Tournament: NA | Round: 1 | Opponent: NA | Judge: NA
1AC
Resolution: The member nations of the World Trade Organization ought to reduce intellectual property protections for medicines.
Value: Quality of Life
Value-Criteria: Teleology
Contention 1: Saving Lives
- Access to vaccinations and medicines
- Covid-19 variations spreading - deadly - need vaccination to prevent death
Steenhuysen, Smout, and Rabinovitch 21, Julie Steenhuysen, Alistair Smout and Ari Rabinovitch, July 26, 2021, at 6:19 a.m., Reuters, “How the Delta Variant Upends Assumptions About the Coronavirus”, 8/23, https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2021-07-26/how-the-delta-variant-upends-assumptions-about-the-coronavirus, Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago, Alistair Smout in London, Ari Rabinovitch and Maayan Lubell in Jerusalem; Editing by Will Dunham and Bill Berkrot
"The Delta variant is the fastest, fittest and most formidable version of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 the world has encountered, and it is upending assumptions about the disease even as nations loosen restrictions and open their economies, according to virologists and epidemiologists..."
- Billions lack access
Rouw et al. 21, Anna Rouw, Adam Wexler, Jennifer Kates, and Josh Michaud, Jul 21, 2021, Kaiser Family Foundation, Tracking Global COVID-19 Vaccine Equity, 8/24, https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/tracking-global-covid-19-vaccine-equity/, Anna Rouw is a data analyst on the Global Health and HIV Policy team where she provides data analysis and policy research on a wide range of global health policy topics. Previously, Anna has held positions working for the Oklahoma House of Representatives as a non-partisan health policy analyst and the Oklahoma Policy Institute as a data intern. She graduated from the University of Tulsa with a B.A. in Political Science, Adam Wexler is an Associate Director of Global Health and HIV Policy with the Global Health team at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, where he focuses on analyzing the U.S. global health budget, international donor assistance for health, U.S. bilateral health agreements, and implications of foreign aid reform on U.S. global health efforts. Prior to joining KFF, Adam worked as a policy analyst for the City of San Diego. Adam holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from Gettysburg College and a Master of Public Policy from Georgetown University, Dr. Jen Kates is Senior Vice President and Director of Global Health and HIV Policy at KFF, where she oversees policy analysis and research focused on the U.S. government’s role in global health and on the global and domestic HIV epidemics. Widely regarded as an expert in the field, she regularly publishes and presents on global health and HIV policy issues and is particularly known for her work analyzing donor government investments in global health; assessing and mapping the U.S. government’s global health architecture, programs, and funding; and tracking and analyzing major U.S. HIV programs and financing, and key trends in the HIV epidemic, an area she has been working in for close to thirty years. Prior to joining KFF in 1998, Dr. Kates was a Senior Associate with The Lewin Group, a health care consulting firm, where she focused on HIV policy, strategic planning/health systems analysis, and health care for vulnerable populations. Among other prior positions, she directed the Office of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Concerns at Princeton University. Dr. Kates has served on numerous federal and private sector advisory committees on global health and HIV issues, including PEPFAR’s Scientific Advisory Board, the NIH Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council, the CDC/HRSA Advisory Committee on HIV, Viral Hepatitis and STD Prevention and Treatment (CHACHSPT), the board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society. She is also a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Dr. Kates received her Ph.D. in Health Policy from George Washington University. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, a Master’s degree in Public Affairs from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and a Master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, Josh Michaud is an Associate Director for Global Health Policy at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, where he helps guide and oversee KFF’s research and analysis in the area of global health. Dr. Michaud is an authority on a range of global health policy issues including financing, the roles and activities of U.S. agencies and multilateral organizations, health diplomacy, and global health security and emerging diseases. Dr. Michaud is also a Professorial Lecturer at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington D.C., where he teaches courses on global health policy, public health and development. In the past, Dr. Michaud worked as an infectious disease epidemiologist with the U.S. Department of Defense and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He holds a Ph.D. in International Health Policy from Johns Hopkins SAIS, an M.A. in Applied Economics from Johns Hopkins University, and an M.H.S. in Infectious Disease Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
"As of July 7, 2021, of the estimated 3.3 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses administered globally, most had been provided in a small number of countries only..."
- Spread leaves to civil strife, need development to reverse trends
Labott 21, Elise Labott, JULY 22, 2021, 11:33 AM, Foreign Policy, “Get Ready for a Spike in Global Unrest COVID-19 threatens to accelerate longer-term rebellion, violence, and political upheaval.”, 8/24, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/22/covid-global-unrest-political-upheaval/, Elise Labott, a columnist at Foreign Policy and an adjunct professor at American University’s School of International Service.
"To call 2021 the summer of discontent would be a severe understatement..."
- IPRs preventing distribution
Turner and Rourke 21, Mark Eccleston-Turner and Michelle Rourke, May 27, 2021, American Society of International Law, “The TRIPS Waiver is Necessary, but it Alone is not Enough to Solve Equitable Access to COVID-19 Vaccines”, 8/24, https://www.asil.org/insights/volume/25/issue/9, Mark Eccleston-Turner, Lecturer of Global Health Law, Keele University, Michelle Rourke, CSIRO Synthetic Biology Future Science Fellow, Griffith University, Australia.
"High-income countries have dominated the limited supply of COVID-19 vaccines, leaving low and middle-income countries (LMICs) with limited, if any, supplies of these life-saving countermeasures..."
- IPRs reduction is essential to end pandemic
Silverman 2020, Ed Silverman, Oct. 3, 2020, STAT, “South Africa and India urge WTO to waive IP rights, widen access to Covid-19 drugs and vaccines”, 8/25, https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2020/10/03/wto-covid19-coronavirus-patents-india-southafrica/, Ed Silverman is a senior writer and Pharmalot columnist at STAT, and has covered the pharmaceutical industry for more than 25 years. Prior to joining STAT at its founding in 2015, he worked at The Wall Street Journal, The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, and New York Newsday, among other publications. He won the Gerald Loeb Award for business journalism commentary in 2018 for his Pharmalot View columns. Along with several former Wall Street Journal colleagues, Ed was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in explanatory journalism in 2016 for a series of stories on prescription drug pricing. He earned an accounting degree from Binghamton University and a master’s in journalism from New York University.
"The move comes as several wealthy nations — notably, the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and France — have signed deals with various drug makers for hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines that are still being tested. But poorer countries lack the means to place such orders and global health officials fear that inequitable access will cause further immeasurable suffering and the coronavirus will not be contained..."
- IPRs lead to collapse of effectiveness of vaccinations
Barry 21, John M. Barry, July 26, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. EDT, The Washington Post, “Opinion: What history tells us about the delta variant — and the variants that will follow”, 8/25, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/07/26/what-history-tells-us-about-delta-variant-variants-that-will-follow/, John M. Barry is the author of “The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History” and Distinguished Scholar at Tulane University’s School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.
"As is obvious to everyone, the delta variant is surging..."
- Reduction needed to ensure effectiveness and distribution
Gupta and Namboodiri 21, Vineeta Gupta Sreenath Namboodiri, JULY 13, 2021, Health Affairs, “America And The TRIPS Waiver: You Can Talk The Talk, But Will You Walk The Walk?”, 8/26, https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20210712.248782/full/, Vineeta Gupta, MD, JD, LLM, is a maternal and child health physician, human rights advocate, and a passionate activist for health equity. As director, she leads the ACTION Global Health Advocacy Partnership as well as a volunteer-based policy advocacy organization that unites the Indian diaspora to mount a prompt, global response to the COVID-19 crisis in India. Dr. Gupta has more than 20 years of tri-sector experience in leading and supporting projects in more than 25 countries. In addition to conducting organization development, diversity, inclusion, equity, and global health equity workshops, Gupta has designed and facilitated partnership projects to achieve agreements and results on complex issues. She has been invited to speak in more than 60 universities in the US and Europe, Sreenath Namboodiri, LLM, LLB, is assistant professor at the School of Ethics, Governance, Culture and Social Systems at Chinmaya Vishwavidyapeeth and a post-graduate on law of intellectual property rights (IPR) from Inter University Centre for IPR Studies, CUSAT, Kochi. His areas of interest are in intellectual property rights vis-à-vis health systems, sustainable development and innovation, pharmaceutical patents, knowledge governance, and technology and law. He is an honorary fellow of the Centre for Economy, Development, and Law since 2013. Namboodiri is part of the editorial team of Elenchus Law Review, a biannual peer-reviewed journal from the Centre (CEDandL). He has also worked as a guest lecturer in Inter University Centre for IPR Studies, CUSAT, Kochi, where he provided courses on access to medicine and IP, and patents and biotechnology.
"The TRIPS waiver is critical to combating the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. Demand for the vaccine has already surpassed supply, with high-income countries taking a large share of reserved doses..."