult WHO CP sui generis CP Nebel T case 1AR condo bad consult bad all 2NR innovation DA theory case 2AR case DA
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Cites
Entry
Date
0 - Contact
Tournament: - | Round: 1 | Opponent: - | Judge: - Hi! I'm Jane (she/her). Cites already aren't working, but every position is open-sourced.
Email: jane.lichtman@gmail.com
Messenger: Jane Lichtman
9/4/21
1 - K - Third World
Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 1 | Opponent: McNeil AR | Judge: Chris Castillo I endorse the whole 1AC minus their use of the phrase “1st/3rd world divide.” Pate 16 (Sabriya, Islamic studies major at Duke University) “Five things wrong with the term “Third World Countries”,” Duke Engage Cape Town, 6/23/2016 JL
The nature of the term implies entire nations are unsophisticated and alien. (Seriously, why does the term imply that certain nations are on another entirely different world?) The issue at hand is that “third world” has become an adjective used when individuals do not wish to outline what they actually mean. When in fact someone seeks to refer to how a country is specifically poverty-ridden or plagued with governmental corruption or repressive in civil liberties or struggling with high economic vulnerability, “third world” has become a convenient shorthand expression. While many of the aforementioned traits overlap in certain countries, to wholeheartedly characterize a nation as consequently “third world” can be misleading. The term is without a doubt ambiguous and hence vulnerable to usage in meaningless or unformed political rhetoric. 2. The term is simply archaic. “Third World” was coined during the Cold War to describe nations that neither supported ‘the West’ (NATO) nor ‘the East’ (the Communists). In effect, the term was created as a marker for a nation’s political ideology (perhaps often pacifism in the case of “Third World countries”) in a time of great global unrest. So why is the term still used today despite the end of the first Cold War? After all, how appropriate can a Cold War-era classification be when used as a blanket term for economic, political and social life in primarily Africa, Asia and Latin America. 3. It assumes a hierarchy between countries- and this is also true of the expressions “developed” and “developing” countries. These terms paint most definitely not homogenous Western nations as the ideal, despite the grave issues affecting so-called Western nations. Furthermore, these terms are not concrete, whereas quantitative data, such as infant mortality rates, provide a more solid basis for comparison. Additionally, referring to certain nations as of the “Third World,” presupposes the existence of a First (and Second World). But what does a “First World” country actually look like? The United States? Scandinavia? What really makes a country “first in its class?” (Yes, that is a phrase appropriated from car commercials, but when you think about it, that is an inherent meaning when a country is labeled “First World.”) 4. These artificial labels lack legitimacy. Who is one to classify another? Even in the 21st century, there’s no clear consensus on what it means to be a developed country. As written by one senior politics writer, Zeeshan Aleem, “Social democracy in Scandinavia, oil-funded theocracy in Saudi Arabia, and a one-party, partially planned, partially free market economy in China are all vastly different models for generating and harnessing prosperity.” With all these subjective perspectives on what defines a country, where lies the merit behind such universal labeling? 5. The term depicts the ‘afflicted’ countries as inaccessible In 1952 when Alfred Sauvy wrote “Three words one planet” for his article in L’Observateur, he envisioned a world entirely constructed in terms of capitalism and socialism, with a grey area denoted as the “third world.” While he may have had his problematic reasoning, in the 21st century, the term makes so-called “third world countries” sound inaccessible. Why must we refer to nations whose exports we consume, whose citizens we laud and whose culture we often derogate as on ‘another world?’ Are we that unwilling to find common ground or even admit that we all share one global economy and ‘pile of resources’ so-to-speak? Perhaps somewhere out there lies a justifiable reason to classify nations for certain attributes. But the idea of a “third world” is disconcerting. There is only one world: a world with billions of people and superficially drawn borders that have overtime come to divide and define us. In my opinion, rhetoric on nation-states should be unifying rather than divisive—the opposite of emotions evoked from the term “third world.”
Representations shape reality – they control communication and form identity Sarrica and Contarello 4 (Muro Sarrica – Department of General Psychology at the University of Padova and Alberta Contarello – PhD, Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Social Psychology, Section of Applied Psychology at the University of Padova “Peace, War and Conflict: Social Representations Shared by Peace Activists and Non-Activists,” September 2004, Vol. 41, No. 5 http://jpr.sagepub.com/content/41/5/549)//PC The idea of social representations has its roots in Durkheim’s distinction between individual and collective representations, in structuralist anthropology and in Piaget’s distinction between childish operative thinking and adult formal thinking. Like collective representations, social represen- tations are shared within groups; just as in primitive cultures and in operative thinking, they are not based on logical rules. The underlying concept of the theory is that people refer to a reality that is socially con- structed, based on common agreement on what is real and what is not. Social represen- tations are thus defined, shared and used by groups and contribute to defining the environment in which the life of these groups and of their members takes place. Thus, they draw wider systems within which specific attitudes can develop (Doise, 1989). They may be defined as forms of common sense/knowledge, emotionally loaded, that allow members of a community to com- municate and understand each other (Moscovici, 1961/1976, 1998a,b). To highlight their social nature, the theory stresses the importance of the pro- cesses of communication within groups in the emergence of representations. When faced with an important but unfamiliar event, thoughts and discourse on the subject proliferate, and this set of interactions gives rise to a new social representation (Wagner, Valencia and Elejabarrieta, 1996). A social representation is, therefore, an explanation constructed by a group to cope with some- thing new. This first function, termed ‘symbolic coping’, is carried out through processes of anchoring and objectification. Anchoring consists of a series of responses that attempt to relate the content and struc- tures of the individual’s previous knowledge to the new event in order to make sense of it (Doise, 1992). Later, with objectification, ‘an icon, metaphor or trope is constructed which comes to stand for the new phenom- enon’ (Wagner et al., 1999: 99). Thanks to this process, even abstract or hazy concepts may be used by everyone and modified like real objects. Social representations have a twofold nature: they are stable concepts, since we do not redefine everything everyday, but they continue to evolve in relation to external, individual and group changes. To under- stand this twofold character, two zones – one central, the other peripheral – may be dis- tinguished in the representation. According to Flament (1987) and Flament and Moliner (1989), peripheral elements allow us to relate rapidly to the world around us. They also absorb the changes that concern the representation, by adapting to the changing situations. The central nucleus of the representation is, on the contrary, more stable and consists of ‘one or more elements, whose absence would end up destroying or giving a radically different meaning to the representation overall’ (Abric, 1989: 197; see also Abric, 1993). According to this approach, two social representations are different only if the central nuclei are different. People who share the same representation may differ, therefore, only in the peripheral elements to which they refer. It is also possible that, within the same cultural framework, different groups may take up distinct positions in the representa- tional field, by referring to different social representations. These differences are assumed to be systematic and organized on the basis of psycho-social variables (Doise, Clémence and Lorenzi-Cioldi, 1992; Doise, Spini and Clémence, 1999), among which identity plays a crucial role. The question is whether identity is a function of the representation itself (Duveen, 2001) or if the contrary is equally true (Brewer, 2001), since the two themes are inextricably linked. From this viewpoint, sharing a social represen- tation is a consequence of belonging to a group, but it is also a way of defining oneself in opposition to outgroups with different representations. Social representations thus regulate intragroup and intergroup relations, create cohesion (Breakwell, 1993) and help form social identity (Moscovici and Hewstone, 1983) as well as its evolution and preservation (Breakwell, 2001; see also Chryssochoou, 2000, 2003).
9/18/21
1 - NC - Util
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 2 | Opponent: Sam Barlow EL | Judge: Julian Kuffour The standard is maximizing expected wellbeing
Pleasure and pain are intrinsically valuable. People consistently regard pleasure and pain as good reasons for action, despite the fact that pleasure doesn’t seem to be instrumentally valuable for anything. Moen 16 Ole Martin Moen, Research Fellow in Philosophy at University of Oslo “An Argument for Hedonism” Journal of Value Inquiry (Springer), 50 (2) 2016: 267–281 SJDI Let us start by observing, empirically, that a widely shared judgment about intrinsic value and disvalue is that pleasure is intrinsically valuable and pain is intrinsically disvaluable. On virtually any proposed list of intrinsic values and disvalues (we will look at some of them below), pleasure is included among the intrinsic values and pain among the intrinsic disvalues. This inclusion makes intuitive sense, moreover, for there is something undeniably good about the way pleasure feels and something undeniably bad about the way pain feels, and neither the goodness of pleasure nor the badness of pain seems to be exhausted by the further effects that these experiences might have. “Pleasure” and “pain” are here understood inclusively, as encompassing anything hedonically positive and anything hedonically negative.2 The special value statuses of pleasure and pain are manifested in how we treat these experiences in our everyday reasoning about values. If you tell me that you are heading for the convenience store, I might ask: “What for?” This is a reasonable question, for when you go to the convenience store you usually do so, not merely for the sake of going to the convenience store, but for the sake of achieving something further that you deem to be valuable. You might answer, for example: “To buy soda.” This answer makes sense, for soda is a nice thing and you can get it at the convenience store. I might further inquire, however: “What is buying the soda good for?” This further question can also be a reasonable one, for it need not be obvious why you want the soda. You might answer: “Well, I want it for the pleasure of drinking it.” If I then proceed by asking “But what is the pleasure of drinking the soda good for?” the discussion is likely to reach an awkward end. The reason is that the pleasure is not good for anything further; it is simply that for which going to the convenience store and buying the soda is good.3 As Aristotle observes: “We never ask a man what his end is in being pleased, because we assume that pleasure is choice worthy in itself.”4 Presumably, a similar story can be told in the case of pains, for if someone says “This is painful!” we never respond by asking: “And why is that a problem?” We take for granted that if something is painful, we have a sufficient explanation of why it is bad. If we are onto something in our everyday reasoning about values, it seems that pleasure and pain are both places where we reach the end of the line in matters of value.
2. Moral uncertainty means preventing extinction should be our highest priority. Bostrom 12 Nick Bostrom. Faculty of Philosophy and Oxford Martin School University of Oxford. “Existential Risk Prevention as Global Priority.” Global Policy (2012) These reflections on moral uncertainty suggest an alternative, complementary way of looking at existential risk; they also suggest a new way of thinking about the ideal of sustainability. Let me elaborate.¶ Our present understanding of axiology might well be confused. We may not now know — at least not in concrete detail — what outcomes would count as a big win for humanity; we might not even yet be able to imagine the best ends of our journey. If we are indeed profoundly uncertain about our ultimate aims, then we should recognize that there is a great option value in preserving — and ideally improving — our ability to recognize value and to steer the future accordingly. Ensuring that there will be a future version of humanity with great powers and a propensity to use them wisely is plausibly the best way available to us to increase the probability that the future will contain a lot of value. To do this, we must prevent any existential catastrophe. 3. Independent of considerations of future happiness or life, death is the worst evil since it destroys the subject itself Paterson, 03 – Department of Philosophy, Providence College, Rhode Island (Craig, “A Life Not Worth Living?”, Studies in Christian Ethics, http://sce.sagepub.com) Contrary to those accounts, I would argue that it is death per se that is really the objective evil for us, not because it deprives us of a prospective future of overall good judged better than the alter- native of non-being. It cannot be about harm to a former person who has ceased to exist, for no person actually suffers from the sub-sequent non-participation. Rather, death in itself is an evil to us because it ontologically destroys the current existent subject — it is the ultimate in metaphysical lightening strikes.80 The evil of death is truly an ontological evil borne by the person who already exists, independently of calculations about better or worse possible lives. Such an evil need not be consciously experienced in order to be an evil for the kind of being a human person is. Death is an evil because of the change in kind it brings about, a change that is destructive of the type of entity that we essentially are. Anything, whether caused naturally or caused by human intervention (intentional or unintentional) that drastically interferes in the process of maintaining the person in existence is an objective evil for the person. What is crucially at stake here, and is dialectically supportive of the self-evidency of the basic good of human life, is that death is a radical interference with the current life process of the kind of being that we are. In consequence, death itself can be credibly thought of as a ‘primitive evil’ for all persons, regardless of the extent to which they are currently or prospectively capable of participating in a full array of the goods of life.81 In conclusion, concerning willed human actions, it is justifiable to state that any intentional rejection of human life itself cannot therefore be warranted since it is an expression of an ultimate disvalue for the subject, namely, the destruction of the present person; a radical ontological good that we cannot begin to weigh objectively against the travails of life in a rational manner. To deal with the sources of disvalue (pain, suffering, etc.) we should not seek to irrationally destroy the person, the very source and condition of all human possibility.82
9/4/21
SEPTOCT - CP - 1 and Done Adv
Tournament: Loyola | Round: Octas | Opponent: Carnegie Vanguard SR | Judge: Panel CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should: - Increase research and funding for research related to energy production, pollution, remediation, and oceanic biodiversity - Double the current yield of global crops – 1AC NAS NAS 8 National Academy of Sciences 12-3-2008 “The Role of the Life Sciences in Transforming America's Future Summary of a Workshop” Re-cut by Elmer Fostering Industries to AND sustainably on earth.
9/6/21
SEPTOCT - CP - COVID
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 2 | Opponent: Sam Barlow EL | Judge: Julian Kuffour CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines except for COVID-19 medicines. Agree WTO is bad, but reducing IP for covid medicines bolsters the WTO’s global credibility Patent waiver is necessary to revitalize WTO’s credibility as an international dispute mechanism – creates momentum for further reform. Meyer 6-18-21. (David Meyer is the Editor of CEO Daily and a senior writer on Fortune’s European team. Author of the digital rights primer, Control Shift: How Technology Affects You and Your Rights. “The WTO’s survival hinges on the COVID-19 vaccine patent debate, waiver advocates warn,” Fortune, June 18, 2021. https://fortune.com/2021/06/18/wto-covid-vaccines-patents-waiver-south-africa-trips/ TDI The World Trade Organization knows all about crises. Former U.S. President Donald Trump threw a wrench into its core function of resolving trade disputes—a blocker that President Joe Biden has not yet removed—and there is widespread dissatisfaction over the fairness of the global trade rulebook. The 164-country organization, under the fresh leadership of Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, has a lot to fix. However, one crisis is more pressing than the others: the battle over COVID-19 vaccines, and whether the protection of their patents and other intellectual property should be temporarily lifted to boost production and end the pandemic sooner rather than later. According to some of those pushing for the waiver—which was originally proposed last year by India and South Africa—the WTO's future rests on what happens next. "The credibility of the WTO will depend on its ability to find a meaningful outcome on this issue that truly ramps-up and diversifies production," says Xolelwa Mlumbi-Peter, South Africa's ambassador to the WTO. "Final nail in the coffin" The Geneva-based WTO isn't an organization with power, as such—it's a framework within which countries make big decisions about trade, generally by consensus. It's supposed to be the forum where disputes get settled, because all its members have signed up to the same rules. And one of its most important rulebooks is the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, which sprang to life alongside the WTO in 1995. The WTO's founding agreement allows for rules to be waived in exceptional circumstances, and indeed this has happened before: its members agreed in 2003 to waive TRIPS obligations that were blocking the importation of cheap, generic drugs into developing countries that lack manufacturing capacity. (That waiver was effectively made permanent in 2017.) Consensus is the key here. Although the failure to reach consensus on a waiver could be overcome with a 75 supermajority vote by the WTO's membership, this would be an unprecedented and seismic event. In the case of the COVID-19 vaccine IP waiver, it would mean standing up to the European Union, and Germany in particular, as well as countries such as Canada and the U.K.—the U.S. recently flipped from opposing the idea of a waiver to supporting it, as did France. It's a dispute between countries, but the result will be on the WTO as a whole, say waiver advocates. "If, in the face of one of humanity's greatest challenges in a century, the WTO functionally becomes an obstacle as in contrast to part of the solution, I think it could be the final nail in the coffin" for the organization, says Lori Wallach, the founder of Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, a U.S. campaigning group that focuses on the WTO and trade agreements. "If the TRIPS waiver is successful, and people see the WTO as being part of the solution—saving lives and livelihoods—it could create goodwill and momentum to address what are still daunting structural problems." Those problems are legion. Reform needs Top of the list is the WTO's Appellate Body, which hears appeals in members' trade disputes. It's a pivotal part of the international trade system, but Trump—incensed at decisions taken against the U.S. —blocked appointments to its seven-strong panel as judges retired. The body became completely paralyzed at the end of 2019, when two judges' terms ended and the panel no longer had the three-judge quorum it needs to rule on appeals. Anyone who hoped the advent of the Biden administration would change matters was disappointed earlier this year when the U.S. rejected a European proposal to fill the vacancies. "The United States continues to have systemic concerns with the appellate body," it said. "As members know, the United States has raised and explained its systemic concerns for more than 16 years and across multiple U.S. administrations." At her confirmation hearing in February, current U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai reiterated those concerns—she said the appellate body had "overstepped its authority and erred in interpreting WTO agreements in a number of cases, to the detriment of the United States and other WTO members," and accused it of dragging its heels in settling disputes. "Reforms are needed to ensure that the underlying causes of such problems do not resurface," Tai said. "While the U.S. has been engaging with the WTO it hasn't indicated it would move quickly on allowing appointments to the Appellate Body," says Bryan Mercurio, an economic-law professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, who opposes the vaccine waiver. "This is not a good sign. In terms of WTO governance, it's a much more important step than supporting negotiations on an intellectual property waiver." It's not just the U.S. that wants to see reform at the WTO. In a major policy document published in February, the EU said negotiations had failed to modernize the organization's rules, the dispute-resolution system was broken, the monitoring of countries' trade policies was ineffective, and—crucially—"the trade relationship between the U.S. and China, two of the three largest WTO members, is currently largely managed outside WTO disciplines." China is one of the key problems here. It became a WTO member in 2001 but, although this entailed significant liberalization of the Chinese economy, it did not become a full market economy. As the European Commission put it in February: "The level at which China has opened its markets does not correspond to its weight in the global economy, and the state continues to exert a decisive influence on China's economic environment with consequent competitive distortions that cannot be sufficiently addressed by current WTO rules." "China is operating from what it sees as a position of strength, so it will not be bullied into agreeing to changes which it sees as not in its interests," says Mercurio. China is at loggerheads with the U.S., the EU and others over numerous trade-related issues. Its rivals don't like its policy of demanding that Chinese citizens' data is stored on Chinese soil, nor do they approve of how foreign investors often have to partner with Chinese firms to access the country's market, in a way that leads to the transfer of technological knowhow. They also oppose China's industrial subsidies. Mercurio thinks China may agree to reforms on some of these issues, particularly regarding subsidies, but "only if it is offered something in return." All these problems won't go away if the WTO manages to come up with a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and medical supplies, Wallach concedes. "But," she adds, "the will and the good faith to tackle these challenges is increased enormously if the WTO has the experience of being part of the solution, not just an obstacle." Wallach points to a statement released earlier this month by Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) trade ministers, which called for urgent discussions on the waiver. "The WTO must demonstrate that global trade rules can help address the human catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic and facilitate the recovery," the statement read in its section about WTO reform. Okonjo-Iweala's role The WTO's new director general, whose route to the top was unblocked in early 2021 with the demise of the Trump administration, is certainly keen to fix the problems that contributed to the early departure of her predecessor, Brazil's Robert Azevedo. "We must act now to get all our ambassadors to the table to negotiate a text" on the issue of an IP waiver for COVID vaccines, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director general of the World Trade Organization, has said. Dursun Aydemir—Anadolu/Bloomberg/Getty Images Earlier this week, when the U.S. and EU agreed a five-year ceasefire in a long-running dispute over Boeing and Airbus aircraft subsidies, Okonjo-Iweala tweeted: "With political will, we can solve even the most intractable problems." However, Mercurio is skeptical about her stewardship having much of an effect on the WTO's reform process. "Upon taking over she stated it was time for delegations to speak to each other and not simply past each other, but at the recent General Counsel meeting delegations simply read prepared statements in what some have described as the worst meeting ever," he says. "On the other hand, Ngozi is very much someone who will actively seek solutions to problems, and in this way different to her predecessor. If the role of mediator is welcomed, she could have an impact not in starting discussions but in getting deals over the finish line." No alt causes – how the WTO acts now with Covid will shape its role in the international economy for decades to come. Evenett and Baldwin 20. (Simon J. Evenett is Professor of International Trade and Economic Development at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, and Co-Director of the CEPR Programme in International Trade and Regional Economics. Richard E. Baldwin is a professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. “Revitalising multilateral trade cooperation: Why? Why Now? And How?” November 10, 2020. https://voxeu.org/content/revitalising-multilateralism-pragmatic-ideas-new-wto-director-general TDI Purposeful, pragmatic steps towards noble goals Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that tireless campaigner against Apartheid, once remarked that “there is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time”. After a decade of drift and backsliding, the task of revitalising multilateral trade cooperation may seem daunting. It may seem even more so after the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic and the attendant slump in world trade. Yet, in the same emergency lies the seeds of revival – especially, if trade diplomats can demonstrate the relevance of the WTO to national governments fighting this pandemic – ideally through an accord that eases the cross-border shipment of needed medical goods and medicines. Step by pragmatic step, the WTO can regain its centrality in the world trading system. Ultimately, the pandemic affords the opportunity to reframe discussions on multilateral trade cooperation away from the stalemate, frustration of recent years between governments, and the Uruguay Round mindset that ran into diminishing returns years ago. Rather, discussions between governments need to draw lessons from the second global economic shock in 15 years so as to rebuild a system of global trade arrangements capable of better tackling systemic crises and, more importantly, better able to contribute to the growing number of first-order challenges facing societies in the 21st century. Doing so will require revisiting the very purpose of the WTO. Specifically, action now over Covid creates goodwill to establish global trade as a norm and preserve the relevance of the trading system post-Covid. González 20. (Anabel Gonzalez is a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute and former Minister of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica “Revitalising multilateral trade cooperation: Why? Why Now? And How?” November 10, 2020. https://voxeu.org/content/revitalising-multilateralism-pragmatic-ideas-new-wto-director-general TDI EXTRAORDINARY TIMES DEMAND EXTRAORDINARY ACTION As of 2 November 2020, there are 46.9 million COVID-19 cases across all regions, with the number of deaths exceeding 1.2 million, and rising.2 The economic and social impacts of the pandemic and its containment measures are not less daunting. Global growth is estimated at -4.9 in 2020, with over 95 of countries projected to have negative per capita income growth (IMF 2020). Trade volumes are expected to decrease by between 13 and 32 from last year,3 while foreign direct investment flows could plunge by up to 40 (UNCTAD 2020). Is it estimated that the equivalent of 555 million jobs have been lost in the first half of this year (ILO 2020), which in turn could push up to 100 million more people into extreme poverty and would almost double the number of persons suffering from acute hunger (FAO 2020). While there is some evidence that goods trade may be rebounding and that the worst-case trade scenario projected in April could be averted (CPB 2020, WTO 2020a), the recovery from the deepest global recession since World War II will depend on the sustained and effective containment of the virus and the quality of government policies. The World Bank/IMF Development Committee warned that the pandemic has the potential to erase development gains for many countries (World Bank 2020a). Some consequences may also be long-lasting, such as lower investment, erosion of human capital, and a retreat from global trade and supply linkages (World Bank 2020b). It is no understatement to say these are extraordinary times. In many countries, governments are providing significant levels of fiscal support to try to stabilise their economies, sustain companies and minimise the impact on workers; in many others, limited fiscal space and informality constraint governments’ capacity to mitigate the damage. For advanced and developing economies alike, trade is a powerful, cost-effective tool to alleviate the devastating effects of COVID-19 on the health and economic fronts. And yet, protectionism is gaining an upper hand, deepening some of pre-pandemic confrontations that were already threatening the global economy. The short-term response to the virus and longer-term growth prospects depend on strong multilateral cooperation to scale back obstacles to trade and investment, increase business certainty and leverage opportunities which the pandemic has accelerated in areas like the digital economy. It is also needed to preserve stable and coordinated international relations to avoid that heavy threats implicit in the pandemic could result in catastrophic disorders or conflicts (Jean 2020). But it will not happen automatically. Unless governments accelerate their efforts to collaborate, growing protectionism and increased distortions to global value chains (GVCs) risk being a by-product of the virus, at the same time further exacerbating its negative implications. This demands extraordinary action. This chapter addresses the question of what role for trade ministers at the WTO in times of crises with a view to activating global cooperation to overcome COVID-19. In addition to the introductory section, the second section explores the need to reactivate the WTO to underpin collaboration among governments, the third section argues that trade ministers should call the shots during crisis, the fourth section suggests eight actions for ministers to rein in protectionism and mitigate further damage, the fifth section refers to the mechanics on how and when to do it, and a final section offers concluding remarks. REACTIVATE THE WTO Trade needs to be part of the response to COVID-19 and its upshots, and countries cannot afford the WTO, hobbled as it has been lately, to muddle through. Moreover, as the world confronts more frequent and severe profound shocks such as financial crises, terrorism, extreme weather and pandemics (McKinsey Global Institute 2020), the WTO needs to step up its role during systemic crises. The fact that the organisation has been faltering, that there is a leadership vacuum and that distrust runs high among major traders will not make it any easier. Exacerbated tensions related to the pandemic can only add to the feeling that WTO rules have been conceived for a very different context, increasing the risk of a loss of legitimacy (Jean 2020). This is not about a major reset of the WTO. It is about (re)activating the organisation to serve its members as they combat the devastating impact of the pandemic and the global recession. The WTO needs broader reform, in particular to address structural changes in the global economy. While extremely important, this discussion should not hamper the ability of the WTO to deliver at times of systemic crisis. Moreover, should the WTO – or more accurately, its members – demonstrate they can actually rise to the occasion in the context of COVID-19, they will also contribute to increasing trust levels on the ability of the organisation to produce results. The starting point is a shift in mindset: governments need to understand that international trade is not a problem in the crisis, but rather a core element of the solution (Baldwin and Evenett 2020). Take the shortages of medical supplies. There are three methods of assuring supply: stockpiling, investments in manufacturing capacity and trade. Of these options, relying on international trade is the most efficient and economic choice, provided the WTO can help assure security of this method of supply (Wolff 2020a). To be sure, many nations have taken unilateral steps to facilitate trade, especially in medical supplies and medicines. The Global Trade Alert reports that while 91 jurisdictions have adopted a total of 202 export controls on these goods since the beginning of 2020, 106 jurisdictions have executed 229 import policy reforms on these goods over the same period.4 After initial border closures, some neighbouring countries are beginning to facilitate the cross-border flow of goods. At the regional level and among subsets of countries, governments have issued different statements to keep trade lanes open and supply chains moving (see Table A1 in the Annex). After a tepid declaration from G20 leaders, trade ministers reaffirmed their determination to cooperate and coordinate to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on trade and investment and to lay a solid foundation for a global economic recovery. They also endorsed a set of short-term collective actions on trade regulation, trade facilitation, transparency, operation of logistics networks and support for small enterprises, and a group of longer-term actions on WTO reform, GVC resilience and investment; monitoring of implementation was left to senior officials (G20 2020). These actions are positive and reflect the political will of governments to collaborate to some extent – even if they have not fully countered the flurry of barriers and restrictions surrounding trade in critical medical gear. They are no substitute for trade cooperation at the global level, either. In the case of medical products, for example, the EU, the US and China account for almost three-quarters of world exports (WTO 2020b); cooperation initiatives that do not include these members would fall short on impact. The venue for cooperation should be global and open to all, even if not all 164 WTO members opt to engage in all initiatives. TRADE MINISTERS SHOULD CALL THE SHOTS DURING CRISES Challenges notwithstanding, governments need to act now to empower the WTO to play an active part in coordinating the response to the pandemic. The WTO is more than an organisation immersed in myriad drama on the shores of Lake Geneva; it is a solid framework for global trade cooperation. It is in countries’ interest to preserve the relevance of the WTO; its role can be critical in helping members help themselves. In a member-driven organisation such as the WTO, the role of the Director-General and the Secretariat is important and can and should be enhanced, for example with greater power of initiative and strengthened monitoring and analytics capabilities. The WTO dedicated page on the pandemic is a step in the right direction.5 But the ultimate responsibility to provide direction and act rests with governments. The WTO is nothing more and nothing less than the collectivity of its members (Steger 2020), a point that is frequently forgotten in the public discourse. Without strong leadership, frequent engagement and serious interest among members in addressing its challenges, the WTO itself cannot deliver results (Cutler 2020). Paraphrasing VanGrasstek (2013), the multilateral trading system receives its inspiration from economists and is shaped primarily by lawyers, but it can only operate within the limits set by politicians.
9/4/21
SEPTOCT - CP - EU Proposal
Tournament: Greenhill RR | Round: 4 | Opponent: Northland Christian LB | Judge: Panel CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should adopt the European Union’s proposal to:
Ensure that COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and their components can cross borders freely 2. Encourage producers to expand their production, while ensuring that those countries most in need of vaccines receive them at an affordable price 3. Facilitate the use of compulsory licensing within the WTO's existing Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Solves vaccine access but avoids innovation Brachmann 6/8 (Steve, contributor to IPWatchdog.com, Research on Point, and Main Street Host writing about technology and innovation) “EU Offers Alternative to COVID-19 IP Waiver That Supports Innovation and Addresses Supply Chain Problems,” IP Watchdog, 6/8/2021 JL The EU’s proposal to the WTO regarding COVID-19 vaccine access focuses on three key elements. The first element focuses on international supply chain issues, advocating for countries producing vaccines to increase international exports and to avoid any trade restrictions on vaccines or their raw materials that could hinder the supply chain either for countries in need or the global COVAX Facility initiative. Supply chain issues have a real and devastating effect on unvaccinated communities, as evidenced by the recent news that Thailand government officials acknowledged delays and reductions for a promised shipment of 17 million doses of Thai-produced AstraZeneca vaccines to the Philippines. One of the biggest supply chain issues facing the unvaccinated world right now is the decision of India’s government, which along with South Africa proposed the patent waiver at the WTO, to stop exporting vaccines manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, in order to address India’s own exploding COVID-19 infection rates. For its part, the United States under President Joe Biden recently announced an increase of 20 million doses to the country’s planned COVID-19 vaccine exports. The second key element in the EU’s proposal requests that governments support vaccine manufacturers and developers to ensure affordable vaccine supplies. This portion of the EU’s proposal acknowledges the beneficial impacts of licensing, which ensures that developers and manufacturers enter into agreements that those companies are incentivized to uphold because they promote business interests. The EU’s proposal notes that the vaccine developers Pfizer, BioNTech, Johnson and Johnson and Moderna have all committed to agreements to deliver a combined 1.3 billion doses through 2021 at no profit to low-income countries and at low cost to middle-income countries. The final key element in the EU’s alternative focuses on intellectual property and recognizes that “voluntary licenses are the most effective instrument to facilitate the expansion of production and sharing of expertise.” While compulsory licensing could be available without voluntary licensing due to the extraordinary nature of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU advocates for using existing mechanisms for compulsory licensing under the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). While the EU is currently drafting a communication dedicated to intellectual property rights which it plans to submit to all WTO members, the governmental body was clear on its thoughts regarding the India-South Africa proposal backed by many governments, including the Biden Administration: As regards the broad waiver proposed by a number of WTO members, the European Commission, while ready to discuss any option that helps end the pandemic as soon as possible, is not convinced that this would provide the best immediate response to reach the objective of the widest and timely distribution of COVID-19 vaccines that the world urgently needs. The forces urging the world towards waiving international patent rights under TRIPS for COVID-19 vaccines are about as legion as they are misguided. On June 7, the WTO announced that it had received a petition signed by 2.7 million people around the world calling for the suspension of patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines. Currently more than 60 nations have publicly supported the India-South Africa proposal to waive patent rights under TRIPS for COVID-19 vaccines. However, as the EU’s proposal indicates, developing effective responses to international supply chain issues regarding vaccines do not have to stoop to dismantling the system for encouraging the investment in pharmaceutical RandD that produced the vaccine in the first place. In fact, the EU’s proposal recognizes that properly respecting IP rights and encouraging voluntary licensing, while making some allowances for Article 31 of TRIPS, will be a much more effective answer than a political stance that creates more problems than it solves by reducing medical innovation at exactly the time that the world needs it the most. In supporting the waiver, the Biden Administration has arguably abdicated one of its first promises: that it would be an administration guided by science and truth. There is no science that exists to show that patents are barriers to vaccine access. That is a fact that has been acknowledged by the World Intellectual Property Organization, the UN’s agency for intellectual property rights, since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. The sentimentality driving those supporting the TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines won’t solve supply chain issues in manufacturing capacity, which the EU’s alternative does address, but it will do a great job at decreasing investment into medical RandD because weak patent rights decrease economic productivity. Decreased investment in medical RandD will slow down the research needed to cure new COVID-19 variants that continue to appear across the world, and needless human death will continue.
9/17/21
SEPTOCT - CP - Epilepsy
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Ayala AM | Judge: Sam Larson CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should reduce intellectual property protections for medicines by implementing a one-and-done approach for patent protection except for extended-release formulations for epilepsy medicines. Holman 18 (Christopher M., Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law, where his primary research focus lies at the intersection of intellectual property and biotechnology) “Why Follow-On Pharmaceutical Innovations Should Be Eligible For Patent Protection,” Intellectual Property Watch, 9/12/2018 JL Follow-on pharmaceutical innovation can come in the form of an extended-release formulation that permits the drug to be administered at less frequent intervals than the original formulation. Critics of secondary patents downplay the significance of extended-release formulations, claiming that they represent nothing more than a ploy to extend patent protection without providing any real benefit to patients. In fact, the availability of a drug that can be taken once a day has been shown to improve patient compliance, a significant issue with many drugs, particularly in the case of drugs taken by patients with dementia or other cognitive impairments. Extended-release formulations can also provide a more consistent dosing throughout the day, avoiding the peaks and valleys in blood levels experienced by patients forced to take an immediate-release drug multiple times a day. Other examples of improved formulations that provide real benefits to patients are orally administrable formulations of drugs that could previously only be administered by more invasive intravenous or intramuscular injection, combination products that combine two or more active pharmaceutical agents in a single formulation (resulting in improved patient compliance), and a heat-stable formulation of a lifesaving drug used to treat HIV infection and AIDS (an important characteristic for use in developing countries with a hot climate).
Extended-release epilepsy medicines save lives Wheless and Phelps 18 (James W., professor of neurology and pediatrics and director of the Texas Comprehensive Epilepsy Program and of the Epilepsy/EEG Fellowship Program at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Stephanie J., Professor of Clinical Pharmacy and Pediatrics at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center) “A Clinician's Guide to Oral Extended-Release Drug Delivery Systems in Epilepsy,” Journal of Pediatric Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 8/2018 JL There are many inherent advantages to using ER formulations. They may enhance adherence to AED therapy, minimize fluctuations in SDC, improve seizure control, and reduce toxicities associated with peak concentrations compared with IR formulations. Enhanced Medication Adherence and Improved Quality of Life. Non-adherence to AEDs is a problem in the management of epilepsy, and it can have serious or even fatal consequences if patients experience inadequate seizure control (Table 2).17–19 In a US survey of 661 patients with epilepsy, 71 noted dose omissions and 45 reported a seizure following a missed dose.19 A large retrospective database analysis in a US managed-care adult population showed that during a mean follow-up of 27 months, 39 of patients with epilepsy were non-adherent.18 In another retrospective open-cohort study of claims data for 33,658 US Medic-aid patients with epilepsy, non-adherence to AEDs was associated with a more than 3-fold increase in mortality compared with adherence, and during periods of non-adherence patients had significantly higher incidences of emergency department visits, hospital admissions, motor vehicle injuries, and fractures.20 Evidence shows that patients receiving an ER formulation are more likely to continue with therapy than patients receiving IR formulations, and that there are no significant differences in AEs between the 3 formulations (Tegretol ER carbamazepine, Carbatrol ER carbamazepine, and a generic IR carbamazepine).21 In a review of studies that compared ER, conventional, and IR formulations of AEDs, several studies noted increases in adherence following a change from an IR to an ER formulation.17 In general, ER formulations were associated with reduced AEs, greater tolerability, improved dosing convenience, increased efficacy, and improvements in quality of life.17 Finally, because the likelihood of missing a dose increases with dosing frequency, and with the number of tablets/capsules taken,19 the simplification of dosing regimens with ER formulations is an important approach to improving adherence.13,15,17,22 Decreased Fluctuation in Peak-and-Trough SDC. Many AEDs have short half-lives. For IR formulations, this necessitates frequent dosing to maintain SDCs within the targeted range for optimal seizure control. The resulting wide peak-to-trough fluctuations in concentrations (Figure 1B) may increase the likelihood of both seizures and AEs.13,15,22,23 Extended-release formulations enable the dosing interval to be increased, which maintains concentration within the targeted range while decreasing fluctuations in peak-to-trough concentrations (Figure 1B). The decreased fluctuations may result in reduced toxicity and fewer concentration-related AEs compared with IR formulations.14,15,24 This may make ER formulations more forgiving to occasional irregular dosing compared with IR formulations. A pharmacokinetic simulation of Trokendi XR (topiramate; Supernus Pharmaceuticals, Rockville, MD) showed that following a delayed or omitted dose, SDC could be restored by giving the ER dose at any point within the next dosing interval, or by giving an additional ER dose together with the next scheduled dose.25 Less Frequent Local and Systemic AEs. Extended-release DDSs typically have slower release rates, which can result in fewer concentration-related AEs and can prevent side effects that may occur during the absorption phase with IR formulations.26 Lower peak concentrations may allow some patients to have their total daily dose increased without experiencing AEs, resulting in improved seizure control for the same chemical moiety when an ER formulation is used. Uthman17 reviewed more than 15 studies comparing ER formulations of AEDs to IR, DR, or placebo products. A total of 4 of the 7 studies that directly compared ER and IR formulations showed significantly fewer AEs, better tolerability, and enhanced compliance for ER formulations of carbamazepine,27,28 levetiracetam,29 and valproate.30 Similarly to DR formulations, ER products have the potential to improve adherence by reducing local AEs, such as the gastrointestinal intolerance that can be associated with IR formulations. Additionally, ER formulations that are enteric coated may improve gastrointestinal tolerability in some patients. For example, the gastrointestinal AEs associated with valproic acid have been reduced by the introduction of enteric-coated formulations.31 Overall Decrease in Health Care Costs. The use of AED ER formulations is generally associated with better adherence and seizure control than IR formulations.17 Several studies in adults have shown that an increase in adherence was associated with a decrease in the costs of care and hospitalization (Table 2)18,32,33; hence, ER formulations have the potential to reduce overall health care costs compared with IR formulations. Helmers et al34 studied the economic burden associated with generic versus branded AEDs in the United States. They found that the periods of generic use were associated with higher total medical service cost (i.e., $3186) when compared to period of brand product use. Likewise, Labiner et al35 reported that generic AED use was associated with significantly greater use of medical services and increased risk of epilepsy-related medical events compared with brand use. Within an institutional setting, ER products require less pharmacy preparation and less nursing time related to administration (e.g., QD versus TID).
10/16/21
SEPTOCT - CP - Sui Generis
Tournament: St Marks | Round: 3 | Opponent: Westwood AG | Judge: Kristiana Baez CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should establish a sui generis right for holders of traditional knowledge. That solves the aff by preventing biopiracy while ensuring indigenous communities can use IP as an economic bargaining chip Garcia 07 (Javier, attorney at Perkins Coie LLP in Seattle, Washington, J.D. from Gonzaga University School of Law and B.A. from the University of Redlands) “Fighting Biopiracy: The Legislative Protection of Traditional Knowledge,” Berkeley La Raza Law Journal,” 3/2007 JL The establishment of a sui generis right for holders of traditional knowledge would provide compensation for communities that do not otherwise qualify for patent protection. Under Article 8 of the TRIPS agreement, countries can adopt legislation to protect "sectors of vital importance to their socio-economic and technological development."'' 7 s A sui generis right could therefore be adopted in conjunction with domestic legislation as a catch-all provision pursuant to Article 8. The nature of a traditional knowledge sui generis right is detailed below. Establishing a sui generis right for traditional knowledge holders could resolve problems stemming from patent law's limited term of protection. 7 6 Foremost among them is that certain forms of traditional knowledge may fall under the realm of public domain, and thus, be exempt from any patent protection. 7 Likewise, some traditional knowledge holders may also seek terms of protection that are incompatible with patent law, seek to prevent any sharing of their knowledge, or seek exclusive rights over their knowledge for an unlimited amount of time. 7 1 Such efforts would prove at odds with current patent law, which only rewards patent . . ... . '79 protection for a limited period of time to enable further innovations. Although a sui generis right could address some of these concerns, traditional knowledge holders will likely have to make sacrifices to avoid the misappropriation of their intellectual property rights. For example, the documentation of traditional knowledge will ultimately submit any documented traditional knowledge to the public domain. This may prove contradictory to the values of some traditional knowledge holders who wish to maintain ownership and control of their knowledge forever; nonetheless, it is an adaptation that must be made to avoid the exploitation of traditional knowledge. A traditional knowledge sui generis right could also overcome patent law's relative incompatibility with communal ownership. Confronting this hurdle is necessary since it may be against communal customs for an individual to own knowledge developed and modified over many generations.' Recognition of a sui generis right could also overcome barriers posed by international patent standards that require that an invention be new and subject to industrial applicability. I5 ' Finally, a sui generis right could modify patent law with respect to traditional knowledge holders to allow benefit sharing among communities not considered inventors under current patent law. For example, in 2004, the University of California, Berkeley, signed an agreement with the Samoan government to isolate from an indigenous tree the gene for a promising anti-AIDS drug and to share any royalties from sale of a gene-derived drug with the people of Samoa. 182 The agreement, signed by the prime minister of Samoa and U.C. Berkeley's Vice Chancellor for research, allocates Samoa's fifty percent share to the government, villages, and the families of healers who first shared the knowledge of how to use the plant. 18 Under the agreement, any commercial developer must "first negotiate an equitable benefit-sharing agreement with Samoa."' 184 This landmark agreement could be duplicated in Mexico under domestic legislation. Agreements like these may pose a problem given the amount of government corruption in Mexico and other 185 developing countries. Nevertheless, it may be the lesser of the two evils. Under domestic legislation or a sui generis right, compensation from patent royalties would be guaranteed at least to the State and would hopefully be spent in Mexico, rather than abroad. Furthermore, local government officials may be more entitled to compensation from profitable traditional knowledge than foreign, corporations. An effective dispute resolution mechanism is necessary to make domestic legislation successful. First, it allows a country to establish jurisdiction over foreign companies that enter the country to extract resources. The mere existence of a dispute resolution process places foreign companies on notice that they are subject to jurisdiction and criminal or civil liability for violative conduct, such as environmental damage resulting from the excavation of resources, misappropriation of intellectual property rights, and civil rights violations. Currently, foreign companies are entering sovereign territories without permission, but governments do not have the legislation in place to regulate them effectively. 186 A dispute resolution mechanism will force entities to abide by the laws and regulations established by the proposed legislation. The mechanism should provide a dispute resolution process for domestic conflicts and conflicts involving other sovereign states, thus requiring two levels of dispute-resolution. The first level should be for States to resolve disputes. The second level should provide a dispute-resolution mechanism for private parties who claim ownership of traditional knowledge, such as two tribal communities claiming ownership over the same traditional knowledge. 189 This level of dispute resolution will adjudicate intellectual property rights among all domestic entities, including indigenous communities, local inventors, corporations, or any other patent applicants claiming ownership of traditional knowledge. The protection of traditional knowledge is vital to underdeveloped countries. Traditional knowledge is one of the few resources and bargaining chips these countries still retain. Accordingly, Mexico and other underdeveloped countries should protect themselves from the misappropriation of traditional knowledge that has already begun. Adopting domestic legislation provides the best means to regulate and control foreign entities seeking to extract and exploit traditional knowledge from vulnerable indigenous communities. It competes:
The CP is anti-topical action IPTF 04 (International Intellectual Property Institute, not-for-profit 501 corporation that provides education and training on intellectual property) “Is a Sui Generis System Necessary?” 1/14/2004 JL WIPO and the WTO are in the process of establishing international rules for the protection of biodiversity. One of the key questions under consideration is whether or not to create a sui generis system to establish the norms and rules for protection. A “sui generis” system simply means “one that is of its own kind1 ”. In this case it refers to the creation of a new national law or the establishment of international norms that would afford protection to intellectual property dealing with genetic resources -or biodiversity - and the biotechnology that might result. It also refers to a law that might protect creations, inventions, models, drawings, designs, innovations contained in images, figures, symbols, petroglyphs, art, music, history and other traditional artistic expressions.
2. Eliminate means get rid of – the CP doesn’t get rid of IP protections, just changes who they’re afforded to Oxford n.d. “Eliminate,” Oxford Languages JL completely remove or get rid of (something).
10/16/21
SEPTOCT - CP - WHO
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 3 | Opponent: Orange Lutheran AZ | Judge: Asher Towner CP: Member nations of the World Trade Organization should enter into a prior and binding consultation with the World Health Organization over eliminating patents for medicines. Member nations will support the proposal and adopt the results of consultation.
WHO says yes – it supports increasing the availability of generics and limiting TRIPS Hoen 03 (Ellen T., researcher at the University Medical Centre at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands who has been listed as one of the 50 most influential people in intellectual property by the journal Managing Intellectual Property, PhD from the University of Groningen) “TRIPS, Pharmaceutical Patents and Access to Essential Medicines: Seattle, Doha and Beyond,” Chicago Journal of International Law, 2003 JL However, subsequent resolutions of the World Health Assembly have strengthened the WHO’s mandate in the trade arena. In 2001, the World Health Assembly adopted two resolutions in particular that had a bearing on the debate over TRIPS 30. The resolutions addressed: – the need to strengthen policies to increase the availability of generic drugs; – and the need to evaluate the impact of TRIPS on access to drugs, local manufacturing capacity, and the development of new drugs
Consultation displays strong leadership, authority, and cohesion among member states which are key to WTO legitimacy Gostin et al 15 (Lawrence O., Linda D. and Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law at Georgetown University, Faculty Director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights, JD from Duke University) “The Normative Authority of the World Health Organization,” Georgetown University Law Center, 5/2/2015 JL Members want the WHO to exert leadership, harmonize disparate activities, and set priorities. Yet they resist intrusions into their sovereignty, and want to exert control. In other words, ‘everyone desires coordination, but no one wants to be coordinated.’ States often ardently defend their geostrategic interests. As the Indonesian virus-sharing episode illustrates, the WHO is pulled between power blocs, with North America and Europe (the primary funders) on one side and emerging economies such as Brazil, China, and India on the other. An inherent tension exists between richer ‘net contributor’ states and poorer ‘net recipient’ states, with the former seeking smaller WHO budgets and the latter larger budgets. Overall, national politics drive self-interest, with states resisting externally imposed obligations for funding and action. Some political leaders express antipathy to, even distrust of, UN institutions, viewing them as bureaucratic and inefficient. In this political environment, it is unsurprising that members fail to act as shareholders. Ebola placed into stark relief the failure of the international community to increase capacities as required by the IHR. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone had some of the world's weakest health systems, with little capacity to either monitor or respond to the Ebola epidemic.20 This caused enormous suffering in West Africa and placed countries throughout the region e and the world e at risk. Member states should recognize that the health of their citizens depends on strengthening others' capacity. The WHO has a central role in creating systems to facilitate and encourage such cooperation. The WHO cannot succeed unless members act as shareholders, foregoing a measure of sovereignty for the global common good. It is in all states' interests to have a strong global health leader, safeguarding health security, building health systems, and reducing health inequalities. But that will not happen unless members fund the Organization generously, grant it authority and flexibility, and hold it accountable. WHO diplomacy solves great power conflict Murphy 20 (Chris, U.S. senator from Connecticut serving on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee) “The Answer is to Empower, Not Attack, the World Health Organization,” War on the Rocks, 4/21/2020 JL The World Health Organization is critical to stopping disease outbreaks and strengthening public health systems in developing countries, where COVID-19 is starting to appear. Yemen announced its first infection earlier this month, and other countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East are at severe risk. Millions of refugees rely on the World Health Organization for their health care, and millions of children rely on the WHO and UNICEF to access vaccines. The World Health Organization is not perfect, but its team of doctors and public health experts have had major successes. Their most impressive claim to fame is the eradication of smallpox – no small feat. More recently, the World Health Organization has led an effort to rid the world of two of the three strains of polio, and they are close to completing the trifecta. These investments are not just the right thing to do; they benefit the United States. Improving health outcomes abroad provides greater political and economic stability, increasing demand for U.S. exports. And, as we are all learning now, it is in America’s national security interest for countries to effectively detect and respond to potential pandemics before they reach our shores. As the United States looks to develop a new global system of pandemic prevention, there is absolutely no way to do that job without the World Health Organization. Uniquely, it puts traditional adversaries – like Russia and the United States, India and Pakistan, or Iran and Saudi Arabia – all around the same big table to take on global health challenges. It has relationships with the public health leaders of every nation, decades of experience in tackling viruses and diseases, and the ability to bring countries together to tackle big projects. This ability to bridge divides and work across borders cannot be torn down and recreated – not in today’s environment of major power competition – and so there is simply no way to build an effective international anti-pandemic infrastructure without the World Health Organization at the center.
WHO is critical to disease prevention – it is the only international institution that can disperse information, standardize global public health, and facilitate public-private cooperation Murtugudde 20 (Raghu, professor of atmospheric and oceanic science at the University of Maryland, PhD in mechanical engineering from Columbia University) “Why We Need the World Health Organization Now More Than Ever,” Science, 4/19/2020 JL WHO continues to play an indispensable role during the current COVID-19 outbreak itself. In November 2018, the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine organised a workshop to explore lessons from past influenza outbreaks and so develop recommendations for pandemic preparedness for 2030. The salient findings serve well to underscore the critical role of WHO for humankind. The world’s influenza burden has only increased in the last two decades, a period in which there have also been 30 new zoonotic diseases. A warming world with increasing humidity, lost habitats and industrial livestock/poultry farming has many opportunities for pathogens to move from animals and birds to humans. Increasing global connectivity simply catalyses this process, as much as it catalyses economic growth. WHO coordinates health research, clinical trials, drug safety, vaccine development, surveillance, virus sharing, etc. The importance of WHO’s work on immunisation across the globe, especially with HIV, can hardly be overstated. It has a rich track record of collaborating with private-sector organisations to advance research and development of health solutions and improving their access in the global south. It discharges its duties while maintaining a dynamic equilibrium between such diverse and powerful forces as national securities, economic interests, human rights and ethics. COVID-19 has highlighted how political calculations can hamper data-sharing and mitigation efforts within and across national borders, and WHO often simply becomes a convenient political scapegoat in such situations. International Health Regulations, a 2005 agreement between 196 countries to work together for global health security, focuses on detection, assessment and reporting of public health events, and also includes non-pharmaceutical interventions such as travel and trade restrictions. WHO coordinates and helps build capacity to implement IHR.
9/4/21
SEPTOCT - DA - Fisheries
Tournament: Nano Nagle | Round: 2 | Opponent: Harker DV | Judge: Sam McLoughlin WTO is near consensus on fisheries subsidies – success will require continued focus, flexibility, and cooperation among members WTO 7/15 (World Trade Organization) “WTO members edge closer to fisheries subsidies agreement,” News and Events, 7/15/2021 JL During an all-day meeting with 104 ministers and heads of delegation, WTO members pledged to conclude the negotiations soon and certainly before the WTO's Ministerial Conference in early December, and to empower their Geneva-based delegations to do so. Members also confirmed that the negotiating text currently before them can be used as the basis for the talks to strike the final deal. “I feel new hope this evening. Because ministers and heads of delegation today demonstrated a strong commitment to moving forward and doing the hard work needed to get these negotiations to the finish line. I applaud you for this. In 20 years of negotiations, this is the closest we have ever come towards reaching an outcome — a high-quality outcome that would contribute to building a sustainable blue economy,” said Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. “One fundamental conclusion that I draw from your interventions today is that members are ready to use the text as the basis for future negotiations. A second takeaway from today was that there is universal agreement about the importance of the food and livelihood security of artisanal fishers in developing and least developed countries. The prospect for a deal in the autumn ahead of our Ministerial Conference has clearly improved.” The UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that one-third of global fish stocks are overfished and most of the rest is fully exploited. This is up from 10 in 1970 and 27 in 2000. Depleted stocks threaten the food security of low-income coastal communities, and the livelihoods of poor and vulnerable fishers who must go further and further from shore only to bring back smaller and smaller hauls. Each year, governments hand out around $35 billion in fisheries subsidies, two-thirds of which go to commercial fishers. These subsidies keep at sea vessels which would otherwise be economically unviable. World leaders in 2015 made a fisheries subsidies agreement by 2020 part of the Sustainable Development Goals and trade ministers reaffirmed this pledge in 2017. The negotiations on fisheries subsidies disciplines have been ongoing for nearly 20 years. Although there has been recent progress thanks to the intensive work that led to the development of the negotiating text on which members are working, the lack of political impetus in the talks to close the remaining gaps inspired Director-General Okonjo-Iweala to call this meeting of ministers. Among the thorniest issues to resolve has been how to extend special and differential treatment to developing and least developed country WTO members while preserving the overall objective of enhanced sustainability of the oceans. Ministers said that the livelihoods and food security of poor and vulnerable artisanal fishers in developing and least developed countries were of great importance, as was preserving the sustainability objective of the negotiations. Amb. Santiago Wills of Colombia, who chairs the Rules Negotiating Group overseeing the fisheries subsidies negotiations, said he had received some valuable inputs from the discussions. He now has greater clarity on the path forward and the next steps that would be required to harvest an agreement. He will be consulting with the Director-General and WTO members about charting the path forward for the next stage of the talks. “I am very heartened by the responses and messages that we have heard today. What we sought from ministers today was political guidance to help close these negotiations soon. And we did hear that guidance. We have been given the ingredients to reach a successful conclusion; a commitment to finish well ahead of our Ministerial Conference a text that can be the platform for this final stage of the negotiations and fully empowered heads of delegations in Geneva. This represents a real success,” said Amb. Wills. The Director-General said that delegations needed to prepare for an intensive period of line by line negotiations. “As we enter this new phase of text-based discussions, the responsibility to conclude these negotiations is truly in the hands of members. To get from here to an agreement, it will be your job to find the necessary trade-offs and flexibilities. A successful outcome by MC12 is ultimately your responsibility,” she said. “The world is watching. The fisheries subsidies negotiations are a test both of the WTO's credibility as a multilateral negotiating forum and of the trading system's ability to respond to problems of the global commons. If we wait another 20 years, there may be no marine fisheries left to subsidise — or artisanal fishing communities to support.”
IP disputes fragment WTO unity and trade off with subsidies negotiation Patnaik 3/12 (Priti, journalist in Geneva, Switzerland, master’s in Development Studies from The Graduate Institute in Geneva and a master’s in Business and Economic Reporting from New York University) “Could Vaccine Nationalism Spur Disputes At The WTO?” Geneva Health Files, 3/12/2021 JL To protect domestic manufacturers and constituencies, countries may resort to filing disputes, if only to send a signal to other members, experts believe. To be sure, this is not only about vaccines. Going forward, export restrictions on raw materials can have implications for therapeutics as well. So the threat of a dispute may be a tool to deal with competition for scarce medical products during the pandemic, experts say. Although trade restrictive measures are short-sighted and not a preferred policy option, governments see them as powerful instruments to meet political goals, to send a message to domestic stakeholders, sources said. “My hunch is that all countries are sort of sitting on both sides of the fence. On the one hand, governments would like to maintain the discretion and the ability to impose export restrictions if they need to or if they think they need to. Whether that is medical products or personal protective equipment. On the other hand, everybody dislikes it when other countries impose export restrictions. So I think there is enough of an incentive for countries to sit down and negotiate,” one legal expert noted. Sources also pointed to political declarations last year where WTO members came together and said that they would not impose restrictive trade measures. “In order to be constructive, countries decided that they were going to signal to members that will not introduce exports restrictive measures even though it may be expedient to do so,” one trade expert said. The way out, some feel, is to find solution to placing limits on export restrictions. It is not just trade restrictive measures that could result in trade disputes. The heated political discussions on the TRIPS waiver at WTO is also aggravating the potential for disputes, according to experts involved in litigations in international trade in Geneva. Therefore these ostensibly independent processes, can catalyse disputes. “The waiver discussion is very heated and it is aggravating the discussion on the EU's export restrictions. If the waiver succeeds, then the opposing members cannot do anything about it. So they will be looking at other ways to beat up on behavior they do not like on the COVID-19 front,” one trade law expert said. Do not rule out disputes against supporters of the TRIPS waiver proposal, in case the waiver is adopted, the source added. In their statement at the WTO General Council meeting last week, the EU said, “In order to ensure that vaccines and their ingredients are not directed to export destinations in unjustified volumes, the European Union had no choice but to introduce a transparency mechanism on Covid-19 vaccine export transactions.” The EU has said that the measures are WTO-consistent. It added “Since the entry into force of the scheme on the 1 February, we have received 150 requests for export authorisation. All of them have been accepted. I repeat, all of them.” This week, the European Commission extended transparency and authorisation mechanism for exports of COVID-19 vaccines. The EU is also a part of the Ottawa Group proposal on Trade and Health that also spells out commitments towards export restrictions. (See also E.U. Exports Millions of Covid Vaccine Doses Despite Supply Crunch at Home) “Members bring disputes all the time, even when they know that it's going to take a long time to get a result and often they bring a dispute as leverage for negotiations. Filing a dispute does not mean they are looking for a solution. It does not mean the dispute will be litigated all the way to the end,” a trade lawyer said. It could also result in a negotiated arrangement, like it was in 2001 in the U.S.-Brazil case. “Why did the U.S. bring a case against Brazil? It gave them leverage in negotiations, and to satisfy domestic stakeholders,” the lawyer added. The impasse at the Appellate Body may not be a deterrent for countries to dissuade countries from bringing a dispute, some believe. “The Appellate Body not being functional is not a problem. Countries have recourse to Article 25 under the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) that provides for ‘expeditious arbitration as a alternate means to dispute settlement’,” a source involved in the WTO litigation process said. (The EU, for example, is a signatory to the Multi-party interim appeal arbitration arrangement, MPIA.) While disputes may take up precious energy and resources of members already stretched in fighting to address the pandemic, it may likely be a strategy to address trade protectionism. Not all agree. “I think the law is not really an answer here, I hate to say that because I'm a lawyer. But I really don't think the law is an answer because the law is so generically drafted right that and it's politically so sensitive. Which WTO panel will tell a member that restricting vaccines is not legitimate? It will ultimately harm the legitimacy of the trading system,” the person added.
Overfishing collapses biodiversity DUJS 12 (Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, official open access science journal of Dartmouth College, publishing original scientific research, multidisciplinary review articles, and science news) “The Threats of Overfishing: Consequences at the Commercial Level,” 3/11/2012 JL According to marine ecologists, overfishing is the greatest threat to ocean ecosystems today (1). Overfishing occurs because fish are captured at a faster rate than they can reproduce (2). Advanced fishing technology and an increased demand for fish have led to overfishing, causing several marine species to become extinct or endangered as a result (3, 4). In the long-term, overfishing can have a devastating impact on ocean communities as it destabilizes the food chain and destroys the natural habitats of many aquatic species (2). In the past, fishing was more sustainable because fishermen could not access every location and because they had a limited capacity for fish aboard their vessels. Today, however, small trawlers and fishing boats have been replaced by giant factory ships that can capture and process extremely large amounts of prey at a given time (2). These ships use sonar instruments and global positioning systems (GPS) to rapidly locate large schools of fish (1). Fishing lines are deployed with thousands of large hooks that can reach areas up to 120 kilometers deep. The trawling vessels and machines can even reach depths of 170 kilometers and can store an extraordinarily large volume of fish. Each year, these huge trawling ships comb an area twice the size of the United States. They use massive nets 50 meters wide with the capacity to pull the weight of a medium-sized plane (2). They also have several plants for processing and packing fish, large freezing systems, fishmeal processing plants, and powerful engines that can carry this enormous fishing gear around the ocean. Because these ships have all the equipment necessary to freeze and tin fish, they only need to return to their base once they are full. Even when the ships are filled, however, the fish are often transferred to refrigerated vessels in the middle of the ocean and are processed for consumption later (4). As such, industrial fishing has expanded considerably and fishermen can now explore new shores and deeper waters to keep up with the increased demand for seafood. In fact, it has been reported by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) that over 70 percent of the world’s fisheries are either ‘fully exploited’, ‘over exploited’ or ‘significantly depleted’ (5). The annual total global catch of fish is 124 million metric tons, which is equivalent in weight to 378 Empire State Buildings (2). Fishing gear is often non-selective in the fish it targets. For example, any fish that are too big to get through the mesh of a net are captured. Therefore, overfishing does not only threaten the species of fish that is targeted for food, but also many non-target species. As a result, these other species, including marine mammals and seabirds, are accidentally caught in the fishing gear and killed (6). For example, for every ton of prawn caught, three tons of other fish are killed and thrown away. Those in the trade refer to this practice of inadvertent catching of other species as bycatch (4). The FAO has pointed out that about 25 percent of the world’s captured fish end up thrown overboard because they are caught unintentionally, are illegal market species, or are of inferior quality and size. Many of the fish caught this way include endangered and over exploited species, 95 percent of which are eventually thrown away (2). Bycatch is not just limited to just unwanted fish, but rather affects all types of marine life, including whales, dolphins, porpoises, fur seals, albatrosses, and turtles. For example, tuna fisheries are indirectly responsible for the deaths of an estimated one million sharks annually due to bycatch. Small cetaceans, such as dolphins and porpoises, are also targets of bycatch as they are often caught in fishing nets. In fact, hundreds of dolphin corpses are washed up on the beaches of Europe every year, bringing attention to the growing scale of this problem (6). Many modern fishing methods are also irreversibly destructive. For example, bottom trawling, a technique that uses extremely wide nets armed with heavy metal rollers, can crush everything in the path of the gear, destroying fragile corals, smashing rock formations, and killing several tons of fish and animals as bycatch (7). As such, these practices can wreak havoc on delicate marine ecosystems. Not surprisingly, it has been reported that industrial fishing takes between only 10 and 15 years to wipe out a tenth of whichever species it targets (2). In fact, several marine species have already been fished to commercial extinction, and this number is rapidly increasing (1). One of the reasons for this is that the regulation of fishing vessels and the fishing industry is universally inadequate. Roughly two-thirds of the ocean is free of laws and fishing vessels only follow the laws ratified by their country of origin. However, most fishing countries have not ratified any international convention to protect the sea or marine life (2). Moreover, fishing factory ships and companies are given access to fisheries before the long–term impact of their fishing practices is understood (1). Today, the number of fish caught worldwide is actually shrinking as the fishing industry is in decline from many years of overfishing (2). The year 1988 was the first time in human history that global wild fish catches dropped and they have continued to fall ever since. In European waters, four out of every five known fish stocks are already beyond safe biological limits (7). Illegal and unreported fishing have also contributed a great deal to the depletion of the oceans and continues to be a serious problem. A new study conducted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) found that 5 out of the 8 tuna species are at risk of extinction (8). All three species of bluefin tuna, for example, are threatened with extinction and are at a population that makes their recovery practically irreversible (2). The IUCN has also reported that freshwater fish are among the most endangered species, with more than a third facing extinction. Not surprisingly, among those at the greatest risk are species like the Mekong giant catfish, the freshwater stingray, and the European eel, which are used to make some of the most expensive caviars. The Mekong giant catfish is the closest to extinction, with as few as 250 left. Overfishing has reduced the numbers of Mekong freshwater stingray by over 50 percent in Southeast Asia and has reduced the giant Mekong salmon carp population by over 90 percent (9). As previously mentioned, shark populations have also been greatly affected by overfishing. There are already more than 135 species of shark on the IUCN’s list of endangered animals and more are being added each year. For example, the number of scalloped hammerhead shark has decreased by 99 over the past 30 years. Other species recently added to the endangered list include the smooth hammerhead, shortfin mako, common thresher, big-eye thresher, silky, tiger, bull, and dusky (10). Besides being caught as bycatch, sharks are now also being targeted by commercial fishermen for their fins which can fetch a substantial price on the Asian food market. Sharks are particularly vulnerable to exploitation because they have long life spans, are exceptionally slow to mature (taking as long as 16 years in some cases), and are relatively unprolific breeders (11). Recent reports suggest that over fishing has caused a 90 decline in shark populations across the world’s oceans and up to 99 along the US east coast, which are some of the best managed waters in the world. Because sharks are at the top of the food chain, a decline in their numbers has devastating consequences on marine ecosystems (10). Overfishing impacts not just the particular species that is exploited, but also damages other species of fish and disrupts local ecosystems. The stability of ecological communities depends largely on the interactions between predators and prey (12). Thereby, the balance of the food chain is disturbed when certain species are removed. As a result, many ocean species are disappearing and losing their habitats. The evolutionary process of marine species is also being altered, causing cycles of premature reproduction and relative decreases in the size of fish across generations. As predators diminish, the populations of smaller fish escalate because they were previously the food source of the bigger fish. In addition, the disappearance of these species affects many other species, like seabirds and sea mammals, which are vulnerable to the lack of food (2). A recent study found that overfishing is also decreasing the genetic diversity of fish worldwide. Diversity is projected to be reduced further if overfishing continues at the same rate (13). This has serious effects on nutrient recycling in marine ecosystems because fish species vary widely in their rates of nitrogen and phosphorus excretion. As such, altering fish communities creates divergent nutrient recycling patterns and disrupts the functioning of the ecosystem. Recently conducted studies in lakes affected by overfishing show that loss of species contributes to a decline in nutrient recycling and destabilizes the ecosystem (14). While it is often overlooked for other environmental issues, overfishing has historically caused more ecological extinction than any other human influence on coastal ecosystems, including water pollution (5). Unfortunately, due to a lack of data, the extent of this damage has only recently been recognized (15).
Continued biodiversity loss causes extinction Carrington 18 (Damian, the Guardian's Environment editor) "Humanity has wiped out 60 of a animal populations since 1970, report finds," The Guardian, 10/29/18 TDI Humanity has wiped out 60 of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles since 1970, leading the world’s foremost experts to warn that the annihilation of wildlife is now an emergency that threatens civilisation. The new estimate of the massacre of wildlife is made in a major report produced by WWF and involving 59 scientists from across the globe. It finds that the vast and growing consumption of food and resources by the global population is destroying the web of life, billions of years in the making, upon which human society ultimately depends for clean air, water and everything else. “We are sleepwalking towards the edge of a cliff” said Mike Barrett, executive director of science and conservation at WWF. “If there was a 60 decline in the human population, that would be equivalent to emptying North America, South America, Africa, Europe, China and Oceania. That is the scale of what we have done.” “This is far more than just being about losing the wonders of nature, desperately sad though that is,” he said. “This is actually now jeopardising the future of people. Nature is not a ‘nice to have’ – it is our life-support system.” “We are rapidly running out of time,” said Prof Johan Rockström, a global sustainability expert at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. “Only by addressing both ecosystems and climate do we stand a chance of safeguarding a stable planet for humanity’s future on Earth.” Many scientists believe the world has begun a sixth mass extinction, the first to be caused by a species – Homo sapiens. Other recent analyses have revealed that humankind has destroyed 83 of all mammals and half of plants since the dawn of civilisation and that, even if the destruction were to end now, it would take 5-7 million years for the natural world to recover. The Living Planet Index, produced for WWF by the Zoological Society of London, uses data on 16,704 populations of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians, representing more than 4,000 species, to track the decline of wildlife. Between 1970 and 2014, the latest data available, populations fell by an average of 60. Four years ago, the decline was 52. The “shocking truth”, said Barrett, is that the wildlife crash is continuing unabated. Wildlife and the ecosystems are vital to human life, said Prof Bob Watson, one of the world’s most eminent environmental scientists and currently chair of an intergovernmental panel on biodiversity that said in March that the destruction of nature is as dangerous as climate change. “Nature contributes to human wellbeing culturally and spiritually, as well as through the critical production of food, clean water, and energy, and through regulating the Earth’s climate, pollution, pollination and floods,” he said. “The Living Planet report clearly demonstrates that human activities are destroying nature at an unacceptable rate, threatening the wellbeing of current and future generations.” The biggest cause of wildlife losses is the destruction of natural habitats, much of it to create farmland. Three-quarters of all land on Earth is now significantly affected by human activities. Killing for food is the next biggest cause – 300 mammal species are being eaten into extinction – while the oceans are massively overfished, with more than half now being industrially fished. Chemical pollution is also significant: half the world’s killer whale populations are now doomed to die from PCB contamination. Global trade introduces invasive species and disease, with amphibians decimated by a fungal disease thought to be spread by the pet trade. The worst affected region is South and Central America, which has seen an 89 drop in vertebrate populations, largely driven by the felling of vast areas of wildlife-rich forest. In the tropical savannah called cerrado, an area the size of Greater London is cleared every two months, said Barrett. “It is a classic example of where the disappearance is the result of our own consumption, because the deforestation is being driven by ever expanding agriculture producing soy, which is being exported to countries including the UK to feed pigs and chickens,” he said. The UK itself has lost much of its wildlife, ranking 189th for biodiversity loss out of 218 nations in 2016. The habitats suffering the greatest damage are rivers and lakes, where wildlife populations have fallen 83, due to the enormous thirst of agriculture and the large number of dams. “Again there is this direct link between the food system and the depletion of wildlife,” said Barrett. Eating less meat is an essential part of reversing losses, he said. The Living Planet Index has been criticised as being too broad a measure of wildlife losses and smoothing over crucial details. But all indicators, from extinction rates to intactness of ecosystems, show colossal losses. “They all tell you the same story,” said Barrett. Conservation efforts can work, with tiger numbers having risen 20 in India in six years as habitat is protected. Giant pandas in China and otters in the UK have also been doing well. But Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, said the fundamental issue was consumption: “We can no longer ignore the impact of current unsustainable production models and wasteful lifestyles.”
10/9/21
SEPTOCT - DA - Innovation
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 2 | Opponent: Sam Barlow EL | Judge: Julian Kuffour Biotech industry strong now. Cancherini et al. 4/30 (Laura, Engagement Manager @ McKinsey and Company, Joseph Lydon, Associate Partner @ McKinsey and Company, Jorge Santos Da Silva, Senior Partner at McKinsey and Company, and Alexandra Zemp, Partner at McKinsey and Company), “What’s ahead for biotech: Another wave or low tide?“, McKinsey and Company, 4-30-2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/whats-ahead-for-biotech-another-wave-or-low-tide TDI As the pandemic spread across the globe in early 2020, biotech leaders were initially pessimistic, reassessing their cash position and financing constraints. When McKinsey and BioCentury interviewed representatives from 106 biotech companies in May 2020,4 half of those interviewed were expecting delays in financing, and about 80 percent were tight on cash for the next two years and considering trade-offs such as deferring IPOs and acquisitions. Executives feared that valuations would decline because of lower revenue projections and concerns about clinical-trial delays, salesforce-effectiveness gaps, and other operational issues. Belying this downbeat mood, biotech has in fact had one of its best years so far. By January 2021, venture capitalists had invested some 60 percent more than they had in January 2020, with more than $3 billion invested worldwide in January 2021 alone.5 IPO activity grew strongly: there were 19 more closures than in the same period in 2020, with an average of $150 million per raise, 17 percent more than in 2020. Other deals have also had a bumper start to 2021, with the average deal size reaching more than $500 million, up by more than 66 percent on the 2020 average (Exhibit 3).6 What about SPACs? The analysis above does not include special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which have recently become significant in IPOs in several industries. Some biotech investors we interviewed believe that SPACs represent a route to an IPO. How SPACs will evolve remains to be seen, but biotechs may be part of their story. Fundamentals continue strong When we asked executives and investors why the biotech sector had stayed so resilient during the worst economic crisis in decades, they cited innovation as the main reason. The number of assets transitioning to clinical phases is still rising, and further waves of innovation are on the horizon, driven by the convergence of biological and technological advances. In the present day, many biotechs, along with the wider pharmaceutical industry, are taking steps to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, biotechs and pharma companies have more than 250 vaccine candidates in their pipelines, along with a similar number of therapeutics. What’s more, the crisis has shone a spotlight on pharma as the public seeks to understand the roadblocks involved in delivering a vaccine at speed and the measures needed to maintain safety and efficacy standards. To that extent, the world has been living through a time of mass education in science research and development. Biotech has also benefited from its innate financial resilience. Healthcare as a whole is less dependent on economic cycles than most other industries. Biotech is an innovator, actively identifying and addressing patients’ unmet needs. In addition, biotechs’ top-line revenues have been less affected by lockdowns than is the case in most other industries. Another factor acting in the sector’s favor is that larger pharmaceutical companies still rely on biotechs as a source of innovation. With the top dozen pharma companies having more than $170 billion in excess reserves that could be available for spending on MandA, the prospects for further financing and deal making look promising. For these and other reasons, many investors regard biotech as a safe haven. One interviewee felt it had benefited from a halo effect during the pandemic. More innovation on the horizon The investors and executives we interviewed agreed that biotech innovation continues to increase in quality and quantity despite the macroeconomic environment. Evidence can be seen in the accelerating pace of assets transitioning across the development lifecycle. When we tracked the number of assets transitioning to Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III clinical trials, we found that Phase I and Phase II assets have transitioned 50 percent faster since 2018 than between 2013 and 2018, whereas Phase III assets have maintained much the same pace. There could be many reasons for this, but it is worth noting that biotechs with Phase I and Phase II assets as their lead assets have accounted for more than half of biotech IPOs. Having an early IPO gives a biotech earlier access to capital and leaves it with more scope to concentrate on science. Looking forward, the combination of advances in biological science and accelerating developments in technology and artificial intelligence has the potential to take innovation to a new level. A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute analyzed the profound economic and social impact of biological innovation and found that biomolecules, biosystems, biomachines, and biocomputing could collectively produce up to 60 percent of the physical inputs to the global economy. The applications of this “Bio Revolution” range from agriculture (such as the production of nonanimal meat) to energy and materials, and from consumer goods (such as multi-omics tailored diets) to a multitude of health applications.
IP protections are key to innovation – recouping startup costs and high risk of failure Grabowski et al 15 (Henry, Professor of Economics, member of the faculty for the Health Sector Management Program, and Director of the Program in Pharmaceuticals and Health Economics at Duke University) “The Roles of Patents and Research And Development Incentives In Biopharmaceutical Innovation,” Health Affairs, 2/2015 JL The essential rationale for patent protection for biopharmaceuticals is that long-term benefits in the form of continued future innovation by pioneer or brand-name drug manufacturers outweigh the relatively short-term restrictions on imitative cost competition associated with market exclusivity. Regardless, the entry of other branded agents remains an important source of therapeutic competition during the patent term. Several economic characteristics make patents and intellectual property protection particularly important to innovation incentives for the biopharmaceutical industry. 5 The RandD process often takes more than a decade to complete, and according to a recent analysis by Joseph DiMasi and colleagues, per new drug approval (including failed attempts), it involves more than a billion dollars in out-of-pocket costs. 6 Only approximately one in eight drug candidates survive clinical testing. 6 As a result of the high risks of failure and the high costs, research and development must be funded by the few successful, on-market products (the top quintile of marketed products provide the dominant share of RandD returns). 7,8 Once a new drug’s patent term and any regulatory exclusivity provisions have expired, competing manufacturers are allowed to sell generic equivalents that require the investment of only several million dollars and that have a high likelihood of commercial success. Absent intellectual property protections that allow marketing exclusivity, innovative firms would be unlikely to make the costly and risky investments needed to bring a new drug to market. Patents confer the right to exclude competitors for a limited time within a given scope, as defined by patent claims. However, they do not guarantee demand, nor do they prevent competition from nonidentical drugs that treat the same diseases and fall outside the protection of the patents. New products may enter the same therapeutic class with common mechanisms of action but different molecular structures (for example, different statins) or with differing mechanisms of action (such as calcium channel blockers and angiotensin receptor blockers). 9 Joseph DiMasi and Laura Faden have found that the time between a first-in-class new drug and subsequent new drugs in the same therapeutic class has been dramatically reduced, from a median of 10.2 years in the 1970s to 2.5 years in the early 2000s. 10 Drugs in the same class compete through quality and price for preferred placement on drug formularies and physicians’ choices for patient treatment. Patents play an essential role in the economic “ecosystem” of discovery and investment that has developed since the 1980s. Hundreds of start-up firms, often backed by venture capital, have been launched, and a robust innovation market has emerged. 11 The value of these development-stage firms is largely determined by their proprietary technologies and the candidate drugs they have in development. As a result, the strength of intellectual property protection plays a key role in funding and partnership opportunities for such firms.
Biopharmaceutical innovation is key to prevent future pandemics and bioterror. Marjanovic and Feijao 20 (Sonja Marjanovic, Ph.D., Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Carolina Feijao, Ph.D. in biochemistry, University of Cambridge; M.Sc. in quantitative biology, Imperial College London; B.Sc. in biology, University of Lisbon.) "How to Best Enable Pharma Innovation Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis," RAND Corporation, 05-2020, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA407-1.html TDI As key actors in the healthcare innovation landscape, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies have been called on to develop medicines, vaccines and diagnostics for pressing public health challenges. The COVID-19 crisis is one such challenge, but there are many others. For example, MERS, SARS, Ebola, Zika and avian and swine flu are also infectious diseases that represent public health threats. Infectious agents such as anthrax, smallpox and tularemia could present threats in a bioterrorism context.1 The general threat to public health that is posed by antimicrobial resistance is also well-recognised as an area in need of pharmaceutical innovation. Innovating in response to these challenges does not always align well with pharmaceutical industry commercial models, shareholder expectations and competition within the industry. However, the expertise, networks and infrastructure that industry has within its reach, as well as public expectations and the moral imperative, make pharmaceutical companies and the wider life sciences sector an indispensable partner in the search for solutions that save lives. This perspective argues for the need to establish more sustainable and scalable ways of incentivising pharmaceutical innovation in response to infectious disease threats to public health. It considers both past and current examples of efforts to mobilise pharmaceutical innovation in high commercial risk areas, including in the context of current efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. In global pandemic crises like COVID-19, the urgency and scale of the crisis – as well as the spotlight placed on pharmaceutical companies – mean that contributing to the search for effective medicines, vaccines or diagnostics is essential for socially responsible companies in the sector. 2 It is therefore unsurprising that we are seeing industry-wide efforts unfold at unprecedented scale and pace. Whereas there is always scope for more activity, industry is currently contributing in a variety of ways. Examples include pharmaceutical companies donating existing compounds to assess their utility in the fight against COVID19; screening existing compound libraries in-house or with partners to see if they can be repurposed; accelerating trials for potentially effective medicine or vaccine candidates; and in some cases rapidly accelerating in-house research and development to discover new treatments or vaccine agents and develop diagnostics tests.3,4 Pharmaceutical companies are collaborating with each other in some of these efforts and participating in global RandD partnerships (such as the Innovative Medicines Initiative effort to accelerate the development of potential therapies for COVID-19) and supporting national efforts to expand diagnosis and testing capacity and ensure affordable and ready access to potential solutions.3,5,6 The primary purpose of such innovation is to benefit patients and wider population health. Although there are also reputational benefits from involvement that can be realised across the industry, there are likely to be relatively few companies that are ‘commercial’ winners. Those who might gain substantial revenues will be under pressure not to be seen as profiting from the pandemic. In the United Kingdom for example, GSK has stated that it does not expect to profit from its COVID-19 related activities and that any gains will be invested in supporting research and long-term pandemic preparedness, as well as in developing products that would be affordable in the world’s poorest countries.7 Similarly, in the United States AbbVie has waived intellectual property rights for an existing combination product that is being tested for therapeutic potential against COVID-19, which would support affordability and allow for a supply of generics.8,9 Johnson and Johnson has stated that its potential vaccine – which is expected to begin trials – will be available on a not-for-profit basis during the pandemic.10 Pharma is mobilising substantial efforts to rise to the COVID-19 challenge at hand. However, we need to consider how pharmaceutical innovation for responding to emerging infectious diseases can best be enabled beyond the current crisis. Many public health threats (including those associated with other infectious diseases, bioterrorism agents and antimicrobial resistance) are urgently in need of pharmaceutical innovation, even if their impacts are not as visible to society as COVID-19 is in the immediate term. The pharmaceutical industry has responded to previous public health emergencies associated with infectious disease in recent times – for example those associated with Ebola and Zika outbreaks.11 However, it has done so to a lesser scale than for COVID-19 and with contributions from fewer companies. Similarly, levels of activity in response to the threat of antimicrobial resistance are still low.12 There are important policy questions as to whether – and how – industry could engage with such public health threats to an even greater extent under improved innovation conditions.
Extinction Piers Millett 17, Consultant for the World Health Organization, PhD in International Relations and Affairs, University of Bradford, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, “Existential Risk and Cost-Effective Biosecurity”, Health Security, Vol 15(4), http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/hs.2017.0028 Historically, disease events have been responsible for the greatest death tolls on humanity. The 1918 flu was responsible for more than 50 million deaths,1 while smallpox killed perhaps 10 times that many in the 20th century alone.2 The Black Death was responsible for killing over 25 of the European population,3 while other pandemics, such as the plague of Justinian, are thought to have killed 25 million in the 6th century—constituting over 10 of the world’s population at the time.4 It is an open question whether a future pandemic could result in outright human extinction or the irreversible collapse of civilization. A skeptic would have many good reasons to think that existential risk from disease is unlikely. Such a disease would need to spread worldwide to remote populations, overcome rare genetic resistances, and evade detection, cures, and countermeasures. Even evolution itself may work in humanity’s favor: Virulence and transmission is often a trade-off, and so evolutionary pressures could push against maximally lethal wild-type pathogens.5,6 While these arguments point to a very small risk of human extinction, they do not rule the possibility out entirely. Although rare, there are recorded instances of species going extinct due to disease—primarily in amphibians, but also in 1 mammalian species of rat on Christmas Island.7,8 There are also historical examples of large human populations being almost entirely wiped out by disease, especially when multiple diseases were simultaneously introduced into a population without immunity. The most striking examples of total population collapse include native American tribes exposed to European diseases, such as the Massachusett (86 loss of population), Quiripi-Unquachog (95 loss of population), and theWestern Abenaki (which suffered a staggering 98 loss of population). In the modern context, no single disease currently exists that combines the worst-case levels of transmissibility, lethality, resistance to countermeasures, and global reach. But many diseases are proof of principle that each worst-case attribute can be realized independently. For example, some diseases exhibit nearly a 100 case fatality ratio in the absence of treatment, such as rabies or septicemic plague. Other diseases have a track record of spreading to virtually every human community worldwide, such as the 1918 flu,10 and seroprevalence studies indicate that other pathogens, such as chickenpox and HSV-1, can successfully reach over 95 of a population.11,12 Under optimal virulence theory, natural evolution would be an unlikely source for pathogens with the highest possible levels of transmissibility, virulence, and global reach. But advances in biotechnology might allow the creation of diseases that combine such traits. Recent controversy has already emerged over a number of scientific experiments that resulted in viruses with enhanced transmissibility, lethality, and/or the ability to overcome therapeutics.13-17 Other experiments demonstrated that mousepox could be modified to have a 100 case fatality rate and render a vaccine ineffective.18 In addition to transmissibility and lethality, studies have shown that other disease traits, such as incubation time, environmental survival, and available vectors, could be modified as well.19-2
9/4/21
SEPTOCT - DA - Innovation v2
Tournament: Greenhill RR | Round: 4 | Opponent: Northland Christian LB | Judge: Panel Biotech industry strong now Cancherini et al. 4/30 (Laura, Engagement Manager @ McKinsey and Company, Joseph Lydon, Associate Partner @ McKinsey and Company, Jorge Santos Da Silva, Senior Partner at McKinsey and Company, and Alexandra Zemp, Partner at McKinsey and Company), “What’s ahead for biotech: Another wave or low tide?“, McKinsey and Company, 4-30-2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/whats-ahead-for-biotech-another-wave-or-low-tide TDI Belying this downbeat mood, biotech has in fact had one of its best years so far. By January 2021, venture capitalists had invested some 60 percent more than they had in January 2020, with more than $3 billion invested worldwide in January 2021 alone.5 IPO activity grew strongly: there were 19 more closures than in the same period in 2020, with an average of $150 million per raise, 17 percent more than in 2020. Other deals have also had a bumper start to 2021, with the average deal size reaching more than $500 million, up by more than 66 percent on the 2020 average (Exhibit 3).6 What about SPACs? The analysis above does not include special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which have recently become significant in IPOs in several industries. Some biotech investors we interviewed believe that SPACs represent a route to an IPO. How SPACs will evolve remains to be seen, but biotechs may be part of their story. Fundamentals continue strong When we asked executives and investors why the biotech sector had stayed so resilient during the worst economic crisis in decades, they cited innovation as the main reason. The number of assets transitioning to clinical phases is still rising, and further waves of innovation are on the horizon, driven by the convergence of biological and technological advances. In the present day, many biotechs, along with the wider pharmaceutical industry, are taking steps to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, biotechs and pharma companies have more than 250 vaccine candidates in their pipelines, along with a similar number of therapeutics. What’s more, the crisis has shone a spotlight on pharma as the public seeks to understand the roadblocks involved in delivering a vaccine at speed and the measures needed to maintain safety and efficacy standards. To that extent, the world has been living through a time of mass education in science research and development. Biotech has also benefited from its innate financial resilience. Healthcare as a whole is less dependent on economic cycles than most other industries. Biotech is an innovator, actively identifying and addressing patients’ unmet needs. In addition, biotechs’ top-line revenues have been less affected by lockdowns than is the case in most other industries. Another factor acting in the sector’s favor is that larger pharmaceutical companies still rely on biotechs as a source of innovation. With the top dozen pharma companies having more than $170 billion in excess reserves that could be available for spending on MandA, the prospects for further financing and deal making look promising. For these and other reasons, many investors regard biotech as a safe haven. One interviewee felt it had benefited from a halo effect during the pandemic. More innovation on the horizon The investors and executives we interviewed agreed that biotech innovation continues to increase in quality and quantity despite the macroeconomic environment. Evidence can be seen in the accelerating pace of assets transitioning across the development lifecycle. When we tracked the number of assets transitioning to Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III clinical trials, we found that Phase I and Phase II assets have transitioned 50 percent faster since 2018 than between 2013 and 2018, whereas Phase III assets have maintained much the same pace. There could be many reasons for this, but it is worth noting that biotechs with Phase I and Phase II assets as their lead assets have accounted for more than half of biotech IPOs. Having an early IPO gives a biotech earlier access to capital and leaves it with more scope to concentrate on science.
Lack of IP protection makes medical innovation prohibitively risky and expensive Grabowski et al 15 (Henry, Professor of Economics, member of the faculty for the Health Sector Management Program, and Director of the Program in Pharmaceuticals and Health Economics at Duke University) “The Roles of Patents and Research And Development Incentives In Biopharmaceutical Innovation,” Health Affairs, 2/2015 JL The essential rationale for patent protection for biopharmaceuticals is that long-term benefits in the form of continued future innovation by pioneer or brand-name drug manufacturers outweigh the relatively short-term restrictions on imitative cost competition associated with market exclusivity. Regardless, the entry of other branded agents remains an important source of therapeutic competition during the patent term. Several economic characteristics make patents and intellectual property protection particularly important to innovation incentives for the biopharmaceutical industry. 5 The RandD process often takes more than a decade to complete, and according to a recent analysis by Joseph DiMasi and colleagues, per new drug approval (including failed attempts), it involves more than a billion dollars in out-of-pocket costs. 6 Only approximately one in eight drug candidates survive clinical testing. 6 As a result of the high risks of failure and the high costs, research and development must be funded by the few successful, on-market products (the top quintile of marketed products provide the dominant share of RandD returns). 7,8 Once a new drug’s patent term and any regulatory exclusivity provisions have expired, competing manufacturers are allowed to sell generic equivalents that require the investment of only several million dollars and that have a high likelihood of commercial success. Absent intellectual property protections that allow marketing exclusivity, innovative firms would be unlikely to make the costly and risky investments needed to bring a new drug to market. Patents confer the right to exclude competitors for a limited time within a given scope, as defined by patent claims. However, they do not guarantee demand, nor do they prevent competition from nonidentical drugs that treat the same diseases and fall outside the protection of the patents. New products may enter the same therapeutic class with common mechanisms of action but different molecular structures (for example, different statins) or with differing mechanisms of action (such as calcium channel blockers and angiotensin receptor blockers). 9 Joseph DiMasi and Laura Faden have found that the time between a first-in-class new drug and subsequent new drugs in the same therapeutic class has been dramatically reduced, from a median of 10.2 years in the 1970s to 2.5 years in the early 2000s. 10 Drugs in the same class compete through quality and price for preferred placement on drug formularies and physicians’ choices for patient treatment. Patents play an essential role in the economic “ecosystem” of discovery and investment that has developed since the 1980s. Hundreds of start-up firms, often backed by venture capital, have been launched, and a robust innovation market has emerged. 11 The value of these development-stage firms is largely determined by their proprietary technologies and the candidate drugs they have in development. As a result, the strength of intellectual property protection plays a key role in funding and partnership opportunities for such firms.
MRNA solves a litany of diseases, but continued innovation is key Gupta 5/7 (Swati, vice president and head of emerging infectious diseases and scientific strategy at IAVI, a nonprofit scientific research organization that develops vaccines and antibodies for HIV, tuberculosis, emerging infectious diseases (including COVID-19) and neglected diseases, PhD and MPH from Yale University) “The Application and Future Potential of mRNA Vaccines,” Yale School of Public Health, 5/7/2021 JL The implications of mRNA technology are staggering. Several vaccine developers are studying this technology for deployment against rabies, influenza, Zika, HIV and cancer, as well as for veterinary purposes. Its potential utility is based upon its being a “platform technology” that can be developed and scaled rapidly. Given that only the genetic code for a protein of interest is needed, synthetically produced mRNA vaccines can be made rapidly, in days. Other vaccine approaches involve growing and/or producing proteins in cells, a process that can take months. Messenger RNA vaccines are generally regarded as safe, since they do not integrate into our cells’ DNA and naturally degrade in the body after injection. They also can be safely administered repeatedly, as we are seeing with the two-dose regimen for both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. Despite the current success of mRNA vaccines for COVID-19, scientists continue to work on making the technology better. A number of laboratories are testing more thermostable formulations of mRNA vaccines, which currently must be kept at freezing or ultra-cold temperatures. Others are investigating second-generation vaccines that will only require a single shot, and “universal” coronavirus vaccines that could protect against future emerging coronaviruses. Messenger RNA vaccines that target a broad range of different diseases, all in one shot, are also in development; this approach has the potential to greatly simplify current vaccination schedules. Taken together, these advantages and potential future developments position mRNA vaccines as an increasingly important technology in our arsenal of tools against infectious disease outbreaks, and are likely to be critical to fighting future epidemics and pandemics. Global partnerships like the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness and Innovation (CEPI), tasked with facilitating the development of vaccines to stop future epidemics, have called for vaccines to be able to be tested in the clinic within months after a new pathogen is identified. With the latest discoveries in mRNA technology, we are well on our way to this goal; the ability of this platform technology to be transformative is no longer a hope, but more likely to be a reality in the very near future. Reducing patents sets a precedent that spills over to all future diseases – Hopkins 21: Jared S. Hopkins {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. Jared started his career at The Times-News in Twin Falls, Idaho covering politics. In 2014, he was a finalist for the Livingston Award For Young Journalists for an investigation into charities founded by professional athletes. In 2011, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Investigative Reporting for a series about neglect at a residential facility for disabled kids. Jared graduated from the Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland-College Park with a bachelor's degree in journalism}, 21 - ("U.S. Support for Patent Waiver Unlikely to Cost Covid-19 Vaccine Makers in Short Term ," WSJ, 5-7-2021, https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-support-for-patent-waiver-unlikely-to-cost-covid-19-vaccine-makers-in-short-term-11620414260)//marlborough-wr/ The Biden administration’s unexpected support for temporarily waiving Covid-19 vaccine patents won’t have an immediate financial impact on the companies making the shots, industry officials and analysts said. Yet the decision could mark a shift in Washington’s longstanding support of the industry’s valuable intellectual property, patent-law experts said. A waiver, if it does go into effect, may pose long-term risks to the vaccine makers, analysts said. Moderna Inc., MRNA -4.12 Pfizer Inc. PFE -3.10 and other vaccine makers weren’t counting on sales from the developing countries that would gain access to the vaccine technology, analysts said. If patents and other crucial product information behind the technology is made available, it would take at least several months before shots were produced, industry officials said. Yet long-term Covid-19 sales could take a hit if other companies and countries gained access to the technologies and figured out how to use it. Western drugmakers could also confront competition sooner for other medicines they are hoping to make using the technologies. A World Trade Organization waiver could also set a precedent for waiving patents for other medicines, a long-sought goal of some developing countries, patient groups and others to try to reduce the costs of prescription drugs. “It sets a tremendous precedent of waiving IP rights that’s likely going to come up in future pandemics or in other serious diseases,” said David Silverstein, a patent lawyer at Axinn, Veltrop and Harkrider LLP who advises drugmakers. “Other than that, this is largely symbolic.”
Disease causes extinction – defense is wrong Piers Millett 17, Consultant for the World Health Organization, PhD in International Relations and Affairs, University of Bradford, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, “Existential Risk and Cost-Effective Biosecurity”, Health Security, Vol 15(4), http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/hs.2017.0028 Historically, disease events have been responsible for the greatest death tolls on humanity. The 1918 flu was responsible for more than 50 million deaths,1 while smallpox killed perhaps 10 times that many in the 20th century alone.2 The Black Death was responsible for killing over 25 of the European population,3 while other pandemics, such as the plague of Justinian, are thought to have killed 25 million in the 6th century—constituting over 10 of the world’s population at the time.4 It is an open question whether a future pandemic could result in outright human extinction or the irreversible collapse of civilization. A skeptic would have many good reasons to think that existential risk from disease is unlikely. Such a disease would need to spread worldwide to remote populations, overcome rare genetic resistances, and evade detection, cures, and countermeasures. Even evolution itself may work in humanity’s favor: Virulence and transmission is often a trade-off, and so evolutionary pressures could push against maximally lethal wild-type pathogens.5,6 While these arguments point to a very small risk of human extinction, they do not rule the possibility out entirely. Although rare, there are recorded instances of species going extinct due to disease—primarily in amphibians, but also in 1 mammalian species of rat on Christmas Island.7,8 There are also historical examples of large human populations being almost entirely wiped out by disease, especially when multiple diseases were simultaneously introduced into a population without immunity. The most striking examples of total population collapse include native American tribes exposed to European diseases, such as the Massachusett (86 loss of population), Quiripi-Unquachog (95 loss of population), and theWestern Abenaki (which suffered a staggering 98 loss of population). In the modern context, no single disease currently exists that combines the worst-case levels of transmissibility, lethality, resistance to countermeasures, and global reach. But many diseases are proof of principle that each worst-case attribute can be realized independently. For example, some diseases exhibit nearly a 100 case fatality ratio in the absence of treatment, such as rabies or septicemic plague. Other diseases have a track record of spreading to virtually every human community worldwide, such as the 1918 flu,10 and seroprevalence studies indicate that other pathogens, such as chickenpox and HSV-1, can successfully reach over 95 of a population.11,12 Under optimal virulence theory, natural evolution would be an unlikely source for pathogens with the highest possible levels of transmissibility, virulence, and global reach. But advances in biotechnology might allow the creation of diseases that combine such traits. Recent controversy has already emerged over a number of scientific experiments that resulted in viruses with enhanced transmissibility, lethality, and/or the ability to overcome therapeutics.13-17 Other experiments demonstrated that mousepox could be modified to have a 100 case fatality rate and render a vaccine ineffective.18 In addition to transmissibility and lethality, studies have shown that other disease traits, such as incubation time, environmental survival, and available vectors, could be modified as well.19-2
9/17/21
SEPTOCT - DA - Innovation v3
Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 1 | Opponent: McNeil AR | Judge: Chris Castillo Biotech industry strong now. Cancherini et al. 4/30 (Laura, Engagement Manager @ McKinsey and Company, Joseph Lydon, Associate Partner @ McKinsey and Company, Jorge Santos Da Silva, Senior Partner at McKinsey and Company, and Alexandra Zemp, Partner at McKinsey and Company), “What’s ahead for biotech: Another wave or low tide?“, McKinsey and Company, 4-30-2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/whats-ahead-for-biotech-another-wave-or-low-tide TDI As the pandemic spread across the globe in early 2020, biotech leaders were initially pessimistic, reassessing their cash position and financing constraints. When McKinsey and BioCentury interviewed representatives from 106 biotech companies in May 2020,4 half of those interviewed were expecting delays in financing, and about 80 percent were tight on cash for the next two years and considering trade-offs such as deferring IPOs and acquisitions. Executives feared that valuations would decline because of lower revenue projections and concerns about clinical-trial delays, salesforce-effectiveness gaps, and other operational issues. Belying this downbeat mood, biotech has in fact had one of its best years so far. By January 2021, venture capitalists had invested some 60 percent more than they had in January 2020, with more than $3 billion invested worldwide in January 2021 alone.5 IPO activity grew strongly: there were 19 more closures than in the same period in 2020, with an average of $150 million per raise, 17 percent more than in 2020. Other deals have also had a bumper start to 2021, with the average deal size reaching more than $500 million, up by more than 66 percent on the 2020 average (Exhibit 3).6 What about SPACs? The analysis above does not include special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), which have recently become significant in IPOs in several industries. Some biotech investors we interviewed believe that SPACs represent a route to an IPO. How SPACs will evolve remains to be seen, but biotechs may be part of their story. Fundamentals continue strong When we asked executives and investors why the biotech sector had stayed so resilient during the worst economic crisis in decades, they cited innovation as the main reason. The number of assets transitioning to clinical phases is still rising, and further waves of innovation are on the horizon, driven by the convergence of biological and technological advances. In the present day, many biotechs, along with the wider pharmaceutical industry, are taking steps to address the COVID-19 pandemic. Together, biotechs and pharma companies have more than 250 vaccine candidates in their pipelines, along with a similar number of therapeutics. What’s more, the crisis has shone a spotlight on pharma as the public seeks to understand the roadblocks involved in delivering a vaccine at speed and the measures needed to maintain safety and efficacy standards. To that extent, the world has been living through a time of mass education in science research and development. Biotech has also benefited from its innate financial resilience. Healthcare as a whole is less dependent on economic cycles than most other industries. Biotech is an innovator, actively identifying and addressing patients’ unmet needs. In addition, biotechs’ top-line revenues have been less affected by lockdowns than is the case in most other industries. Another factor acting in the sector’s favor is that larger pharmaceutical companies still rely on biotechs as a source of innovation. With the top dozen pharma companies having more than $170 billion in excess reserves that could be available for spending on MandA, the prospects for further financing and deal making look promising. For these and other reasons, many investors regard biotech as a safe haven. One interviewee felt it had benefited from a halo effect during the pandemic. More innovation on the horizon The investors and executives we interviewed agreed that biotech innovation continues to increase in quality and quantity despite the macroeconomic environment. Evidence can be seen in the accelerating pace of assets transitioning across the development lifecycle. When we tracked the number of assets transitioning to Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III clinical trials, we found that Phase I and Phase II assets have transitioned 50 percent faster since 2018 than between 2013 and 2018, whereas Phase III assets have maintained much the same pace. There could be many reasons for this, but it is worth noting that biotechs with Phase I and Phase II assets as their lead assets have accounted for more than half of biotech IPOs. Having an early IPO gives a biotech earlier access to capital and leaves it with more scope to concentrate on science.
IP protections for traditional knowledge are key to innovation Ngatcha 20 (Beatrice T., lawyer and patent agent in Lavery’s intellectual property group, patent agent registered to practice in Canada and the United States,member of the Quebec Bar, doctoral degree in chemistry from Université Laval and post-doctoral fellow at the National Research Council in Ottawa) “Natural Products and Pharmaceutical Innovations: What are the Patent Options?” Lavery, 5/29/2020 JL Natural products play an important role in pharmaceutical innovation. They are active components in many medicines. For example, nearly half of the small molecules used to treat cancer are natural products or directly derived from natural products.1 They are also components of vaccines. The pharmaceutical industry is constantly seeking access to natural products and the traditional knowledge associated with them. These include plants (roots, bark, leaves), micro-organisms (terrestrial and marine), toxins, venoms and other natural biological agents. In the current race to develop a drug and/or vaccine against COVID-19, natural products or derivatives are surely worth considering as a starting point. The harvesting of natural resources for use by the pharmaceutical industry is usually carried out by partners such as traditional healers, farmers, academics or businesses. Thus, the process usually involves several stakeholders, including providers and users of natural resources and associated traditional knowledge, which are often located in different parts of the world. Fair and equitable collaboration in such a context requires well-developed collaboration agreements and access and benefit-sharing agreements. Various instruments of international law encourage the signing of such agreements, including: The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which recognizes the sovereignty of states over their natural resources. The CBD sets out fundamental principles to regulate access and benefit-sharing, including that access to natural resources, their use and the sharing of benefits arising from them should be based on “mutually agreed terms.”2 The Nagoya Protocol covers the sharing of the results of research and development, the payment of royalties and joint ownership of intellectual property (IP) rights.3 The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has developed a guide to assist providers and users of natural resources and associated traditional knowledge in the negotiation and establishment of IP clauses in access and benefit-sharing agreements. The guide describes how IP rights can be exploited and managed to achieve the desired objectives, and how the benefits arising from the use can be created and shared in a fair and equitable manner, thereby promoting the conservation and use of biodiversity.4 Furthermore, research and development activities in the pharmaceutical industry are known to be associated with high risk and high investment costs. Indeed, it is widely recognized that the process to develop a drug can take up to 15 years, only about 16 of molecules entering the clinical phase will be approved, and only 1 in 5 marketed drugs generates revenues equal to or greater than the research and development costs involved.5 In the pharmaceutical industry, intellectual property, especially patents and data protection, is thus considered an essential instrument for securing the economic benefits of an innovation. Efforts in this intense period of development of a drug/vaccine against COVID-19 are of course focused on the technical aspects directly related to research and development. Nevertheless, those involved should not lose sight of the importance of collaboration agreements and access and benefit-sharing agreements.
50 of medicine comes from IK Eiland 08 Dr. Eiland received a doctorate in Oriental Archaeology from Oxford University and an LLM from the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center, “Patenting Traditional Medicine”, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH and Co. KG, pg. 7-10, 2008 SLC PK - TM = traditional medicine In 1982, it was estimated that about 50 of all filled prescriptions in the US originated from drugs that were derived – one way or another – from natural substances. This generated US sales of about 20 billion.4 Another estimate found that 3/4 of the plants used in prescription drugs originally came to the attention of drug companies because of their use in TM.5 In 1995, the worldwide market value of TM derived pharmaceuticals was estimated to be $43 billon.6 While one could argue about the precise values, TM has significant pharmaceutical applications. Drug companies are interested in acquiring TM, both natural substances, as well as the knowledge about how to use them.
Biopharmaceutical innovation is key to prevent future pandemics and bioterror. Marjanovic and Feijao 20 (Sonja Marjanovic, Ph.D., Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Carolina Feijao, Ph.D. in biochemistry, University of Cambridge; M.Sc. in quantitative biology, Imperial College London; B.Sc. in biology, University of Lisbon.) "How to Best Enable Pharma Innovation Beyond the COVID-19 Crisis," RAND Corporation, 05-2020, https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PEA407-1.html TDI As key actors in the healthcare innovation landscape, pharmaceutical and life sciences companies have been called on to develop medicines, vaccines and diagnostics for pressing public health challenges. The COVID-19 crisis is one such challenge, but there are many others. For example, MERS, SARS, Ebola, Zika and avian and swine flu are also infectious diseases that represent public health threats. Infectious agents such as anthrax, smallpox and tularemia could present threats in a bioterrorism context.1 The general threat to public health that is posed by antimicrobial resistance is also well-recognised as an area in need of pharmaceutical innovation. Innovating in response to these challenges does not always align well with pharmaceutical industry commercial models, shareholder expectations and competition within the industry. However, the expertise, networks and infrastructure that industry has within its reach, as well as public expectations and the moral imperative, make pharmaceutical companies and the wider life sciences sector an indispensable partner in the search for solutions that save lives. This perspective argues for the need to establish more sustainable and scalable ways of incentivising pharmaceutical innovation in response to infectious disease threats to public health. It considers both past and current examples of efforts to mobilise pharmaceutical innovation in high commercial risk areas, including in the context of current efforts to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. In global pandemic crises like COVID-19, the urgency and scale of the crisis – as well as the spotlight placed on pharmaceutical companies – mean that contributing to the search for effective medicines, vaccines or diagnostics is essential for socially responsible companies in the sector. 2 It is therefore unsurprising that we are seeing industry-wide efforts unfold at unprecedented scale and pace. Whereas there is always scope for more activity, industry is currently contributing in a variety of ways. Examples include pharmaceutical companies donating existing compounds to assess their utility in the fight against COVID19; screening existing compound libraries in-house or with partners to see if they can be repurposed; accelerating trials for potentially effective medicine or vaccine candidates; and in some cases rapidly accelerating in-house research and development to discover new treatments or vaccine agents and develop diagnostics tests.3,4 Pharmaceutical companies are collaborating with each other in some of these efforts and participating in global RandD partnerships (such as the Innovative Medicines Initiative effort to accelerate the development of potential therapies for COVID-19) and supporting national efforts to expand diagnosis and testing capacity and ensure affordable and ready access to potential solutions.3,5,6 The primary purpose of such innovation is to benefit patients and wider population health. Although there are also reputational benefits from involvement that can be realised across the industry, there are likely to be relatively few companies that are ‘commercial’ winners. Those who might gain substantial revenues will be under pressure not to be seen as profiting from the pandemic. In the United Kingdom for example, GSK has stated that it does not expect to profit from its COVID-19 related activities and that any gains will be invested in supporting research and long-term pandemic preparedness, as well as in developing products that would be affordable in the world’s poorest countries.7 Similarly, in the United States AbbVie has waived intellectual property rights for an existing combination product that is being tested for therapeutic potential against COVID-19, which would support affordability and allow for a supply of generics.8,9 Johnson and Johnson has stated that its potential vaccine – which is expected to begin trials – will be available on a not-for-profit basis during the pandemic.10 Pharma is mobilising substantial efforts to rise to the COVID-19 challenge at hand. However, we need to consider how pharmaceutical innovation for responding to emerging infectious diseases can best be enabled beyond the current crisis. Many public health threats (including those associated with other infectious diseases, bioterrorism agents and antimicrobial resistance) are urgently in need of pharmaceutical innovation, even if their impacts are not as visible to society as COVID-19 is in the immediate term. The pharmaceutical industry has responded to previous public health emergencies associated with infectious disease in recent times – for example those associated with Ebola and Zika outbreaks.11 However, it has done so to a lesser scale than for COVID-19 and with contributions from fewer companies. Similarly, levels of activity in response to the threat of antimicrobial resistance are still low.12 There are important policy questions as to whether – and how – industry could engage with such public health threats to an even greater extent under improved innovation conditions.
Extinction – defense is wrong Piers Millett 17, Consultant for the World Health Organization, PhD in International Relations and Affairs, University of Bradford, Andrew Snyder-Beattie, “Existential Risk and Cost-Effective Biosecurity”, Health Security, Vol 15(4), http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/hs.2017.0028 Historically, disease events have been responsible for the greatest death tolls on humanity. The 1918 flu was responsible for more than 50 million deaths,1 while smallpox killed perhaps 10 times that many in the 20th century alone.2 The Black Death was responsible for killing over 25 of the European population,3 while other pandemics, such as the plague of Justinian, are thought to have killed 25 million in the 6th century—constituting over 10 of the world’s population at the time.4 It is an open question whether a future pandemic could result in outright human extinction or the irreversible collapse of civilization. A skeptic would have many good reasons to think that existential risk from disease is unlikely. Such a disease would need to spread worldwide to remote populations, overcome rare genetic resistances, and evade detection, cures, and countermeasures. Even evolution itself may work in humanity’s favor: Virulence and transmission is often a trade-off, and so evolutionary pressures could push against maximally lethal wild-type pathogens.5,6 While these arguments point to a very small risk of human extinction, they do not rule the possibility out entirely. Although rare, there are recorded instances of species going extinct due to disease—primarily in amphibians, but also in 1 mammalian species of rat on Christmas Island.7,8 There are also historical examples of large human populations being almost entirely wiped out by disease, especially when multiple diseases were simultaneously introduced into a population without immunity. The most striking examples of total population collapse include native American tribes exposed to European diseases, such as the Massachusett (86 loss of population), Quiripi-Unquachog (95 loss of population), and theWestern Abenaki (which suffered a staggering 98 loss of population). In the modern context, no single disease currently exists that combines the worst-case levels of transmissibility, lethality, resistance to countermeasures, and global reach. But many diseases are proof of principle that each worst-case attribute can be realized independently. For example, some diseases exhibit nearly a 100 case fatality ratio in the absence of treatment, such as rabies or septicemic plague. Other diseases have a track record of spreading to virtually every human community worldwide, such as the 1918 flu,10 and seroprevalence studies indicate that other pathogens, such as chickenpox and HSV-1, can successfully reach over 95 of a population.11,12 Under optimal virulence theory, natural evolution would be an unlikely source for pathogens with the highest possible levels of transmissibility, virulence, and global reach. But advances in biotechnology might allow the creation of diseases that combine such traits. Recent controversy has already emerged over a number of scientific experiments that resulted in viruses with enhanced transmissibility, lethality, and/or the ability to overcome therapeutics.13-17 Other experiments demonstrated that mousepox could be modified to have a 100 case fatality rate and render a vaccine ineffective.18 In addition to transmissibility and lethality, studies have shown that other disease traits, such as incubation time, environmental survival, and available vectors, could be modified as well.19-2
9/18/21
SEPTOCT - K - Neolib
Tournament: Loyola | Round: Finals | Opponent: Diamond Bar NC | Judge: Panel The aff’s portrayal of a world with reduced IP protections as an “information commons” where medical inequality is solved by deregulation perpetuates the neoliberal myth of a perfect market Kapczynski 14 (Amy, a Professor of Law at Yale Law School, Faculty Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership, and Faculty Co-Director of the Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency. She is also Faculty Co-Director of the Law and Political Economy Project and cofounder of the Law and Political Economy blog. Her areas of research include information policy, intellectual property law, international law, and global health.) “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY’S LEVIATHAN” Duke Law, Law and Contemporary problems, 2014. https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4710andcontext=lcp BC Over the last decade or so, a powerful set of critiques has emerged to contest the dominant account just sketched out as well as the contemporary state of IP law.12 These arguments have come from many directions, some even arising from scholars who previously were champions of the dominant account.13 The most prominent and potent line of theoretical critique in the legal literature has come in the guise of arguments for free culture and the “information commons” and has been most influentially articulated by Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler.14 Both have stressed the problems with expansive exclusive rights regimes in information and have also sketched a set of actually existing alternatives to market-based exclusionary forms of information and cultural production. Lessig has written a series of influential books that have made him a “rock star of the information age,”15 particularly for young Internet and free-culture activists. He has argued powerfully, for example, that existing copyright law is in deep conflict with the radical new possibilities for creativity in the digital age. As he points out, when a mother posting a video of her toddler dancing to a Prince song on YouTube is threatened with a $150,000 fine for copyright infringement, something has gone seriously awry.16 Lessig also contends that copyright law today is too long, too expansive, and instantiates a “permission culture” that is antithetical to free expression in the age of the remix.17 As he puts it, “the Internet has unleashed an extraordinary possibility for many to participate in the process of building and cultivating a culture that reaches far beyond local boundaries,” creating the possibility of markets that “include a much wider and more diverse range of creators,” if not stifled by incumbents who use IP law to “protect themselves against this competition.”18 Benkler’s work has also been extraordinarily formative in the field, particularly for his insights into the multiplicity of modes of information production. As he has stressed, the conventional justification for IP does not account for the many successful and longstanding modes of market nonexclusionary information production.19 For example, attorneys write articles to attract clients, software developers sell services customizing free and opensource software for individual clients, and bands give music away for free to increase revenues from touring or merchandise.20 More pathbreaking still is Benkler’s account of the importance of “commons-based peer production,” a form of socially motivated and cooperative production exemplified by the volunteer network that maintains Wikipedia or the groups of coders who create open-source software products such as the Linux operating system.21 In the digital networked age, as Benkler describes, the tools of information production are very broadly distributed, “creating new opportunities for how we make and exchange information, knowledge, and culture.”22 These changes have increased the relative role in our information economy of nonproprietary production and facilitate “new forms of production that are based neither in the state nor in the market.”23 Because commons-based peer production is not hierarchically organized and is motivated by social dynamics and concerns, it also offers new possibilities for human development, human freedom, a more critical approach to culture, and more democratic forms of political participation.24 This line of critique has been profoundly generative and has helped launch an important new conceptualization of the commons as a paradigm. That paradigm, as a recent book puts it, “helps us ‘get outside’ of the dominant discourse of the market economy and helps us represent different, more wholesome ways of being.”25 Proponents of the commons concept draw upon contemporary articulations of successful commons-based resource management by Elinor Ostrom and her followers.26 They do mobilize retellings of the political and economic history of the commons in land in Europe before enclosure,27 and recent evidence from psychology and behavioral economics that suggests that humans have deep tendencies toward cooperation and reciprocation.28 They argue that A key revelation of the commons way of thinking is that we humans are not in fact isolated, atomistic individuals. We are not amoebas with no human agency except hedonistic “utility preferences” expressed in the marketplace. No: We are commoners—creative, distinctive individuals inscribed within larger wholes. We may have unattractive human traits fueled by individual fears and ego, but we are also creatures entirely capable of self-organization and cooperation; with a concern for fairness and social justice; and willing to make sacrifices for the larger good and future generations.29 This stands, of course, as a powerful rebuke to the neoliberal imaginary, which “constructs and interpellates individuals as . . . rational, calculating creatures whose moral autonomy is measured by their capacity for ‘self-care’— the ability to provide for their own needs and service their own ambitions.”30 III Given this radical—and, in my view, critically important—attempt to rethink the subject at the core of neoliberal accounts, it is all the more striking that proponents of the commons often appear to adopt a neoliberal image of the state. For example, the introduction to a recently edited volume that gathers writings on the commons from seventy-three authors in thirty countries (entitled, tellingly, The Wealth of the Commons: A World Beyond Market and State) has this to say: The presumption that the state can and will intervene to represent the interests of citizens is no longer credible. Unable to govern for the long term, captured by commercial interests and hobbled by stodgy bureaucratic structures in an age of nimble electronic networks, the state is arguably incapable of meeting the needs of citizens as a whole.31 The commons, they suggest, is a concept that seeks not only to liberate us from predatory and dysfunctional markets, but also from predatory and dysfunctional states. Something immediately seems incongruous here. If people are inherently cooperative reciprocators, why are states irredeemably corrupt? After all, as Harold Demsetz famously wrote in his 1967 attack on Arrow’s optimism about state production of information, “government is a group of people.”32 Lessig, one of the progenitors of the language of the commons in the informational domain, often leads with a similar view of the state: If the twentieth century taught us one lesson, it is the dominance of private over state ordering. Markets work better than Tammany Hall in deciding who should get what, when. Or as Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase put it, whatever problems there are with the market, the problems with government are more profound.33 Lessig reveals his own sense of the power of this conception of the state when he seeks to tar IP law with the same brush; we should rebel against current IP law, he suggests, because we should “limit the government’s role in choosing the future of creativity.”34 Benkler is more measured but admits as well to viewing the state as “a relatively suspect actor.”35 We should worry, he suggests, that direct governmental intervention “leads to centralization in the hands of government agencies and powerful political lobbies,”36 a view that echoes the neoliberal account described above. It should perhaps not surprise us that leading critics of neoliberal information policy embrace a neoliberal conception of the state. After all, neoliberalism is not merely an ideology, but also a set of policy prescriptions that may have helped to call forth the state that it has described. As David Harvey puts it, “the neoliberal fear that special-interest groups would pervert and subvert the state is nowhere better realized than in Washington, where armies of corporate lobbyists . . . effectively dictate legislation to match their special interests.”37 There are, it must be said, few areas of law that better exemplify this problem than IP law. For example, Jessica Litman has documented the astonishing process through which the 1976 Copyright Act was drafted, in which Congress delegated most of the drafting to interest groups that were forced to negotiate with one another.38 Other scholars have offered similarly startling accounts of the genesis of the most important IP treaty today, the TradeRelated Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement. TRIPS came into force in 1996, revolutionizing international IP law by both imposing new standards and by rendering them enforceable through the WTO’s disputeresolution system, which authorizes trade retaliation to enforce its judgments. Most countries in the world are members of TRIPS, and the Agreement introduced, for developing countries in particular, substantial new obligations, such as the obligation to grant patents on medicines and food-related inventions. Several excellent histories of the treaty have been written, documenting its beginnings as a brash idea proposed by “twelve chief executive officers (representing pharmaceutical, entertainment, and software industries).”39 As Susan Sell has described, the TRIPS Agreement was a triumph of industry organizing. Through TRIPS, Industry revealed its power to identify and define a trade problem, devise a solution, and reduce it to a concrete proposal that could be sold to governments. Neoliberal exploitation causes extinction. Clark 18 (Brett, associate professor of sociology and sustainability studies at the University of Utah; Stefano B. Longo, Assistant Professor specializing in Environmental Sociology at NC State; “Land–Sea Ecological Rifts”, Land–Sea Ecological Rifts, https://monthlyreview.org/2018/07/01/land-sea-ecological-rifts/) Covering approximately 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, the World Ocean is “the largest ecosystem.”1 Today all areas of the ocean are affected by multiple anthropogenic effects—such as overfishing, pollution, and emission of greenhouse gases, causing warming seas as well as ocean acidification—and over 40 percent of the ocean is strongly affected by human actions. Furthermore, the magnitude of these impacts and the speed of the changes are far greater than previously understood.2 Biologist Judith S. Weis explains that “the most widespread and serious type of marine pollution worldwide is eutrophication due to excess nutrients.”3 The production and use of fertilizers, sewage/waste from humans and farm animals, combustion of fossil fuels, and storm water have all contributed to dramatic increases in the quantity of nutrients in waterways and oceans. Research in 2008 indicated that there were over 400 “dead zones,” areas of low oxygen, mostly near the mouths of rivers.4 Nutrient overloading thus presents a major challenge to maintaining healthy aquatic ecosystems. Nutrients are a basic source of nourishment that all organisms need to survive. Plants require at least eighteen elements to grow normally; of these, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are called macronutrients, because they are needed in larger quantities. While all essential nutrients exist in the biosphere, these three are the ones most commonly known to be deficient in commercial agricultural production systems. Beginning in the early twentieth century with the Haber-Bosch process, atmospheric nitrogen was converted into ammonia to create synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. The fixation of nitrogen, an energy-intensive process, made the nutrient far more widely available for use in agriculture. This in turn dramatically changed production systems, which no longer depended on legumes and manures to biologically supply nitrogen for other crops such as wheat, corn, and most vegetables. In the modern era, particularly since the Second World War, the increased production and use of fertilizers served to greatly expand food production and availability. Major macronutrients are routinely applied to soils in order to maintain and increase the growth of plant life on farms, as well as private and public landscapes such as golf courses, nurseries, parks, and residences. They are used to produce fruits, vegetables, and fibers for human and non-human consumption, expand areas of recreation, and beautify communities. However, like many aspects of modern production, given the larger social dynamics and determinants that shape socioecological relationships, these technological and economic developments have generated serious negative—often unforeseen—consequences. The wide expansion and increasing rates of nitrogen and phosphorus application have caused severe damage to aquatic systems in particular. Rivers, streams, lakes, bays (estuaries), and ocean systems have been inundated with nutrient runoff, which has had far-reaching effects. Here we examine the socioecological relationships and processes associated with the transfer of nutrients from terrestrial to marine systems. We employ a metabolic analysis to highlight the interchange of matter and energy within and between socioecological systems. In particular, we show how capitalist agrifood production contributes to distinct environmental problems, creating a metabolic rift in the soil nutrient cycle. We emphasize how the failure to mend nutrient cycles in agrifood systems has led to approaches that produce additional ruptures, such as those associated with nutrient overloading in marine systems. This analysis reveals the ways that the social relations of capitalist agriculture tend to produce interconnected ecological problems, such as those in terrestrial and aquatic systems. Further, we contend that these processes undermine the basic conditions of life on a wide-ranging scale. It is important to recognize that nutrient pollution of groundwater as well as surface waters has been a major concern since the rise of modern capitalist agriculture and the development of the global food regime.5 The failure to address the metabolic rupture in the soil nutrient cycle and the contradictions of capital are central to contemporary land-sea ecological rifts.
The alternative is a global socialist movement that ends globalization Galant 19 (Michael, a coordinator of the Wire Pillar of the Progressive International, former economics and trade fellow at Young Professionals in Foreign Policy, MPP from Harvard University’s Kennedy School and BA in political economy from Brown University) “The Battle of Seattle: 20 years later, it's time for a revival” Open Democracy, 11/30/2019. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/oureconomy/battle-seattle-20-years-later-its-time-revival/ BC 20 years ago today, the streets of Seattle became front lines in the global class war. Over the course of five days, some 40,000 individuals, representing unions, environmental groups, and Leftist organizations from around the world came together in an attempt to disrupt the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Using direct action tactics, activists physically delayed access to the meeting and led marches, rallies, and teach-ins that drew massive crowds. Protesters of all stripes were attacked by a violent police force – attracting international media coverage. The demonstrations outside became a wedge that would help drive the negotiations inside to collapse. The Battle of Seattle was won. But the war continued. Seattle was about more than any single organization. The WTO was a symbol of the larger project of neoliberal globalization that was, in 1999, well on its way to reshaping the world in the interest of capital. The Battle of Seattle would become an equally potent symbol of resistance. The WTO protests marked the moment that the Alter-Globalization Movement (AGM), also known as the Global Justice, or disparagingly, the Anti-Globalization Movement, was launched into the public consciousness. Much has changed in the two decades since. The AGM won many meaningful victories and experienced many more profound losses. Eventually, the movement faded. Today’s global economy resembles the neoliberal nightmare the Seattle protesters were fighting against more than the world they were fighting for. But recent years have revealed cracks in the surface. With an opportunity to finish what was started, it’s time to revive the spirit of Seattle. Globalization and its dissent Neoliberal globalization is a political project intended to raise the power of capital to the international level – to cement its supremacy as an immutable universal law beyond the reach of political communities. “Free trade” agreements and WTO rules establish the primacy of profit over democracy, labor, environmental, and consumer protections. World Bank and IMF loan conditions impose austerity, privatization, and deregulation on nations of the Global South. An international system of tax havens allows corporations and wealthy individuals to hoard their plundered resources. Global supply chain fragmentation shields multinationals from accountability for their abuses. Investment treaties unleash finance and corporations to cross borders in search of opportunities for exploitation, setting off a regulatory race to the bottom. If there was doubt before that capitalism must be confronted at the global level to be defeated, the power grab that is neoliberal globalization puts those doubts to rest. Capital is global. Labor must be too. Yet there are forces preventing such global solidarity. Beginning during the Cold War, the majority of Northern labor accepted a compromise: support a foreign policy that enacts the interests of capital, and benefit from a share of the spoils in the form of minor concessions, a tempered welfare state, and cheap consumer goods. This tacit agreement survived largely intact into the neoliberal era – dividing the interests of a global working class and quelling demands for systemic global change. The Alter-Globalization Movement rejected the compromise. While activists in the Global South had long resisted destructive free trade agreements and World Bank austerity, occasionally with solidarity from the North, the extremity of turn-of-the-century neoliberalism led to the explosion of a movement that refused to accept the mere crumbs of neocolonial extraction, and sought instead to build an alternative global economy for the many, both North and South. This was a movement that brought together American anarchists with Korean peasants; libertarian socialist indigenous groups in Mexico with US anti-sweatshop activists; the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions with the Industrial Workers of the World; the Brazilian Movement for Landless Workers with Greenpeace; Filipino anti-capitalist scholars with French farmer activists best known for physically dismantling a McDonald’s. Their demands were many and varied – from land redistribution to the abolition of the World Bank, from a renegotiated NAFTA to the protection of indigenous knowledge of seeds from privatization – but all shared a vision of a global solidarity that would overcome the forces of neoliberal globalization. Organizing under such a big tent, the AGM is better understood as a dispersed, informal network – a “movement of movements” – than a unified political structure. This fluid network manifested in many forms. The flagship World Social Forum regularly convened activists in an alternative to the annual World Economic Forum. Transnational advocacy networks campaigned on issues such as Global South debt relief. Northern activists used their positions of relative privilege to support local campaigns in the South, fighting water privatization in Bolivia and indigenous displacement from hydroelectric dams in India. And, as in Seattle, meetings of international organizations became rallying points for major global demonstrations. With these organizing methods, the movement achieved substantial victories. The Jubilee 2000 campaign led to significant debt relief for Southern nations. Potentially disastrous trade agreements from the FTAA to TPP have been, at least temporarily, defeated. International Financial Institutions like the IMF and World Bank – while still agents of global capital – have vastly improved their lending practices since the 90’s. But its greatest successes were intangible: the AGM undermined the hegemonic ambitions embodied in Thatcher’s “There Is No Alternative”, slowed neoliberal globalization’s seemingly inexorable onslaught, and kept alive the flame of resistance during an otherwise nadir of Leftist politics. The AGM should not, however, be romanticized. Emerging in a moment when the failures of 20th century socialist politics weighed heavily on the Left’s imagination, the AGM turned too far in the opposing direction. Big-tentism led to a dilution of demands and paved the way for the NGO-ization of the World Social Fora. A preference for all things decentralized made grabbing headlines easy, but building lasting political structures difficult. Resistance was often treated as an intrinsically valuable ends, rather than a means to taking power. And criticisms of “neoliberalism” typically fell short of identifying the true enemy – capitalism – or advancing a coherent alternative – socialism. Ultimately, the neoliberal plan for the global economy succeeded more than not. While resistance to neoliberal globalization would rage on in the South, Northern solidarity faded. The September 11th attacks were the beginning of the end. Energy shifted to the anti-war movement, the state expanded its repression of Leftist organizing, and increased pressures toward “patriotism” led some to reconsider the old foreign policy compromise. By the mid-2000’s, little was left of what the AGM once was. A call for revival It’s time to rekindle the flame. The global economy is still structured in the interest of capital. But the neoliberal consensus has begun to waver under the weight of its own contradictions. The Right has a response to the crisis. Reactionary nationalists like Trump and Johnson seize upon existing systems of oppression to scapegoat the symptoms of a failed economic model. The problem is not that the global working class has lost out to a global capital class. The problem is that “we” – White, Christian, cishet, native-born Americans – have lost out to “them” – People of Color, immigrants, entire foreign countries, feminists, LGBTQ+ folks, and all those who threaten our supremacy in their struggles for liberation. The Left must offer an alternative vision. The dramatic growth of socialist organizing and rise in popularity of social democratic politicians should offer great hope. But as the AGM understood, social democracy for the North is not enough. Our socialism must not mean merely a greater share of neocolonial extraction for Northern workers. Our socialism must rightly identify the global nature of our challenge, and unite across borders to confront a globalized capital. That means internationalizing labor organizing to confront multinational corporations. Changing the rules of trade and investment. Ending tax havens. Building alternatives to the existing intellectual property regime. Holding corporations accountable for abuses in their supply chains. Supporting the struggles of peasants, indigenous peoples, and all global subaltern groups. Democratizing global governance. Opening borders to those displaced by the ravages of global capitalism. Advancing alternative models of development. Transforming, if not abolishing and replacing, the Bretton Woods Institutions. And confronting the all-important threat of climate collapse with, to begin with, a global Green New Deal. These are not minor addendums to a socialist platform. Class war is global. Internationalist demands are fundamental. Organizations that remain from the AGM, international labor, and newcomers like Justice Is Global, the Fight Inequality Alliance, and Bernie Sanders and Yanis Varoufakis’s Progressive International, are already struggling for this vision. But its fruition depends on the backing of a far broader movement. Like the AGM, we must take a global frame of analysis, and see neoliberal globalization as a concerted effort to undermine our power. Unlike the AGM, we must understand that neoliberalism is merely one manifestation of a greater enemy. Like the AGM, we must build diverse, anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-xenophobic movements that transcend borders. Unlike the AGM, we must not allow fears of centralization to undermine a coherent platform. Like the AGM, we must reject a class compromise that sacrifices the possibility of a better world for the crumbs of colonialism. Unlike the AGM, we must build lasting political structures that back our rejection with political power. 20 years ago, the streets of Seattle echoed with a chant that would become the defining motto of the movement: “another world is possible!” It still is – if we’re willing to fight for it.
9/7/21
SEPTOCT - NC - Anti-Realism
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 3 | Opponent: Orange Lutheran AZ | Judge: Asher Towner Moral realism posits the existence of truths that hold independently of our evaluative attitudes – ought statements are an example Street 06 (Sharon, Professor of Philosophy and Associate Chair of the Department of Philosophy at New York University) “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” Springer, 2006 The defining claim of realism about value, as I will be understanding it, is that there are at least some evaluative facts or truths that hold independently of all our evaluative attitudes.1 Evaluative facts or truths I understand as facts or truths of the form that X is a normative reason to Y, that one should or ought to X, that X is good, valuable, or worthwhile, that X is morally right or wrong, and so on.2 Evaluative attitudes I understand to include states such as desires, attitudes of approval and disapproval, unreflective evaluative tendencies such as the tendency to experience X as counting in favor of or demanding Y, and consciously or unconsciously held evaluative judgements, such as judgements about what is a reason for what, about what one should or ought to do, about what is good, valuable, or worthwhile, about what is morally right or wrong, and so on.
It is important to note that it is not enough to be a realist to claim that the truth of an evaluative judgement holds independently of one’s making that particular evaluative judgement. Antirealists can agree with that much. Consider, for example, a constructivist view according to which the truth of ‘‘X is a reason for agent A to Y’’ is a function of whether that judgement would be among A’s evaluative judgements in reflective equilibrium. This view is antirealist because it understands truths about what reasons a person has as depending on her evaluative attitudes (in particular, on what those attitudes would be in reflective equilibrium). Yet on this view, it is quite possible for someone to have a reason independently of whether she thinks she does, for whether she has a reason is not a function of whether she (presently) judges she has it, but rather a function of whether that judgement would be among her evaluative judgements in reflective equilibrium. Antirealists can therefore agree with realists that the truth of a given evaluative judgement holds independently of whether one makes that particular judgement. Where antirealists part ways with realists is in denying that there are evaluative truths which hold independently of the whole set of evaluative judgements we make or might make upon reflection, or independently of the whole set of other evaluative attitudes we hold or might hold upon reflection.
The kind of independence from our evaluative attitudes that realists endorse is what Russ Shafer-Landau has called stance-independence. 3 To illustrate: Realists of course agree that the evaluative truth that ‘‘Hitler was morally depraved’’ depends in part on Hitler’s evaluative attitudes in the sense that if Hitler had valued peace and universal human rights instead of dictatorial power and genocide, then it would have been false instead of true that he was morally depraved. But given that Hitler did value dictatorial power and genocide, value realists think that it is true, independent of all of our (and any of Hitler’s other) evaluative attitudes, that Hitler was morally depraved. According to realists, the truth that Hitler was morally depraved holds independently of any stance that we (or Hitler) might take toward that truth, whether now or upon reflection.
There are different brands of realism about value. What unites them is the view that there are evaluative facts or truths that hold independently of all our evaluative attitudes (now keeping in mind the qualification about stance-independence). What separates different kinds of realists from one another is how they construe the nature of these facts or truths. According to what I will call non-naturalist versions of value realism, evaluative facts or truths are not reducible to any kind of natural fact, and are not the kinds of things that play a role in causal explanations; instead, they are irreducibly normative facts or truths.4 This brand of realism has been gaining increasing numbers of adherents in recent years, and it lies squarely within the target of the Darwinian Dilemma.
In contrast to non-naturalist versions of value realism, the position I will call value naturalism holds that evaluative facts are identical with or constituted by (certain) natural facts, and that evaluative facts are the kinds of things that play a role in causal explanations.5 According to such views, much as water is identical with H2O, so evaluative properties are identical with certain natural properties, though we may or may not ever be able to provide a reduction telling exactly which natural properties evaluative properties are identical with (different naturalists taking different views on the possibility of such a reduction).6 Whereas non-naturalist versions of value realism lie straightforwardly within my target in this paper, it is a more complicated matter whether versions of value naturalism lie within my target. Answering this question requires making a distinction (in section 7) between versions of value naturalism which count as genuinely realist on my understanding and versions which don’t; my argument will be that the former, but not the latter, are vulnerable to the Darwinian Dilemma. Before introducing these complexities, however, it is important to get the fundamental dilemma for realism on the table.7 Selective pressures have had a relentless impact on the content of our evaluative judgements – shared values and animal tendencies prove Street 06 (Sharon, Professor of Philosophy and Associate Chair of the Department of Philosophy at New York University) “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” Springer, 2006 To begin, note the potentially phenomenal costs and benefits, as measured in the Darwinian currency of reproductive success, of accepting some evaluative judgements rather than others. It is clear, for instance, how fatal to reproductive success it would be to judge that the fact that something would endanger one’s survival is a reason to do it, or that the fact that someone is kin is a reason to harm that individual. A creature who accepted such evaluative judgements would run itself off cliffs, seek out its predators, and assail its offspring, resulting in the speedy elimination of it and its evaluative tendencies from the world.13 In contrast, it is clear how beneficial (in terms of reproductive success) it would be to judge that the fact that something would promote one’s survival is a reason in favor of it, or that the fact that something would assist one’s offspring is a reason to do it. Different evaluative tendencies, then, can have extremely different effects on a creature’s chances of survival and reproduction. In light of this, it is only reasonable to expect there to have been, over the course of our evolutionary history, relentless selective pressure on the content of our evaluative judgements, or rather (as I discuss below) ‘‘proto’’ versions thereof. In particular, we can expect there to have been overwhelming pressure in the direction of making those evaluative judgements which tended to promote reproductive success (such as the judgement that one’s life is valuable), and against making those evaluative judgements which tended to decrease reproductive success (such as the judgement that one should attack one’s offspring).
The hypothesis that this is indeed very roughly what happened is borne out by the patterns of evaluative judgement that we observe in human beings today. There is, of course, a seemingly unlimited diversity to the evaluative judgements that human beings affirm. Yet even as we note this diversity, we also see deep and striking patterns, across both time and cultures, in many of the most basic evaluative judgements that human beings tend to make. Consider, as a brief sampling, the following judgements about reasons:
(1) The fact that something would promote one’s survival is a reason in favor of it. (2) The fact that something would promote the interests of a family member is a reason to do it. (3) We have greater obligations to help our own children than we do to help complete strangers. (4) The fact that someone has treated one well is a reason to treat that person well in return. (5) The fact that someone is altruistic is a reason to admire, praise, and reward him or her. (6) The fact that someone has done one deliberate harm is a reason to shun that person or seek his or her punishment.
What explains the widespread human acceptance of such judgements? There are so many other possible judgements about reasons we could make so why these? Why, for instance, do we view the death of our offspring as a horror, rather than as something to be sought after? Why do we think that altruism with no hope of personal reward is the highest form of virtue, rather than something to be loathed and eliminated? Evolutionary biology offers powerful answers to these questions, very roughly of the form that these sorts of judgements about reasons tended to promote survival and reproduction much more effectively than the alternative judgements. The details of how survival and reproduction were promoted will vary depending on the evaluative tendency in question. In the case of judgement (1), for instance, the rough explanation is obvious: creatures who possessed this general evaluative tendency tended to do more to promote their survival than those who, say, had a tendency to view the fact that something would promote their survival as counting against it, and so the former tended to survive and reproduce in greater numbers. The explanation of evaluative tendencies in the direction of judgements such as (2) and (3) will be somewhat more complicated, drawing on the evolutionary theory of kin selection.14 The explanation in the case of evaluative tendencies in the direction of judgements (4), (5), and (6), meanwhile, will appeal to the biological theory of reciprocal altruism.15
For the sake of contrast, consider the following possible evaluative judgements: (1) The fact that something would promote one’s survival is a reason against it. (2) The fact that something would promote the interests of a family member is a reason not to do it. (3) We have greater obligations to help complete strangers than we do to help our own children. (4) The fact that someone has treated one well is a reason to do that individual harm in return. (5) The fact that someone is altruistic is a reason to dislike, condemn, and punish him or her. (6) The fact that someone has done one deliberate harm is a reason to seek out that person’s company and reward him or her.
If judgements like these ones that would, other things being equal, so clearly decrease rather than increase the reproductive success of those who made them predominated among our most deeply and widely held evaluative judgements across both time and cultures, then this would constitute powerful evidence that the content of our evaluative judgements had not been greatly influenced by Darwinian selective pressures. But these are not the evaluative judgements we tend to see; instead, among our most deeply and widely held judgements, we observe many like those on the first list many with exactly the sort of content one would expect if the content of our evaluative judgements had been heavily influenced by selective pressures. In this way, the observed patterns in the actual content of human evaluative judgements provide evidence in favor of the view that natural selection has had a tremendous influence on that content.
A further piece of evidence in favor of this view is the striking continuity that we observe between many of our own widely held evaluative judgements and the more basic evaluative tendencies of other animals, especially those most closely related to us. It does not seem much of a stretch, for example, to say that chimpanzees, in some primitive, non-linguistic sort of fashion, experience certain things in the world as calling for or counting in favor of certain reactions on their part. Moreover, the content of these evaluative experiences seems to overlap significantly with the content of many of our own evaluative tendencies. Like us, individual chimpanzees seem to experience at some basic motivational level actions that would promote their survival or help their offspring as in some way ‘‘called for.’’ More strikingly, and again at some basic motivational level, chimpanzees seem to experience the fact that another chimpanzee has helped them, whether by sharing food, grooming them, or supporting their position within the group hierarchy, as ‘‘counting in favor of’’ assisting that other individual in similar ways.16 While more work is needed to make such claims precise and subject them to thorough scientific testing, they have a strong basic plausibility, such that the conspicuous continuities between the basic evaluative tendencies of our close animal relatives and our own evaluative judgements lend further support to the view that evolutionary forces have played a large role in shaping the content of our evaluative judgements. We may view many of our evaluative judgements as conscious, reflective endorsements of more basic evaluative tendencies that we share with other animals.
Pain’s badness is a contingent truth – if evolution favored those who pursued pain, our evaluative judgements would be different Street 06 (Sharon, Professor of Philosophy and Associate Chair of the Department of Philosophy at New York University) “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” Springer, 2006 Suppose, however, there is remaining doubt and some are still tempted by a realist position on the badness of pain so understood. It’s at this point that the Darwinian Dilemma arises again for the realist. To see how, suppose again that pain is given some definition according to which it is not a necessary feature of pain that we unreflectively experience it as counting in favor of what would avoid, lessen, or stop it. In that case, the following becomes a legitimate scientific question: given that it is perfectly conceivable that we all could have ended up taking pain sensations to count in favor of what would cause them and intensify them rather than in favor of what would lessen them and stop them, what explains the fact that such a huge percentage of us so consistently do the latter? Here, as in earlier cases, there is a powerful evolutionary answer. I’ve left it open how the person opting for the first horn of the Pain Dilemma is defining pain (so long as that definition makes no reference to the idea that pain is a sensation that we unreflectively take to count in favor of what would stop it). But if the proposed definition is to be plausible at all, then it will pick out (predominantly, one assumes) sensations associated with the sorts of bodily conditions that we normally consider painful, such as cuts, burns, bruises, broken bones, and so on. And it is of course no mystery whatsoever, from an evolutionary point of view, why we and the other animals came to take the sensations associated with bodily conditions such as these to count in favor of what would avoid, lessen, or stop them rather than in favor of what would bring about and intensify them. One need only imagine the reproductive prospects of a creature who relished and sought after the sensations of its bones breaking and its tissues tearing; just think how many descendants such a creature would leave in comparison to those who happened to abhor and avoid such sensations. As in earlier cases, the realist faces a problem when confronted with such an explanation. For once again we see that there is a striking coincidence between the content of the independent evaluative truth posited by the realist, on the one hand, and the content that evolutionary theory would lead us to expect, on the other. The realist tells us that it is an independent evaluative truth that pain sensations (however he or she defines them) are bad, and yet this is precisely what evolutionary theory would have predicted that we come to think. And once again the realist is unable to give any good account of this coincidence. To insist that the coincidence is mere coincidence is implausible. The realist’s alternative, here as in earlier cases, is to defend some sort of tracking account, according to which we were selected to be able to discern independent evaluative truths, among them the truth that these pain sensations (however the realist is defining them) are bad. Yet here as in earlier cases, the tracking account is scientifically unacceptable. In order to explain why we came to think that these sensations are bad, we need make no reference whatsoever to the fact that they are bad; we need only point out how it tended to promote reproductive success to take them to be bad (due to their connection with bodily conditions that tended to diminish reproductive success). The realist, then, is forced to the other horn of the Pain Dilemma. To salvage realism about the badness of pain, he or she is forced to understand pain as a sensation such that the creature who has it unreflectively takes that sensation to count in favor of whatever would avoid, lessen, or stop it. But now notice what this means. In order to salvage his or her view of pain as bad independently of our evaluative attitudes, the realist must admit that pain’s badness depends on its being a sensation such that the creature who has it is unreflectively inclined to take it to be bad. But this, in turn, is just to admit that its badness depends in an important sense on our evaluative attitudes in particular, on our being unreflectively inclined to take it to be bad. Pain may well be bad, in other words, but if it is so, its badness hinges crucially on our unreflective evaluative attitudes toward the sensation which pain is. The realist is thus forced to recognize the role of our evaluative attitudes in determining the disvalue of pain. Though initially plausible, it is a mistake to say that pain is bad independently of our evaluative attitudes. Pain, if it is plausibly to be construed as bad independently of our other evaluative attitudes, must be understood as a sensation such that we have a certain evaluative attitude toward it and it’s that evaluative attitude which (at least in part) makes the sensation bad.
The Darwinian Dilemma makes moral realism impossible – the realist must defend judgements being true by pure coincidence or an anti-scientific account of evolution Street 06 (Sharon, Professor of Philosophy and Associate Chair of the Department of Philosophy at New York University) “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” Springer, 2006 Contemporary realist theories of value claim to be compatible with natural science. In this paper, I call this claim into question by arguing that Darwinian considerations pose a dilemma for these theories. The main thrust of my argument is this. Evolutionary forces have played a tremendous role in shaping the content of human evaluative attitudes. The challenge for realist theories of value is to explain the relation between these evolutionary influences on our evaluative attitudes, on the one hand, and the independent evaluative truths that realism posits, on the other. Realism, I argue, can give no satisfactory account of this relation. On the one hand, the realist may claim that there is no relation between evolutionary influences on our evaluative attitudes and independent evaluative truths. But this claim leads to the implausible skeptical result that most of our evaluative judgements are off track due to the distorting pressure of Darwinian forces. The realist’s other option is to claim that there is a relation between evolutionary influences and independent evaluative truths, namely that natural selection favored ancestors who were able to grasp those truths. But this account, I argue, is unacceptable on scientific grounds. Either way, then, realist theories of value prove unable to accommodate the fact that Darwinian forces have deeply influenced the content of human values. After responding to three objections, the third of which leads me to argue against a realist understanding of the disvalue of pain, I conclude by sketching how antirealism is able to sidestep the dilemma I have presented. Antirealist theories of value are able to offer an alternative account of the relation between evolutionary forces and evaluative facts an account that allows us to reconcile our understanding of evaluative truth with our understanding of the many non-rational causes that have played a role in shaping our evaluative judgements. No new framework warrants – 1NC strategy is premised on the 1AC and late-breaking debates kill clash Our argument doesn’t justify inaction; it may be that the government should do the plan, but that’s not the question the resolution asks. The rez asks: “is there a moral obligation to do the plan?” not “is the plan beneficial?” or “do the benefits of doing the plan outweigh the costs?” Our interpretation is that the aff must prove that WTO member nations have a moral obligation to eliminate patents for medicines. Ought expresses a moral obligation Dictionary n.d. (Dictionary.com) “Ought” JL (used to express duty or moral obligation): Ought statements assume moral realism Anscombe 58 (G.E.M. Anscombe) Modern Moral Philosophy, The Journal of the The Royal Institute of Philosophy, 1/1958 DRD The terms "should" or "ought" or "needs" relate to good and bad: e.g. machinery needs oil, or should or ought to be oiled, in that running without oil is bad for it, or it runs badly without oil. According to this conception, of course, "should" and "ought" are not used in a special "moral" sense when one says that a man should not bilk. (In Aristotle's sense of the term "moral" (ijfo/cds), they are being used in connection with a moral subject-matter: namely that of human passions and (non-technical) actions.) But they have now acquired a special so-called "moral" sense—i.e. a sense in which they imply some absolute verdict (like one of guilty / not guilty on a man) on what is described in the "ought" sentences used in certain types of context: not merely the contexts that Aristotle would call "moral"—passions and actions—but also some of the contexts that he would call "intellectual." The ordinary (and quite indispensable) terms "should," "needs," "ought," "must"—acquired this special sense by being equated in the relevant contexts with "is obliged," or "is bound," or "is required to," in the sense in which one can be obliged or bound by law, or something can be required by law.
Prefer it:
Precision – the resolution says “ought to,” not should – the resolution is the most predictable stasis point for debates, anything outside of that ruins prep and clash by allowing the affirmative to pick any grounds for debate 2. Phil Ed – all of the debates that happen under their interp can still occur; we just also allow for debates about meta-ethics. Those debates are valuable -- saying “we have a moral obligation to do X” is useless if you can’t answer the argument that moral obligations don’t exist. 3. Ground – anti-moral realism is a key negative generic, especially on a topic where there’s an aff about every WTO member and kind of medicine, but no neg args that answer every aff 4. No offense – a. Stale debates are inevitable because of generics like Nebel T, but generic meta ethics debates are better since they produce transferrable skills b. Our interp filters out bad arguments – a prioris and paradoxes don’t negate since they don’t disprove that states have a moral obligation to do the plan
9/4/21
SEPTOCT - T - Medicine
Tournament: Greenhill | Round: 3 | Opponent: Strath Haven AM | Judge: Eric He Interpretation – topical affs must defend a reduction of intellectual property protections for medicines. Violation – they reduce IP protections on vaccines which is categorically distinct Medicines are drugs Senate Journal 12 (SENATE JOURNAL STATE OF ILLINOIS )”NINETY-SEVENTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY 92ND LEGISLATIVE DAY”, https://www.ilga.gov/senate/journals/97/2012/SJ097092R.pdf, MARCH 8, 2012 Medicines means and includes all drugs intended for human or veterinary use approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Vaccines are not drugs He et al 12 (Yongqun, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan Medical School, primary bioinformatics interests are development of biomedical ontologies and their applications in literature mining, Bayesian network modeling, microbial genomics, and vaccine informatics)“A 2012 Workshop: Vaccine and Drug Ontology in the Study of Mechanism and Effect,” Journal of Biomedical Semantics, 12/18/2012 JL Innovative therapeutic interventions are critical to prevent and treat human and animal diseases. A way to broadly classify therapeutic interventions is through their timing in administration: Vaccines are classically administered to prevent the appearance of a medical problem, while drugs are generally administered to treat a medical problem. Noticeable exceptions can be found for both classes of therapeutic interventions such as cancer vaccines (that are administered after detection of the problem), and protein pump inhibitors (that are often administered to prevent gastric problems in co-therapy with other drugs or in specific hospital settings). Nevertheless, vaccines and drugs are similarly regulated both in research and development, manufacturing, clinical trials, government approval and regulation, and post-licensing usage surveillance and monitoring. In a broader scope, vaccine is a special type of drug. Vaccines and drugs also have many differences. For example, for vaccines, dose, time, route, and frequency of administration are generally known quite precisely. However, since drugs are used for patients with different conditions, dose, time, and frequency of drug administration are often very difficult to establish. Since vaccines are often administered to healthy people to prevent medical problems, attribution of an adverse event following vaccination is less likely to be confounded by signs or symptoms of underlying medical problems as it is with drugs that are administered to treat medical problems. However, separation of manifestation of medical problem from manifestation of drug adverse event is often very challenging. In the U.S.A, vaccines are regulated under different laws by the Center for Biologics (CBER) at FDA, while drugs are regulated under the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act by the Center for Drugs (CDER) at FDA. Safety surveillance for vaccines is for the most part carried out by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, while for drugs it is carried out by the FDA. Due to these similarities and differences between vaccines and drugs, a closer communication between these two areas is important to create effective ontological frameworks around which we can build comparative and predictive systems for both vaccines and drugs. Prefer –
Limits – allowing non medicines explodes limits to include affs that defend reducing protections for surgeries, therapy, injury prevention, cosmetic procedures, etc. – makes neg prep impossible because the case neg to the Botox and Laser Eye Surgery affs would have no overlap – privileges the aff by stretching pre-tournament neg prep too thin and precluding nuanced rigorous testing of aff 2. Ground – arbitrarily not defending medicines kills links to core neg generics about drug innovation, competition over pharmaceutical development, or production of medicine needing to increase because medical interventions are uncontroversial – plus they’re regulated by different agencies – pushes 1NCs to the fringes like Ks that disagree with everything or sketchy CPs which destroys clash. 3. No plan text in a vacuum – the only way to logically join the plan text and advantage is to presume they defend the medicines discussed in their advantage
Paradigm issues –
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start 2. Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical 3. Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation 4. Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater 5. Education is a voter – why schools fund debate
9/18/21
SEPTOCT - T - Nebel Medicines
Tournament: Loyola | Round: 5 | Opponent: Saratoga AG | Judge: Ronak Ahuja Interpretation: medicines is a generic bare plural. The aff may not defend that member nations of the World Trade Organization reduce intellectual property protections for a subset of medicines. Nebel 19 Jake Nebel Jake Nebel is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Southern California and executive director of Victory Briefs. , 8-12-2019, "Genericity on the Standardized Tests Resolution," Briefly, https://www.vbriefly.com/2019/08/12/genericity-on-the-standardized-tests-resolution/ SM Both distinctions are important. Generic resolutions can’t be affirmed by specifying particular instances. But, since generics tolerate exceptions, plan-inclusive counterplans (PICs) do not negate generic resolutions. Bare plurals are typically used to express generic generalizations. But there are two important things to keep in mind. First, generic generalizations are also often expressed via other means (e.g., definite singulars, indefinite singulars, and bare singulars). Second, and more importantly for present purposes, bare plurals can also be used to express existential generalizations. For example, “Birds are singing outside my window” is true just in case there are some birds singing outside my window; it doesn’t require birds in general to be singing outside my window. So, what about “colleges and universities,” “standardized tests,” and “undergraduate admissions decisions”? Are they generic or existential bare plurals? On other topics I have taken great pains to point out that their bare plurals are generic—because, well, they are. On this topic, though, I think the answer is a bit more nuanced. Let’s see why. 1.1 “Colleges and Universities” “Colleges and universities” is a generic bare plural. I don’t think this claim should require any argument, when you think about it, but here are a few reasons. First, ask yourself, honestly, whether the following speech sounds good to you: “Eight colleges and universities—namely, those in the Ivy League—ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions. Maybe other colleges and universities ought to consider them, but not the Ivies. Therefore, in the United States, colleges and universities ought not consider standardized tests in undergraduate admissions decisions.” That is obviously not a valid argument: the conclusion does not follow. Anyone who sincerely believes that it is valid argument is, to be charitable, deeply confused. But the inference above would be good if “colleges and universities” in the resolution were existential. By way of contrast: “Eight birds are singing outside my window. Maybe lots of birds aren’t singing outside my window, but eight birds are. Therefore, birds are singing outside my window.” Since the bare plural “birds” in the conclusion gets an existential reading, the conclusion follows from the premise that eight birds are singing outside my window: “eight” entails “some.” If the resolution were existential with respect to “colleges and universities,” then the Ivy League argument above would be a valid inference. Since it’s not a valid inference, “colleges and universities” must be a generic bare plural. Second, “colleges and universities” fails the upward-entailment test for existential uses of bare plurals. Consider the sentence, “Lima beans are on my plate.” This sentence expresses an existential statement that is true just in case there are some lima beans on my plate. One test of this is that it entails the more general sentence, “Beans are on my plate.” Now consider the sentence, “Colleges and universities ought not consider the SAT.” (To isolate “colleges and universities,” I’ve eliminated the other bare plurals in the resolution; it cannot plausibly be generic in the isolated case but existential in the resolution.) This sentence does not entail the more general statement that educational institutions ought not consider the SAT. This shows that “colleges and universities” is generic, because it fails the upward-entailment test for existential bare plurals. Third, “colleges and universities” fails the adverb of quantification test for existential bare plurals. Consider the sentence, “Dogs are barking outside my window.” This sentence expresses an existential statement that is true just in case there are some dogs barking outside my window. One test of this appeals to the drastic change of meaning caused by inserting any adverb of quantification (e.g., always, sometimes, generally, often, seldom, never, ever). You cannot add any such adverb into the sentence without drastically changing its meaning. To apply this test to the resolution, let’s again isolate the bare plural subject: “Colleges and universities ought not consider the SAT.” Adding generally (“Colleges and universities generally ought not consider the SAT”) or ever (“Colleges and universities ought not ever consider the SAT”) result in comparatively minor changes of meaning. (Note that this test doesn’t require there to be no change of meaning and doesn’t have to work for every adverb of quantification.) This strongly suggests what we already know: that “colleges and universities” is generic rather than existential in the resolution. Fourth, it is extremely unlikely that the topic committee would have written the resolution with the existential interpretation of “colleges and universities” in mind. If they intended the existential interpretation, they would have added explicit existential quantifiers like “some.” No such addition would be necessary or expected for the generic interpretation since generics lack explicit quantifiers by default. The topic committee’s likely intentions are not decisive, but they strongly suggest that the generic interpretation is correct, since it’s prima facie unlikely that a committee charged with writing a sentence to be debated would be so badly mistaken about what their sentence means (which they would be if they intended the existential interpretation). The committee, moreover, does not write resolutions for the 0.1 percent of debaters who debate on the national circuit; they write resolutions, at least in large part, to be debated by the vast majority of students on the vast majority of circuits, who would take the resolution to be (pretty obviously, I’d imagine) generic with respect to “colleges and universities,” given its face-value meaning and standard expectations about what LD resolutions tend to mean.
It applies to medicines:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying that nations ought to reduce IPP for one medicine does not entail that those nations ought to reduce IPP for all medicines 2. Adverb test – adding “usually” to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning because a reduction is permanent
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh: a. T is a constitutive rule of the activity and a basic aff burden – they agreed to debate the topic when they came here b. Jurisdiction – you can’t vote aff if they haven’t affirmed the resolution c. It’s the only stasis point we know before the round so it controls the internal link to engagement – there’s no way to use ground if debaters aren’t prepared to defend it
2. Limits – there are countless affs accounting for thousands of medicines – unlimited topics incentivize obscure affs that negs won’t have prep on – limits are key to reciprocal prep burden – potential abuse doesn’t justify foregoing the topic and 1AR theory checks PICs
There are over 20,000 affs FDA 11/18 (U.S. Food and Drug Administration, federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Service) “Fact Sheet: FDA at a Glance,” 11/18/2020 JL There are over 20,000 prescription drug products approved for marketing. FDA oversees over 6,500 different medical device product categories. There are over 1,600 FDA-approved animal drug products. There are about 300 FDA-licensed biologics products.
3. Ground – spec guts core generics like innovation that rely on reducing IP for all medicines because individual medicines don’t affect the pharmaceutical industry broadly – also means there is no universal DA to spec affs
4. TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start 2. Comes before 1AR theory – NC abuse is responsive to them not being topical 3. Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation 4. No RVIs – fairness and education are a priori burdens – and encourages baiting – outweighs because if T is frivolous, they can beat it quickly 5. Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater 6. Education is a voter – why schools fund debate
9/5/21
SEPTOCT - T - WTO
Tournament: Greenhill RR | Round: Finals | Opponent: Harker DS | Judge: Panel Interp – topical affs must fiat an action through the World Trade Organization. Member nations of the WTO make policies as a whole – WTO ND (World Trade Organization) “What is the WTO?” https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/whatis_e/whatis_e.htm BC The WTO is run by its member governments. All major decisions are made by the membership as a whole, either by ministers (who usually meet at least once every two years) or by their ambassadors or delegates (who meet regularly in Geneva). Nation and state are synonymous Merriam Webster ND “nation” Merriam Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nation BC Definition of nation (Entry 1 of 2) 1a(1): NATIONALITY sense 5athree Slav peoples … forged into a Yugoslavia without really fusing into a Yugoslav nation— Hans Kohn (2): a politically organized nationality (3)in the Bible : a non-Jewish nationality why do the nations conspire— Psalms 2:1 (Revised Standard Version) b: a community of people composed of one or more nationalities and possessing a more or less defined territory and government Canada is a nation with a written constitution— B. K. Sandwell c: a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent status a nation of vast size with a small population— Mary K. Hammond
Violation – they don’t – EU member states are distinct from WTO member nations Prefer
Ground – justifies affs about any country reducing any IP protection on medicine – only our interp ensures link magnitude by ensuring it is an international reduction for IPP for medicine which is key to generics like the innovation DA, WTO bad, consult the WHO, and the IP NC -- privileges the aff by stretching pre-tournament neg prep too thin and precluding nuanced rigorous testing of aff. 2. Topic ed – WTO patent wavers are the core topic controversy – their aff is just domestic policy passed in European Union Member states. Proven by their second advantage – none of their internal links are about medical trade secrets which proves their interpretation is a cheap way of getting a relations impact about any two countries that does trade – justifies the US-Mexico or China-Japan aff. Outweighs aff flex -- prep is determined by the lit and we only have 2 months to debate the topic and it provides better link magnitude to all your generics because this is the statis point the topic is centered around. 3. Precision - even if all EU member states are in the WTO that doesn’t mean all WTO member nations are in the EU – prefer our interp – we have evidence from the WTO that explains what coordinated action looks like. Paradigm issues:
Drop the debater – their abusive advocacy skewed the debate from the start 2. Competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation 3. Fairness is a voter ¬– necessary to determine the better debater 4. Education is a voter – why schools fund debate