Contact me emmawollaeger25@marlboroughorg or text me at 323-804-9447
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Tournament: Contact Information | Round: 1 | Opponent: NA | Judge: NA Hey! Im Emma (she/her or they/them)
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Contact me emmawollaeger25@marlboroughorg or text me at 323-804-9447
10/11/21
ND - Pandemics PIC
Tournament: Glenbrooks | Round: 1 | Opponent: Peninsula AJ | Judge: Naqvi, Akeela Off 1 – Nebel T Interpretation: workers is a generic bare plural. The aff may not defend that a just government ought to recognize the unconditional right of a specific type of workers to strike. 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 workers:
Upward entailment test – spec fails the upward entailment test because saying that a just government ought to recognize the right of one type of workers to strike does not entail that all nations ought to recognize the right of all workers to strike 2. Adverb test – adding “usually” to the res doesn’t substantially change its meaning
Vote neg:
Semantics outweigh: 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 different professions and any combination thereof– 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 3. TVA solves – read as an advantage to whole rez
Drop the debater to preserve fairness and education – use competing interps – reasonability invites arbitrary judge intervention and a race to the bottom of questionable argumentation
2– Pandemics PIC Plan Text: A just government ought to recognize the right of healthcare workers to strike except for healthcare workers responding to pandemics. Nurse strikes devastate hospitals Wright 10 Sarah H. Wright July 2010 "Evidence on the Effects of Nurses' Strikes" https://www.nber.org/digest/jul10/evidence-effects-nurses-strikes (Researcher at National Bureau of Economic Research) U.S. hospitals were excluded from collective bargaining laws for three decades longer than other sectors because of fears that strikes by nurses might imperil patients' health. Today, while unionization has been declining in general, it is growing rapidly in hospitals, with the number of unionized workers rising from 679,000 in 1990 to nearly one million in 2008. In Do Strikes Kill? Evidence from New York State (NBER Working Paper No. 15855), co-authors Jonathan Gruber and Samuel Kleiner carefully examine the effects of nursing strikes on patient care and outcomes. The researchers match data on nurses' strikes in New York State from 1984 to 2004 to data on hospital discharges, including information on treatment intensity, patient mortality, and hospital readmission. They conclude that nurses' strikes were costly to hospital patients: in-hospital mortality increased by 19.4 percent and hospital readmissions increased by 6.5 percent for patients admitted during a strike. Among their sample of 38,228 such patients, an estimated 138 more individuals died than would have without a strike, and 344 more patients were readmitted to the hospital than if there had been no strike. "Hospitals functioning during nurses' strikes do so at a lower quality of patient care," they write. Still, at hospitals experiencing strikes, the measures of treatment intensity -- that is, the length of hospital stay and the number of procedures performed during the patient's stay -- show no significant differences between striking and non-striking periods. Patients appear to receive the same intensity of care during union work stoppages as during normal hospital operations. Thus, the poor outcomes associated with strikes suggest that they might reduce hospital productivity. These poor health outcomes increased for both emergency and non-emergency hospital patients, even as admissions of both groups decreased by about 28 percent at hospitals with strikes. The poor health outcomes were not apparent either before or after the strike in the striking hospitals, suggesting that they are attributable to the strike itself. And, the poor health outcomes do not appear to do be due to different types of patients being admitted during strike periods, because patients admitted during a strike are very similar to those admitted during other periods. Hiring replacement workers apparently does not help: hospitals that hired replacement workers performed no better during strikes than those that did not hire substitute employees. In each case, patients with conditions that required intensive nursing were more likely to fare worse in the presence of nurses' strikes. Hospitals are the critical internal link for pandemic preparedness. Al Thobaity 20, Abdullelah, and Farhan Alshammari. "Nurses on the frontline against the COVID-19 pandemic: an Integrative review." Dubai Medical Journal 3.3 (2020): 87-92. (Associate Professor of Nursing at Taif University) The majority of infected or symptomatic people seek medical treatment in medical facilities, particularly hospitals, as a high number of cases, especially those in critical condition, will have an impact on hospitals 4. The concept of hospital resilience in disaster situations is defined as the ability to recover from the damage caused by huge disturbances quickly 2. The resilience of hospitals to pandemic cases depends on the preparedness of the institutions, and not all hospitals have the same resilience. A lower resilience will affect the sustainability of the health services. This also affects healthcare providers such as doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals 5, 6. Despite the impact on healthcare providers, excellent management of a pandemic depends on the level of preparedness of healthcare providers, including nurses. This means that if it was impossible to be ready before a crisis or disaster, responsible people will do all but the impossible to save lives.
Healthcare workers are key to saving millions of lives during COVID-19 through treatment and administering vaccines Garrett Ilg, 21 - ("Celebrating Healthcare Workers and the Technology that Empowers Them," Oracle APAC, 4-7-2021, https://www.oracle.com/apac/news/announcement/blog/celebrating-healthcare-workers-technology-2021-04-05.html?source=:so:ch:or:awr::::)/AK As we observe the World Health Organization’s World Health Day on April 7, I want to celebrate the people and institutions on the front lines of healthcare worldwide—especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Their steely dedication and relentless innovation have produced multiple, highly effective coronavirus vaccines in record time. They’ve administered close to 460 million doses of those vaccines, according to the WHO, saving countless millions of lives. And they’ve treated a large subset of about 125 million confirmed cases, often at great personal risk and with insufficient resources. Oracle’s National Electronic Health Records Database and the Oracle Public Health Management System, built by a global team that worked round the clock, in partnership with government and non-government institutions, played a critical role in that Herculean effort. In addition to electronically screening hundreds of thousands of volunteers for COVID-19 clinical trials, the system has collected millions of daily health updates from patients and healthcare providers. It was designed from the ground up to scale to the populations of entire nations as COVID-19 vaccines become more widely available. New Pandemics are deadlier and faster are coming – COVID is just the beginning Future pandemics cause extinction Eleftherios P. Diamandis 21 (works for the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada; Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Canada; Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada. “The Mother of All Battles: Viruses vs. Humans. Can Humans Avoid Extinction in 50-100 Years? 4/13/21 https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202104.0397/v1 The recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which is causing COVID 19 disease, has taught us unexpected lessons about the dangers of human extinction through highly contagious and lethal diseases. As the COVID 19 pandemic is now being controlled by various isolation measures, therapeutics and vaccines, it became clear that our current lifestyle and societal functions may not be sustainable in the long term. We now have to start thinking and planning on how to face the next dangerous pandemic, not just overcoming the one that is upon us now. Is there any evidence that even worse pandemics could strike us in the near future and threaten the existence of the human race? The answer is unequivocally yes. It is not necessary to get infected by viruses of bats, pangolins and other exotic animals that live in remote forests in order to be in danger. Creditable scientific evidence indicates that the human gut microbiota harbor billions of viruses which are capable of affecting the function of vital human organs such as the immune system, lung, brain, liver, kidney, heart etc. It is possible that the development of pathogenic variants in the gut can lead to contagious viruses which can cause pandemics, leading to destruction of vital organs, causing death or various debilitating diseases such as blindness, respiratory, liver, heart and kidney failures. These diseases could result n the complete shutdown of our civilization and probably the extinction of human race. In this essay, I will first provide a few independent pieces of scientific facts and then combine this information to come up with some (but certainly not all) hypothetical scenarios that could cause human race misery, even extinction. I hope that these scary scenarios will trigger preventative measures that could reverse or delay the projected adverse outcomes. 1) Turns and outweighs the entire aff – now is the worst time for strikes 2) Solves structural violence -- the hospitals that can afford to pay their staff through the pandemic are the richest hospitals that serve the richest patients; it’s the safety net hospitals struggling to keep people on staff that experience the most worker strikes 3 – PRO Act CP CP text: the US ought to pass the PRO act. The problem with worker organization isn’t the right to strike- it’s companies taking deliberate anti-union action. Means the aff can never solve. Heidi Shierholz, 20 - ("Weakened labor movement leads to rising economic inequality," Economic Policy Institute, 1-27-2020, 11-4-2021https:www.epi.org/blog/weakened-labor-movement-leads-to-rising-economic-inequality/)AW The basic facts about inequality in the United States—that for most of the last 40 years, pay has stagnated for all but the highest paid workers and inequality has risen dramatically—are widely understood. What is less well-known is the role the decline of unionization has played in those trends. The share of workers covered by a collective bargaining agreement dropped from 27 percent to 11.6 percent between 1979 and 2019, meaning the union coverage rate is now less than half where it was 40 years ago. Research shows that this de-unionization accounts for a sizable share of the growth in inequality over that period—around 13–20 percent for women and 33–37 percent for men. Applying these shares to annual earnings data reveals that working people are now losing on the order of $200 billion per year as a result of the erosion of union coverage over the last four decades—with that money being redistributed upward, to the rich. The good news is that restoring union coverage—and strengthening workers’ abilities to join together to improve their wages and working conditions in other ways—is therefore likely to put at least $200 billion per year into the pockets of working people. These changes could happen through organizing and policy reform. Policymakers have introduced legislation, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, that would significantly reform current labor law. Building on the reforms in the PRO Act, the Clean Slate for Worker Power Project proposes further transformation of labor law, with innovative ideas to create balance in our economy. How is it that de-unionization has played such a large role in wage stagnation for working people and the rise of inequality? When workers are able to join together, form a union and collectively bargain, their pay goes up. On average, a worker covered by a union contract earns 13.2 percent more than a peer with similar education, occupation and experience in a non-unionized workplace in the same sector. Furthermore, the benefits of collective bargaining extend well beyond union workers. Where unions are strong, they essentially set broader standards that non-union employers must match in order to attract and retain the workers they need and to avoid facing an organizing drive. The combination of the direct effect of unions on their members and this “spillover” effect to non-union workers means unions are crucial in fostering a vibrant middle class—and has also meant that as unionization has eroded, pay for working people has stagnated and inequality has skyrocketed. Unions also help shrink racial wage gaps. For example, black workers are more likely than white workers to be represented by a union, and black workers who are in unions get a larger boost to wages from being in a union than white workers do. This means that the decline of unionization has played a significant role in the expansion of the black–white wage gap. But isn’t the erosion of unionization because workers don’t want unions anymore? No—survey data show that in fact, a higher share of non-union workers say they would vote for a union in their workplace today than did 40 years ago. Isn’t the erosion of unionization due to the shifts in employment from manufacturing to service-producing industries? No again—changing industry composition explains only a small share of the erosion of union coverage. What has caused declining unionization? One key factor is fierce corporate opposition that has smothered workers’ freedom to form unions. Aggressive anti-union campaigns—once confined to the most anti-union employers—have become widespread. For example, it is now standard, when workers seek to organize, for their employers to hire union avoidance consultants to coordinate fierce anti-union campaigns. We estimate that employers spend nearly $340 million per year hiring union avoidance advisers to help them prevent employees from organizing. And though the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) makes it illegal for employers to intimidate, coerce or fire workers in retaliation for participating in union-organizing campaigns, the penalties are grossly insufficient to provide a meaningful disincentive for such behavior. This means employers often engage in illegal activities, such as threatening to close the worksite, cutting union activists’ hours or pay, or reporting workers to immigration enforcement authorities if employees unionize. In at least 1 in 5 union elections, employers are charged with illegally firing workers involved in organizing. In the face of these attacks on union organizing, policymakers have egregiously failed to update labor laws to balance the system. Fundamental reform is necessary to build worker power and guarantee all workers the right to come together and have a real voice in their workplace. The PRO act solves way better than the aff by making it easier for workers to unionize. Celine McNicholas and Lynn Rhinehart, 19 - ("The PRO Act: Giving workers more bargaining power on the job," Economic Policy Institute, 5-2-2019, 11-4-2021https:www.epi.org/blog/the-pro-act-giving-workers-more-bargaining-power-on-the-job/)AW Our economy is out of balance. Corporations and CEOs hold too much power and wealth, and working people know it. Workers are mobilizing, organizing, protesting, and striking at a level not seen in decades, and they are winning pay raises and other real change by using their collective voices. But, the fact is, it is still too difficult for working people to form a union at their workplace when they want to. The law gives employers too much power and puts too many roadblocks in the way of workers trying to organize with their co-workers. That’s why the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act—introduced today by Senator Murray and Representative Scott—is such an important piece of legislation. The PRO Act addresses several major problems with the current law and tries to give working people a fair shot when they try to join together with their coworkers to form a union and bargain for better wages, benefits, and conditions at their workplaces. Here’s how: Stronger and swifter remedies when employers interfere with workers’ rights. Under current law, there are no penalties on employers or compensatory damages for workers when employers illegally fire or retaliate against workers who are trying to form a union. As a result, employers routinely fire pro-union workers, because they know it will undermine the organizing campaign and they will face no real consequences. The PRO Act addresses this issue, instituting civil penalties for violations of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Specifically, the legislation establishes compensatory damages for workers and penalties against employers (including penalties on officers and directors) when employers break the law and illegally fire or retaliate against workers. Importantly, these back pay and damages remedies apply to workers regardless of their immigration status. The PRO Act also requires the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to go to court and get an injunction to immediately reinstate workers if the NLRB believes the employer has illegally retaliated against workers for union activity. With this reform, workers won’t be out of a job and a paycheck while their case works its way through the system. Finally, the PRO Act adds a right for workers to go to court to seek relief, bringing labor law in line with other workplace laws that already contain this right. And, the legislation prohibits employers from forcing workers to waive their right to class or collective litigation. More freedom to organize without employer interference. The PRO Act streamlines the NLRB election process so workers can petition to form a union and get a timely vote without their employer interfering and delaying the vote. The act makes clear it is workers’ decision to file for a union election and that employers have no standing in the NLRB’s election process. It prohibits companies from forcing workers to attend mandatory anti-union meetings as a condition of continued employment. If the employer breaks the law or interferes with a fair election, the PRO Act empowers the NLRB to require the employer to bargain with the union if it had the support of a majority of workers prior to the election. And the PRO Act reinstates an Obama administration rule, which was repealed by the Trump administration, to require employers to disclose the names and payments they make to outside third-party union-busters that they hire to campaign against the union. Winning first contract agreements when workers organize and protecting fair share agreements. The law requires employers to bargain in good faith with the union chosen by their employees to reach a collective bargaining agreement—a contract—addressing wages, benefits, protections from sexual harassment, and other issues. But employers often drag out the bargaining process to avoid reaching an agreement. More than half of all workers who vote to form a union don’t have a collective bargaining agreement a year later. This creates a discouraging situation for workers and allows employers to foster a sense of futility in the process. The PRO Act establishes a process for reaching a first agreement when workers organize, utilizing mediation and then, if necessary, binding arbitration, to enable the parties to reach a first agreement. And the PRO Act overrides so-called “right-to-work” laws by establishing that employers and unions in all 50 states may agree upon a “fair share” clause requiring all workers who are covered by—and benefit from—the collective bargaining agreement to contribute a fair share fee towards the cost of bargaining and administering the agreement. Protecting strikes and other protest activity. When workers need economic leverage in bargaining, the law gives them the right to withhold their labor from their employer—to strike—as a means of putting economic pressure on the employer. But court decisions have dramatically undermined this right by allowing employers to “permanently replace” strikers—in other words, replace strikers with other workers so the strikers no longer have jobs. The law also prohibits boycotts of so-called “secondary” companies as a means of putting economic pressure on the workers’ employer, even if these companies hold real sway over the employer and could help settle the dispute. The PRO Act helps level the playing field for workers by repealing the prohibition on secondary boycotts and prohibiting employers from permanently replacing strikers. Organizing and bargaining rights for more workers. Too often, employers misclassify workers as independent contractors, who do not have the right to organize under the NLRA. Similarly, employers will misclassify workers as supervisors to deprive them of their NLRA rights. The PRO Act tightens the definitions of independent contractor and supervisor to crack down on misclassification and extend NLRA protections to more workers. And, the PRO Act makes clear that workers can have more than one employer, and that both employers need to engage in collective bargaining over the terms and conditions of employment that they control or influence. This provision is particularly important given the prevalence of contracting out and temporary work arrangements—workers need the ability to sit at the bargaining table with all the entities that control or influence their work lives. The PRO Act does not fix all the problems with our labor law, but it would address some fundamental problems and help make it more possible for workers to act on their federally-protected right to join together with their coworkers to bargain with their employer for improvements at their workplace. Research shows that workers want unions. There is a huge gap between the share of workers with union representation (11.9 percent) and the share of workers that would like to have a union and a voice on the job (48 percent). The PRO Act would take a major step forward in closing that gap. Turn: More strikes lead to backlash bills that weaken unions – empirically proven. Partelow ‘19 Lisette Partelow Lisette Partelow is the director of K-12 Strategic Initiatives at American Progress. Her previous experience includes teaching first grade in Washington, D.C., working as a senior legislative assistant for Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-IA), and working as a legislative associate at the Alliance for Excellent Education. She has also worked at the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor and the American Institutes for Research. “Analysis: A Looming Legislative Backlash Against Teacher Strikes? Why Walkouts Could Become Illegal in Some States, With Strikers Facing Fines, Jail, or Loss of Their License”. 02-18-2019. The 74. https://www.the74million.org/article/analysis-a-looming-legislative-backlash-against-teacher-strikes-why-walkouts-could-become-illegal-in-some-states-with-strikers-facing-fines-jail-or-loss-of-their-license/. Accessed 11-3-2021; MJen In 2018 and 2019, after a decade of disinvestment in education that led to stagnant teacher salaries, policymakers have introduced proposals in states across the country to begin reinvesting, spurred in part by teacher walkouts and activism nationwide. While it is wonderful to finally see broad support for raising teacher salaries and investing in public schools, a predictable backlash has also emerged. Legislators in some states that were hotbeds of teacher activism are introducing bills to explicitly prohibit walkouts or punish teachers who participate, often with a sprinkling of additional anti-union provisions. Weakening unions and refusing to invest in education are long-standing conservative tenets, and these bills are evidence that we should expect conservative policymakers to return to them as soon as they believe them to be politically viable. The consequences of a decade of education funding cuts came into sharp relief last spring, after teachers staged walkouts in half a dozen states. The decade of disinvestment in education had its roots in the Great Recession, when many states were forced to drastically cut their K-12 education funding. But as the recovery got underway, many governors — particularly in red states — made intentional policy choices to cut taxes for wealthy residents and corporations rather than allow education funding to rebound to pre-recession levels as revenue increased. As a result, teacher wages stagnated, school budgets were strapped, and expenses such as building repairs and learning materials were deferred year after year. By 2018, reports of crumbling schools, students learning from decades-old textbooks, high teacher turnover, and staff shortages in these states became common. Teachers had reached their boiling point. The teacher walkouts have been very effective. Though they were a last resort, they finally got lawmakers’ attention in states that had seen the most chronic and severe cuts to education. In the states where teachers walked out, governors who hadn’t historically supported education funding agreed to enact significant pay raises and increases in education funding. For example, in Arizona, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey was forced to sign off on a teacher pay bill he had previously opposed that provided a 20 percent raise to the state’s teachers — some of the lowest-paid in the nation — and invested an additional $100 million in schools in the state. And now, in several states with low teacher pay that have so far avoided major protests, some governors have proposed salary increases. Remarkably, much of this movement is happening in deep-red states with historically low education spending. In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster wants to give teachers a 5 percent pay raise; in Texas, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has proposed a $5,000 increase; and in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp has proposed a $3,000 increase. In all three of these states, teachers are paid less than the national average. It’s likely that last year’s walkouts nudged these governors to consider teacher pay in a way that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Though it goes against traditional conservative principles, supporting these raises is smart politics for these governors. There is widespread public support for increasing teacher pay, particularly in the states where walkouts occurred. But even as some conservative policymakers agree to raise teacher salaries, as the 2019 legislative sessions have begun, others in Arizona, Oklahoma, and West Virginia have introduced bills that would make walkouts illegal and penalize teachers with fines, loss of their teaching licenses, or even jail time. Some of the bills also contain provisions designed specifically to weaken teachers unions, such as a requirement that teachers must opt in to dues each year, which sponsors hope will reduce membership by adding an extra step to the process. Legislators in walkout states have also introduced stand-alone proposals designed to make union membership more difficult and, therefore, less likely, such as a prohibition on districts withholding union dues from teachers’ paychecks. These backlash bills hint at a much more familiar conservative education agenda of slashing funding and working to weaken teachers unions. After all, it is this agenda that led to stagnant teacher salaries, deplorable conditions in many school buildings, and consequences for students whose schools were chronically underfunded in the first place. Supporting increases to teacher pay and greater investment in schools is the right thing to do for America’s students. Unfortunately, this wave of backlash makes clear that for some policymakers, it’s all about politics — and as soon as they have the chance, they’ll once again slash education funding and attack hardworking teachers.
Turn again: The right to strike just leads businesses to take stronger steps to stop unionization. Gordon Lafer, 20 - ("Fear at work: An inside account of how employers threaten, intimidate, and harass workers to stop them from exercising their right to collective bargaining," Economic Policy Institute, 7-23-2020, https://www.epi.org/publication/fear-at-work-how-employers-scare-workers-out-of-unionizing/)//va NLRB elections are fundamentally framed by one-sided control over communication, with no free-speech rights for workers. Under current law, employers may require workers to attend mass anti-union meetings as often as once a day (mandatory meetings at which the employer delivers anti-union messaging are dubbed “captive audience meetings” in labor law). Not only is the union not granted equal time, but pro-union employees may be required to attend on condition that they not ask questions; those who speak up despite this condition can be legally fired on the spot.19 The most recent data show that nearly 90 of employers force employees to attend such anti-union campaign rallies, with the average employer holding 10 such mandatory meetings during the course of an election campaign.20 ¶ In addition to group meetings, employers typically have supervisors talk one-on-one with each of their direct subordinates.21 In these conversations, the same person who controls one’s schedule, assigns job duties, approves vacation requests, grants raises, and has the power to terminate employees “at will” conveys how important it is that their underlings oppose unionization. As one longtime consultant explained, a supervisor’s message is especially powerful because “the warnings…come from…the people counted on for that good review and that weekly paycheck.”22 ¶ Within this lopsided campaign environment, the employer’s message typically focuses on a few key themes: unions will drive employers out of business, unions only care about extorting dues payments from workers, and unionization is futile because employees can’t make management do something it doesn’t want to do.23 Many of these arguments are highly deceptive or even mutually contradictory. For instance, the dues message stands in direct contradiction to management’s warnings that unions inevitably lead to strikes and unemployment. If a union were primarily interested in extracting dues money from workers, it would never risk a strike or bankruptcy, because no one pays dues when they are on strike or out of work. But in an atmosphere in which pro-union employees have little effective right of reply, these messages may prove extremely powerful. ¶ It is common for unionization drives to start with two-thirds of employees supporting unionization and still end in a “no” vote. This reversal points to the anti-democratic dynamics of NLRB elections: voters are not being convinced of the merits of remaining without representation—they are being intimidated into the belief that unionization is at best futile and at worst dangerous. When a large national survey asked workers who had been through an election to name “the most important reason people voted against union representation,” the single most common response was management pressure, including fear of job loss.24 Those who vote on this basis are not expressing a preference to remain unrepresented. Indeed, many might still prefer unionization if they believed it could work. Where fear is the motivator, what is captured in the snapshot of the ballot is not preference but despair. ¶To understand what union elections look like in reality, we have profiled two cases in which workers sought to create a union and met with a harsh (and typical) employer backlash. In both cases—a tire plant in Georgia and a satellite TV company in Texas—the employer response ranges from illegally firing union activists to engaging in acts of coercion and intimidation that are illegal in any normal election to public office but are allowed under the NLRA. ¶ Unions are only bodies who have a chance of success at collective bargaining for better conditions collective bargaining Case 1) No inherency – all their ev is about Striketober which says people are striking now – means no impact to the aff 2) Double-bind because strikes are happening now– either current strikes solve their impacts without the plan OR they don’t solve, which means the plan doesn’t solve either 3) Turn – a. they say hospitals hire scabs and pay them more when people go on strike, people quit their jobs permanently when scabs are paid more than they are, and that increases the number of scabs hired which increases the staffing shortage which causes an infinite loop – means if they increase striking, they make conditions worse AND create a perpetual incentive to strike so no single strike can definitively solve b. Peshimam says hospitals can’t pay higher wages – means striking would only exacerbate staffing shortages + would never end since hospitals are literally incapable of fulfilling workers’ demands c. Striking doesn’t work in a healthcare setting – the more desperate people are for healthcare, the more likely that they’ll pay for it even if the staff are overstretched, so management has no incentive to replace striking workers – All of those independent turns mean the only people hurt are the patients as per THEIR EMU card, which spills over to failed pandemic response as per Lasaster and racialized violence according to Sell
4) Al-Arshani says literally nothing about anything other than staffing shortages, which the plan causes, AND there’s NOTHING in the card that justifies the tag’s claim that an unconditional right to strike is key – it is powertagged to the extreme
11/20/21
Sept Oct NC - Covid CP and Innovation DA
Tournament: Chuck Ballingall | Round: 1 | Opponent: LA Reina LS | Judge: Killackey, Michael Covid CP Counterplan: High-income country governments, backed by the United States, should provide all necessary funding to purchase COVID-19 vaccines developed by drug companies at any reasonable cost and distribute them as requested world-wide. Lindsay 6/11 - Brink Lindsay, Brookings, 6-11, 2021, Why intellectual property and pandemics don’t mix, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2021/06/03/why-intellectual-property-and-pandemics-dont-mix/ Waiving patent protections is certainly no panacea. What is needed most urgently is a massive drive of technology transfer, capacity expansion, and supply line coordination to bring vaccine supply in line with global demand. Dispensing with patents in no way obviates the need for governments to fund and oversee this effort.¶ Although focusing on these immediate constraints is vital, we cannot confine our attention to the short term. First of all, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from over. Although Americans can now see the light at the end of the tunnel thanks to the rapid rollout of vaccines, most of the world isn’t so lucky. The virus is¶ currently raging in India and throughout South America, overwhelming health care systems and inflicting suffering and loss on a horrific scale. And consider the fact that Australia, which has been successful in suppressing the virus, recently announced it was sticking to plans to keep its borders closed until mid-2022. Criticisms of the TRIPS waiver that focus only on the next few months are therefore short-sighted: this pandemic could well drag on long enough for elimination of patent restrictions to enable new vaccine producers to make a positive difference.¶ Furthermore, and probably even more important, this is almost certainly not the last pandemic we will face. Urbanization, the spread of factory-farming methods, and globalization all combine to increase the odds that a new virus will make the jump from animals to humans and then spread rapidly around the world. Prior to the current pandemic, the 21st century already saw outbreaks of SARS, H1N1, MERS, and Ebola. Everything we do and learn in the current crisis should be viewed from the perspective of getting ready for next time.¶ The Nature of the Patent Bargain¶ When we take the longer view, we can see a fundamental mismatch between the policy design of intellectual property protection and the policy requirements of effective pandemic response. Although patent law, properly restrained, constitutes one important element of a well-designed national innovation system, the way it goes about encouraging technological progress is singularly ill-suited to the emergency conditions of a pandemic or other public health crisis. Securing a TRIPS waiver for COVID-19 vaccines and treatments would thus establish a salutary precedent that, in emergencies of this kind, governments should employ other, more direct means to incentivize the development of new drugs.¶ Here is the basic bargain offered by patent law: encourage the creation of useful new ideas for the long run by slowing the diffusion of useful new ideas in the short run. The second half of the bargain, the half that imposes costs on society, comes from the temporary exclusive rights, or monopoly privileges, that a patent holder enjoys. Under U.S. patent law, for a period of 20 years nobody else can manufacture or sell the patented product without the permission of the patent holder. This allows the patent holder to block competitors from the market, or extract licensing fees before allowing them to enter, and consequently charge above-market prices to its customers. Patent rights thus slow the diffusion of a new invention by restricting output and raising prices.¶ The imposition of these short-run costs, however, can bring net long-term benefits by sharpening the incentives to invent new products. In the absence of patent protection, the prospect of easy imitation by later market entrants can deter would-be innovators from incurring the up-front fixed costs of research and development. But with a guaranteed period of market exclusivity, inventors can proceed with greater confidence that they will be able to recoup their investment.¶ For the tradeoff between costs and benefits to come out positive on net, patent law must strike the right balance. Exclusive rights should be valuable enough to encourage greater innovation, but not so easily granted or extensive in scope or term that this encouragement is outweighed by output restrictions on the patented product and discouragement of downstream innovations dependent on access to the patented technology.¶ Unfortunately, the U.S. patent system at present is out of balance. Over the past few decades, the expansion of patentability to include software and business methods as well as a general relaxation of patenting requirements have led to wildly excessive growth in these temporary monopolies: the number of patents granted annually has¶ skyrocketed roughly fivefold since the early 1980s. One unfortunate result has been the rise of “non-practicing entities,” better known as patent trolls: firms that make nothing themselves but buy up patent portfolios and monetize them through aggressive litigation. As a result, a law that is supposed to encourage innovation has turned into a¶ legal minefield for many would-be innovators. In the pharmaceutical industry, firms have abused the law by piling up patents for trivial, therapeutically irrelevant “innovations” that allow them to¶ extend their monopolies and keep raising prices long beyond the statutorily contemplated 20 years.¶ Patent law is creating these unintended consequences because policymakers have been caught in an ideological fog that¶ conflates “intellectual property” with actual property rights over physical objects. Enveloped in that fog, they regard any attempts to put limits on patent monopolies as attacks on private property and view ongoing expansions of patent privileges as necessary to keep innovation from grinding to a halt. In fact, patent law is a tool of regulatory policy with the usual tradeoffs between costs and benefits; like all tools, it can be misused, and as with all tools there are some jobs for which other tools are better suited. A well-designed patent system, in which benefits are maximized and costs kept to a minimum, is just one of various policy options that governments can employ to stimulate technological advance—including tax credits for RandD, prizes for targeted inventions, and direct government support.¶ Public Health Emergencies and Direct Government Support¶ For pandemics and other public health emergencies, patents’ mix of costs and benefits is misaligned with what is needed for an effective policy response. The basic patent bargain, even when well struck, is to pay for more innovation down the road with slower diffusion of innovation today. In the context of a pandemic, that bargain is a bad one and should be rejected entirely. Here the imperative is to accelerate the diffusion of vaccines and other treatments, not slow it down. Giving drug companies the power to hold things up by blocking competitors and raising prices pushes in the completely wrong direction. What approach to encouraging innovation should we take instead? How do we incentivize drug makers to undertake the hefty RandD costs to develop new vaccines without giving them exclusive rights over their production and sale? The most effective approach during a public health crisis is direct government support: public funding of RandD, advance purchase commitments by the government to buy large numbers of doses at set prices, and other, related payouts. And when we pay drug makers, we should not hesitate to pay generously, even extravagantly: we want to offer drug companies big profits so that they prioritize this work above everything else, and so that they are ready and eager to come to the rescue again the next time there’s a crisis. It was direct support via Operation Warp Speed that made possible the astonishingly rapid development of COVID-19 vaccines and then facilitated a relatively rapid rollout of vaccine distribution (relative, that is, to most of the rest of the world). And it’s worth noting that a major reason for the faster rollout here and in the United Kingdom compared to the European Union was the latter’s misguided penny-pinching. The EU bargained hard with firms to keep vaccine prices low, and as a result their citizens ended up in the back of the queue as various supply line kinks were being ironed out. This is particularly ironic since the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was developed in Germany. As this fact underscores, the chief advantage of direct support isn’t to “get tough” with drug firms and keep a lid on their profits. Instead, it is to accelerate the end of the public health emergency by making sure drug makers profit handsomely from doing the right thing. Patent law and direct support should be seen not as either-or alternatives but as complements that apply different incentives to different circumstances and time horizons. Patent law provides a decentralized system for encouraging innovation. The government doesn’t presume to tell the industry which new drugs are needed; it simply incentivizes the development of whatever new drugs that pharmaceutical firms can come up with by offering them a temporary monopoly. It is important to note that patent law’s incentives offer no commercial guarantees. Yes, you can block other competitors for a number of years, but that still doesn’t ensure enough consumer demand for the new product to make it profitable. The situation is different in a pandemic. Here the government knows exactly what it wants to incentivize: the creation of vaccines to prevent the spread of a specific virus and other drugs to treat that virus. Under these circumstances, the decentralized approach isn’t good enough. There is no time to sit back and let drug makers take the initiative on their own timeline. Instead, the government needs to be more involved to incentivize specific innovations now. As recompense for letting it call the shots (pardon the pun), the government sweetens the deal for drug companies by insulating them from commercial risk. If pharmaceutical firms develop effective vaccines and therapies, the government will buy large, predetermined quantities at prices set high enough to guarantee a healthy return. For the pharmaceutical industry, it is useful to conceive of patent law as the default regime for innovation promotion. It improves pharmaceutical companies’ incentives to develop new drugs while leaving them free to decide which new drugs to pursue – and also leaving them to bear all commercial risk. In a pandemic or other emergency, however, it is appropriate to shift to the direct support regime, in which the government focuses efforts on one disease. In this regime, it is important to note, the government provides qualitatively superior incentives to those offered under patent law. Not only does it offer public funding to cover the up-front costs of drug development, but it also provides advance purchase commitments that guarantee a healthy return. It should therefore be clear that the pharmaceutical industry has no legitimate basis for objecting to a TRIPS waiver. Since, because of the public health crisis, drug makers now qualify for the superior benefits of direct government support, they no longer need the default benefits of patent support. Arguments that a TRIPS waiver would deprive drug makers of the incentives they need to keep developing new drugs, when they are presently receiving the most favorable incentives available, can be dismissed as the worst sort of special pleading. That said, it is a serious mistake to try to cast the current crisis as a morality play in which drug makers wear the black hats and the choice at hand is between private profits and public health. We would have no chance of beating this virus without the formidable organizational capabilities of the pharmaceutical industry, and providing the appropriate incentives is essential to ensure that the industry plays its necessary and vital role. It is misguided to lament that private companies are profiting in the current crisis: those profits are a drop in the bucket compared to the staggering cost of this pandemic in lives and economic damage. What matters isn’t the existence or size of the profits, but how they are earned. We have good reason to want drug makers to profit from vaccinating the world: the comparative price is minuscule, and the incentive effects are a vital safeguard of public health in the event of future crises. What we want to avoid at all costs is putting drug makers in the position where drug companies can profit from standing in the way of rapid global vaccination. That is why intellectual property rights need to be taken out of the equation. Vaccinating the world in any kind of reasonable time frame will require large-scale technology transfer to drug firms in other countries and rapid expansion of their production capacity. And looking beyond the current pandemic to the longer term, we need ample, redundant global vaccine production capacity that is widely distributed around the planet. To achieve these goals as rapidly as possible will require the active cooperation of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, which is why the direct support model now needs to be extended. What is needed now is an Operation Warp Speed for the world, in which we make it worth current vaccine producers’ while to share their know-how broadly and ramp up global capacity. Here again, we must recognize that the choice isn’t between people on the one hand and profits on the other. Rather, the key to good pandemic response policy is ensuring that incentives are structured so that drug company profit-seeking and global public health are well aligned. That means opting out of the default, decentralized patent bargain in favor of generous but well-focused direct government support. Innovation DA 3.0 NC Materials Bioterror - Short NC Shell COVID has kept patents and innovation strong, but continued protection is key to innovation by incentivizing biomedical research – it’s also crucial to preventing counterfeit medicines, economic collapse, and fatal diseases, which independently turns case. Macdole and Ezell 4-29: Jaci Mcdole and Stephen Ezell {Jaci McDole is a senior policy analyst covering intellectual property (IP) and innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). She focuses on IP and its correlations to global innovation and trade. McDole holds a double BA in Music Business and Radio-Television with a minor in Marketing, an MS in Education, and a JD with a specialization in intellectual property (Southern Illinois University Carbondale). McDole comes to ITIF from the Institute for Intellectual Property Research, an organization she co-founded to study and further robust global IP policies. Stephen Ezell is vice president, global innovation policy, at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). He comes to ITIF from Peer Insight, an innovation research and consulting firm he cofounded in 2003 to study the practice of innovation in service industries. At Peer Insight, Ezell led the Global Service Innovation Consortium, published multiple research papers on service innovation, and researched national service innovation policies being implemented by governments worldwide. Prior to forming Peer Insight, Ezell worked in the New Service Development group at the NASDAQ Stock Market, where he spearheaded the creation of the NASDAQ Market Intelligence Desk and the NASDAQ Corporate Services Network, services for NASDAQ-listed corporations. Previously, Ezell cofounded two successful innovation ventures, the high-tech services firm Brivo Systems and Lynx Capital, a boutique investment bank. Ezell holds a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, with an honors certificate from Georgetown’s Landegger International Business Diplomacy program.}, 21 - ("Ten Ways Ip Has Enabled Innovations That Have Helped Sustain The World Through The Pandemic," Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 4-29-2021, https://itif.org/publications/2021/04/29/ten-ways-ip-has-enabled-innovations-have-helped-sustain-world-through)//marlborough-wr/ To better understand the role of IP in enabling solutions related to COVID-19 challenges, this report relies on 10 case studies drawn from a variety of nations, technical fields, and firm sizes. This is but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally. From a paramedic in Mexico to a veteran vaccine manufacturing company in India and a tech start-up in Estonia to a U.S.-based company offering workplace Internet of Things (IoT) services, small and large organizations alike are working to combat the pandemic. Some have adapted existing innovations, while others have developed novel solutions. All are working to take the world out of the pandemic and into the future. The case studies are: Bharat Biotech: Covaxin Gilead: Remdesivir LumiraDX: SARS-COV-2 Antigen POC Test Teal Bio: Teal Bio Respirator XE Ingeniería Médica: CápsulaXE Surgical Theater: Precision VR Tombot: Jennie Starship Technologies: Autonomous Delivery Robots Triax Technologies: Proximity Trace Zoom: Video Conferencing As the case studies show, IP is critical to enabling innovation. Policymakers around the world need to ensure robust IP protections are—and remain—in place if they wish their citizens to have safe and innovative solutions to health care, workplace, and societal challenges in the future. THE ROLE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN RandD-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES Intangible assets, such as IP rights, comprised approximately 84 percent of the corporate value of SandP 500 companies in 2018.4 For start-ups, this means much of the capital needed to operate is directly related to IP (see Teal Bio case study for more on this). IP also plays an especially important role for RandD-intensive industries.5 To take the example of the biopharmaceutical industry, it is characterized by high-risk, time-consuming, and expensive processes including basic research, drug discovery, pre-clinical trials, three stages of human clinical trials, regulatory review, and post-approval research and safety monitoring. The drug development process spans an average of 11.5 to 15 years.6 For every 5,000 to 10,000 compounds screened on average during the basic research and drug discovery phases, approximately 250 molecular compounds, or 2.5 to 5 percent, make it to preclinical testing. Out of those 250 molecular compounds, approximately 5 make it to clinical testing. That is, 0.05 to 0.1 percent of drugs make it from basic research into clinical trials. Of those rare few which make it to clinical testing, less than 12 percent are ultimately approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).7 In addition to high risks, drug development is costly, and the expenses associated with it are increasing. A 2019 report by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions concluded that since 2010 the average cost of bringing a new drug to market increased by 67 percent.8 Numerous studies have examined the substantial cost of biopharmaceutical RandD, and most confirm investing in new drug development requires $1.7 billion to $3.2 billion up front on average.9 A 2018 study by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness found similar risks and figures for vaccines, stating, “In general, vaccine development from discovery to licensure can cost billions of dollars, can take over 10 years to complete, and has an average 94 percent chance of failure.”10 Yet, a 2010 study found that 80 percent of new drugs—that is, the less than 12 percent ultimately approved by the FDA—made less than their capitalized RandD costs.11 Another study found that only 1 percent (maybe three new drugs each year) of the most successful 10 percent of FDA approved drugs generate half of the profits of the entire drug industry.12 To say the least, biopharmaceutical RandD represents a high-stakes, long-term endeavor with precarious returns. Without IP protection, biopharmaceutical manufacturers have little incentive to take the risks necessary to engage in the RandD process because they would be unable to recoup even a fraction of the costs incurred. Diminished revenues also result in reduced investments in RandD which means less research into cancer drugs, Alzheimer cures, vaccines, and more. IP rights give life-sciences enterprises the confidence needed to undertake the difficult, risky, and expensive process of life-sciences innovation secure in the knowledge they can capture a share of the gains from their innovations, which is indispensable not only to recouping the up-front RandD costs of a given drug, but which can generate sufficient profits to enable investment in future generations of biomedical innovation and thus perpetuate the enterprises into the future.13 THE IMPORTANCE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TO INNOVATION Although anti-IP proponents have attacked biopharmaceutical manufacturers particularly hard, the reality is all IP-protected innovations are at risk if these rights are ignored, or vitiated. Certain arguments have shown a desire for the term “COVID-19 innovations” to include everything from vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and PPE to biotechnology, AI-related data, and educational materials.14 This could potentially open the floodgates to invalidate IP protection on many of the innovations highlighted in this report. However, much of the current discussion concerning IP focuses almost entirely on litigation fears or RandD incentives. Although RandD is an important aspect of IP, as previously mentioned, these discussions ignore the fact that IP protection can be—and often is—used for other purposes, including generating initial capital to create a company and begin manufacturing and, more importantly, using licensing agreements and IP to track the supply chain and ensure quality control of products. This report highlights but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally. In 2018, Forbes identified counterfeiting as the largest criminal enterprise in the world.15 The global struggle against counterfeit and non-regulated products, which has hit Latin America particularly hard during the pandemic, proves the need for safety and quality assurance in supply chains.16 Some communities already ravaged by COVID-19 are seeing higher mortality rates related to counterfeit vaccines, therapeutics, PPE, and cleaning and sanitizing products.17 Polish authorities discovered vials of antiwrinkle treatment labeled as COVID-19 vaccines. 18 In Mexico, fake vaccines sold for approximately $1,000 per dose.19 Chinese and South African police seized thousands of counterfeit vaccine doses from warehouses and manufacturing plants.20 Meanwhile, dozens of websites worldwide claiming to sell vaccines or be affiliated with vaccine manufacturers have been taken down.21 But the problem is not limited to biopharmaceuticals. The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center has recovered $48 million worth of counterfeit PPE and other products.22 Collaborative efforts between law enforcement and manufacturers have kept numerous counterfeits from reaching the population. In countries with strong IP protection, the chances of counterfeit products reaching the market are significantly lower. This is largely because counterfeiting tends to be an IP-related issue, and these countries generally provide superior means of tracking the supply chain through trademarks, trade secrets, and licensing agreements. This enables greater quality control and helps manufacturers maintain a level of public confidence in their products. By controlling the flow of knowledge associated with IP, voluntary licensing agreements provide innovators with opportunities to collaborate, while ensuring their partners are properly equipped and capable of producing quality products. Throughout this difficult time, the world has seen unexpected collaborations, especially between biopharmaceutical companies worldwide such as Gilead and Eva Pharma or Bharat Biotech and Ocugen, Inc. Throughout history, and most significantly in the nineteenth century through the widespread development of patent systems and the ensuing Industrial Revolution, IP has contributed toward greater economic growth.23 This is promising news as the world struggles for economic recovery. A 2021 joint study by the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and European Patent Office (EPO) shows a strong, positive correlation between IP rights and economic performance.24 It states that “IP-owning firms represent a significantly larger proportion of economic activity and employment across Europe,” with IP-intensive industries contributing to 45 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) (€6.6 trillion; US$7.9 trillion).25 The study also shows 38.9 percent of employment is directly or indirectly attributed to IP-intensive industries, and IP generates higher wages and greater revenue per employee, especially for small-to-medium-sized enterprises.26 That concords with the United States, where the Department of Commerce estimated that IP-intensive industries support at least 45 million jobs and contribute more than $6 trillion dollars to, or 38.2 percent of, GDP.27 In 2020, global patent filings through the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system reached a record 275,900 filings amidst the pandemic, growing 4 percent from 2019.28 The top-four nations, which accounted for 180,530 of the patent applications, were China, the United States, Japan, and Korea, respectively.29 While several countries saw an increase in patent filings, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia both saw significant increases in the number of annual applications, with the top two filing growths of 73 percent and 26 percent, respectively.30 The COVID-19 pandemic slowed a lot of things, but it certainly couldn’t stop innovation. There are at least five principal benefits strong IP rights can generate, for both developing and developed countries alike.31 First, stronger IP protection spurs the virtuous cycle of innovation by increasing the appropriability of returns, enabling economic gain and catalyzing economic growth. Second, through patents—which require innovators to disclose certain knowledge as a condition of protection—knowledge spillovers build a platform of knowledge that enables other innovators. For instance, studies have found that the rate of return to society from corporate RandD and innovation activities is at least twice the estimated returns that each company itself receives.32 Third, countries with robust IP can operate more efficiently and productively by using IP to determine product quality and reduce transaction costs. Fourth, trade and foreign direct investment enabled and encouraged by strong IP protection offered to enterprises from foreign countries facilitates an accumulation of knowledge capital within the destination economy. That matters when foreign sources of technology account for over 90 percent of productivity growth in most countries.33 There’s also evidence suggesting that developing nations with stronger IP protections enjoy the earlier introduction of innovative new medicines.34 And fifth, strong IP boosts exports, including in developing countries.35 Research shows a positive correlation between stronger IP protection and exports from developing countries as well as faster growth rates of certain industries.36 The following case studies illustrate these benefits of IP and how they’ve enabled innovative solutions to help global society navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. This 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.” Bioterror causes extinction-~--quick innovation key Farmer 17 (“Bioterrorism could kill more people than nuclear war, Bill Gates to warn world leaders” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/17/biological-terrorism-could-kill-people-nuclear-attacks-bill/) Bioterrorists could one day kill hundreds of millions of people in an attack more deadly than nuclear war, Bill Gates will warn world leaders. Rapid advances in genetic engineering have opened the door for small terrorism groups to tailor and easily turn biological viruses into weapons. A resulting disease pandemic is currently one of the most deadly threats faced by the world, he believes, yet governments are complacent about the scale of the risk. Speaking ahead of an address to the Munich Security Conference, the richest man in the world said that while governments are concerned with the proliferation of nuclear and chemical weapons, they are overlooking the threat of biological warfare. Mr Gates, whose charitable foundationis funding research into quickly spotting outbreaks and speeding up vaccine production, said the defence and security establishment “have not been following biology and I’m here to bring them a little bit of bad news”. Mr Gates will today (Saturday) tell an audience of international leaders and senior officers that the world’s next deadly pandemic “could originate on the computer screen of a terrorist”. He told the Telegraph: “Natural epidemics can be extremely large. Intentionally caused epidemics, bioterrorism, would be the largest of all. “With nuclear weapons, you’d think you would probably stop after killing 100million. Smallpox won’t stop. Because the population is naïve, and there are no real preparations. That, if it got out and spread, would be a larger number.” He said developments in genetic engineering were proceeding at a “mind-blowing rate”. Biological warfare ambitions once limited to a handful of nation states are now open to small groups with limited resources and skills. He said: “They make it much easier for a non-state person. It doesn’t take much biology expertise nowadays to assemble a smallpox virus. Biology is making it way easier to create these things.” The increasingly common use of gene editing technology would make it difficult to spot any potential terrorist conspiracy. Technologies which have made it easy to read DNA sequences and tinker with them to rewrite or tweak genes have many legitimate uses. He said: “It’s not like when someone says, ‘Hey I’d like some Plutonium’ and you start saying ‘Hmmm.. I wonder why he wants Plutonium?’” Mr Gates said the potential death toll from a disease outbreak could be higher than other threats such as climate change or nuclear war. He said: “This is like earthquakes, you should think in order of magnitudes. If you can kill 10 people that’s a one, 100 people that’s a two... Bioterrorism is the thing that can give you not just sixes, but sevens, eights and nines. “With nuclear war, once you have got a six, or a seven, or eight, you’d think it would probably stop. With bioterrorism it’s just unbounded if you are not there to stop the spread of it.” By tailoring the genes of a virus, it would be possible to manipulate its ability to spread and its ability to harm people. Mr Gates said one of the most potentially deadly outbreaks could involve the humble flu virus. It would be relatively easy to engineer a new flu strain combining qualities from varieties that spread like wildfire with varieties that were deadly. The last time that happened naturally was the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic, which went on to kill more than 50 million people – or nearly three times the death toll from the First World War. By comparison, the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa which killed just over 11,000 was “a Richter Scale three, it’s a nothing,” he said. But despite the potential, the founder of Microsoft said that world leaders and their militaries could not see beyond the more recognised risks. He said: “Should the world be serious about this? It is somewhat serious about normal classic warfare and nuclear warfare, but today it is not very serious about bio-defence or natural epidemics.” He went on: “They do tend to say ‘How easy is it to get fissile material and how accurate are the plans out on the internet for dirty bombs, plutonium bombs and hydrogen bombs?’ “They have some people that do that. What I am suggesting is that the number of people that look at bio-defence is worth increasing.” Whether naturally occurring, or deliberately started, it is almost certain that a highly lethal global pandemic will occur within our lifetimes, he believes. But the good news for those contemplating the potential damage is that the same biotechnology can prevent epidemics spreading out of control. Mr Gates will say in his speech that most of the things needed to protect against a naturally occurring pandemic are the same things needed to prepare for an intentional biological attack. Nations must amass an arsenal of new weapons to fight such a disease outbreak, including vaccines, drugs and diagnostic techniques. Being able to develop a vaccine as soon as possible against a new outbreak is particularly important and could save huge numbers of lives, scientists working at his foundation believe.
Future Pandemics – Longer NC Shell The pharma industry is strong now but patents are key for continued economic growth. Batell and PhRMA 14: Batell and PhRMA {Battelle is the world’s largest nonprofit independent research and development organization, providing innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing needs through its four global businesses: Laboratory Management, National Security, Energy, Environment and Material Sciences, and Health and Life Sciences. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) represents the country’s leading pharmaceutical research and biotechnology companies, which are devoted to inventing medicines that allow patients to live longer, healthier, and more productive lives.}, 14 – “The U.S. Biopharmaceutical Industry: Perspectives on Future Growth and The Factors That Will Drive It,” http://phrma-docs.phrma.org/sites/default/files/pdf/2014-economic-futures-report.pdf//marlborough-wr// Compared to other capital-intensive, advanced manufacturing industries in the U.S., the biopharmaceutical industry is a leader in RandD investment, IP generation, venture capital investment, and RandD employment. Policies and infrastructure that helped foster these innovative activities have allowed the U.S. to seize global leadership in biopharmaceutical RandD over the past 30 years. However, as this report details, other countries are seeking to compete with the U.S. by borrowing and building upon some of these pro-innovation policies to improve their own operating environment and become more favorable to biopharmaceutical companies making decisions about where to locate their RandD and manufacturing activities. A unique contribution of this report was the inclusion of the perspective of senior-level strategic planning executives of biopharmaceutical companies regarding what policy areas they see as most likely to impact the favorability of the U.S. business operating environment. The executives cited the following factors as having the most impact on the favorability of the operating environment and hence, potential growth of the innovative biopharmaceutical industry in the U.S.: • Coverage and payment policies that support and encourage medical innovation • A well-functioning, science-based regulatory system • Strong IP protection and enforcement in the U.S. and abroad The top sub-attribute identified as driving future biopharmaceutical industry growth in the U.S. cited by executives was a domestic IP system that provides adequate patent rights and data protection. Collectively, these factors underscore the need to reduce uncertainties and ensure adequate incentives for the lengthy, costly, and risky RandD investments necessary to develop new treatments needed by patients and society to address our most costly and challenging diseases. With more than 300,000 jobs at stake between the two scenarios, the continued growth and leadership of the U.S. innovative biopharmaceutical industry cannot be taken for granted. Continued innovation is fundamental to U.S. economic well-being and the nation’s ability to compete effectively in a globalized economy and to take advantage of the expected growth in demand for new medicines around the world. Just as other countries have drawn lessons from the growth of the U.S. biopharmaceutical sector, the U.S. needs to assess how it can improve the environment for innovation and continue to boost job creation by increasing RandD investment, fostering a robust talent pool, enhancing economic growth and sustainability, and continuing to bring new medicines to patients.
COVID has kept patents and innovation strong, but continued protection is key to innovation by incentivizing biomedical research – it’s also crucial to preventing counterfeit medicines, economic collapse, and fatal diseases, which independently turns case. Macdole and Ezell 4-29: Jaci Mcdole and Stephen Ezell {Jaci McDole is a senior policy analyst covering intellectual property (IP) and innovation policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). She focuses on IP and its correlations to global innovation and trade. McDole holds a double BA in Music Business and Radio-Television with a minor in Marketing, an MS in Education, and a JD with a specialization in intellectual property (Southern Illinois University Carbondale). McDole comes to ITIF from the Institute for Intellectual Property Research, an organization she co-founded to study and further robust global IP policies. Stephen Ezell is vice president, global innovation policy, at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). He comes to ITIF from Peer Insight, an innovation research and consulting firm he cofounded in 2003 to study the practice of innovation in service industries. At Peer Insight, Ezell led the Global Service Innovation Consortium, published multiple research papers on service innovation, and researched national service innovation policies being implemented by governments worldwide. Prior to forming Peer Insight, Ezell worked in the New Service Development group at the NASDAQ Stock Market, where he spearheaded the creation of the NASDAQ Market Intelligence Desk and the NASDAQ Corporate Services Network, services for NASDAQ-listed corporations. Previously, Ezell cofounded two successful innovation ventures, the high-tech services firm Brivo Systems and Lynx Capital, a boutique investment bank. Ezell holds a B.S. from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, with an honors certificate from Georgetown’s Landegger International Business Diplomacy program.}, 21 - ("Ten Ways Ip Has Enabled Innovations That Have Helped Sustain The World Through The Pandemic," Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, 4-29-2021, https://itif.org/publications/2021/04/29/ten-ways-ip-has-enabled-innovations-have-helped-sustain-world-through)//marlborough-wr/ To better understand the role of IP in enabling solutions related to COVID-19 challenges, this report relies on 10 case studies drawn from a variety of nations, technical fields, and firm sizes. This is but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally. From a paramedic in Mexico to a veteran vaccine manufacturing company in India and a tech start-up in Estonia to a U.S.-based company offering workplace Internet of Things (IoT) services, small and large organizations alike are working to combat the pandemic. Some have adapted existing innovations, while others have developed novel solutions. All are working to take the world out of the pandemic and into the future. The case studies are: Bharat Biotech: Covaxin Gilead: Remdesivir LumiraDX: SARS-COV-2 Antigen POC Test Teal Bio: Teal Bio Respirator XE Ingeniería Médica: CápsulaXE Surgical Theater: Precision VR Tombot: Jennie Starship Technologies: Autonomous Delivery Robots Triax Technologies: Proximity Trace Zoom: Video Conferencing As the case studies show, IP is critical to enabling innovation. Policymakers around the world need to ensure robust IP protections are—and remain—in place if they wish their citizens to have safe and innovative solutions to health care, workplace, and societal challenges in the future. THE ROLE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN RandD-INTENSIVE INDUSTRIES Intangible assets, such as IP rights, comprised approximately 84 percent of the corporate value of SandP 500 companies in 2018.4 For start-ups, this means much of the capital needed to operate is directly related to IP (see Teal Bio case study for more on this). IP also plays an especially important role for RandD-intensive industries.5 To take the example of the biopharmaceutical industry, it is characterized by high-risk, time-consuming, and expensive processes including basic research, drug discovery, pre-clinical trials, three stages of human clinical trials, regulatory review, and post-approval research and safety monitoring. The drug development process spans an average of 11.5 to 15 years.6 For every 5,000 to 10,000 compounds screened on average during the basic research and drug discovery phases, approximately 250 molecular compounds, or 2.5 to 5 percent, make it to preclinical testing. Out of those 250 molecular compounds, approximately 5 make it to clinical testing. That is, 0.05 to 0.1 percent of drugs make it from basic research into clinical trials. Of those rare few which make it to clinical testing, less than 12 percent are ultimately approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).7 In addition to high risks, drug development is costly, and the expenses associated with it are increasing. A 2019 report by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions concluded that since 2010 the average cost of bringing a new drug to market increased by 67 percent.8 Numerous studies have examined the substantial cost of biopharmaceutical RandD, and most confirm investing in new drug development requires $1.7 billion to $3.2 billion up front on average.9 A 2018 study by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness found similar risks and figures for vaccines, stating, “In general, vaccine development from discovery to licensure can cost billions of dollars, can take over 10 years to complete, and has an average 94 percent chance of failure.”10 Yet, a 2010 study found that 80 percent of new drugs—that is, the less than 12 percent ultimately approved by the FDA—made less than their capitalized RandD costs.11 Another study found that only 1 percent (maybe three new drugs each year) of the most successful 10 percent of FDA approved drugs generate half of the profits of the entire drug industry.12 To say the least, biopharmaceutical RandD represents a high-stakes, long-term endeavor with precarious returns. Without IP protection, biopharmaceutical manufacturers have little incentive to take the risks necessary to engage in the RandD process because they would be unable to recoup even a fraction of the costs incurred. Diminished revenues also result in reduced investments in RandD which means less research into cancer drugs, Alzheimer cures, vaccines, and more. IP rights give life-sciences enterprises the confidence needed to undertake the difficult, risky, and expensive process of life-sciences innovation secure in the knowledge they can capture a share of the gains from their innovations, which is indispensable not only to recouping the up-front RandD costs of a given drug, but which can generate sufficient profits to enable investment in future generations of biomedical innovation and thus perpetuate the enterprises into the future.13 THE IMPORTANCE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY TO INNOVATION Although anti-IP proponents have attacked biopharmaceutical manufacturers particularly hard, the reality is all IP-protected innovations are at risk if these rights are ignored, or vitiated. Certain arguments have shown a desire for the term “COVID-19 innovations” to include everything from vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and PPE to biotechnology, AI-related data, and educational materials.14 This could potentially open the floodgates to invalidate IP protection on many of the innovations highlighted in this report. However, much of the current discussion concerning IP focuses almost entirely on litigation fears or RandD incentives. Although RandD is an important aspect of IP, as previously mentioned, these discussions ignore the fact that IP protection can be—and often is—used for other purposes, including generating initial capital to create a company and begin manufacturing and, more importantly, using licensing agreements and IP to track the supply chain and ensure quality control of products. This report highlights but a handful of the thousands of IP-enabled innovations that have sprung forth over the past year in an effort to meet the tremendous challenges brought on by COVID-19 globally. In 2018, Forbes identified counterfeiting as the largest criminal enterprise in the world.15 The global struggle against counterfeit and non-regulated products, which has hit Latin America particularly hard during the pandemic, proves the need for safety and quality assurance in supply chains.16 Some communities already ravaged by COVID-19 are seeing higher mortality rates related to counterfeit vaccines, therapeutics, PPE, and cleaning and sanitizing products.17 Polish authorities discovered vials of antiwrinkle treatment labeled as COVID-19 vaccines. 18 In Mexico, fake vaccines sold for approximately $1,000 per dose.19 Chinese and South African police seized thousands of counterfeit vaccine doses from warehouses and manufacturing plants.20 Meanwhile, dozens of websites worldwide claiming to sell vaccines or be affiliated with vaccine manufacturers have been taken down.21 But the problem is not limited to biopharmaceuticals. The National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center has recovered $48 million worth of counterfeit PPE and other products.22 Collaborative efforts between law enforcement and manufacturers have kept numerous counterfeits from reaching the population. In countries with strong IP protection, the chances of counterfeit products reaching the market are significantly lower. This is largely because counterfeiting tends to be an IP-related issue, and these countries generally provide superior means of tracking the supply chain through trademarks, trade secrets, and licensing agreements. This enables greater quality control and helps manufacturers maintain a level of public confidence in their products. By controlling the flow of knowledge associated with IP, voluntary licensing agreements provide innovators with opportunities to collaborate, while ensuring their partners are properly equipped and capable of producing quality products. Throughout this difficult time, the world has seen unexpected collaborations, especially between biopharmaceutical companies worldwide such as Gilead and Eva Pharma or Bharat Biotech and Ocugen, Inc. Throughout history, and most significantly in the nineteenth century through the widespread development of patent systems and the ensuing Industrial Revolution, IP has contributed toward greater economic growth.23 This is promising news as the world struggles for economic recovery. A 2021 joint study by the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) and European Patent Office (EPO) shows a strong, positive correlation between IP rights and economic performance.24 It states that “IP-owning firms represent a significantly larger proportion of economic activity and employment across Europe,” with IP-intensive industries contributing to 45 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) (€6.6 trillion; US$7.9 trillion).25 The study also shows 38.9 percent of employment is directly or indirectly attributed to IP-intensive industries, and IP generates higher wages and greater revenue per employee, especially for small-to-medium-sized enterprises.26 That concords with the United States, where the Department of Commerce estimated that IP-intensive industries support at least 45 million jobs and contribute more than $6 trillion dollars to, or 38.2 percent of, GDP.27 In 2020, global patent filings through the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) system reached a record 275,900 filings amidst the pandemic, growing 4 percent from 2019.28 The top-four nations, which accounted for 180,530 of the patent applications, were China, the United States, Japan, and Korea, respectively.29 While several countries saw an increase in patent filings, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia both saw significant increases in the number of annual applications, with the top two filing growths of 73 percent and 26 percent, respectively.30 The COVID-19 pandemic slowed a lot of things, but it certainly couldn’t stop innovation. There are at least five principal benefits strong IP rights can generate, for both developing and developed countries alike.31 First, stronger IP protection spurs the virtuous cycle of innovation by increasing the appropriability of returns, enabling economic gain and catalyzing economic growth. Second, through patents—which require innovators to disclose certain knowledge as a condition of protection—knowledge spillovers build a platform of knowledge that enables other innovators. For instance, studies have found that the rate of return to society from corporate RandD and innovation activities is at least twice the estimated returns that each company itself receives.32 Third, countries with robust IP can operate more efficiently and productively by using IP to determine product quality and reduce transaction costs. Fourth, trade and foreign direct investment enabled and encouraged by strong IP protection offered to enterprises from foreign countries facilitates an accumulation of knowledge capital within the destination economy. That matters when foreign sources of technology account for over 90 percent of productivity growth in most countries.33 There’s also evidence suggesting that developing nations with stronger IP protections enjoy the earlier introduction of innovative new medicines.34 And fifth, strong IP boosts exports, including in developing countries.35 Research shows a positive correlation between stronger IP protection and exports from developing countries as well as faster growth rates of certain industries.36 The following case studies illustrate these benefits of IP and how they’ve enabled innovative solutions to help global society navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. This 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.” The DA outweighs on time-frame and magnitude: Need to sustain effective research now to avoid future pandemics Lander 8/4/21 Eric Lander, President Biden’s Science Advisory and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) “Opinion: As bad as Covid-19 has been, a future pandemic could be even worse—unless we act now” 8/4/21, The Washington Post RM Coronavirus vaccines can end the current pandemic if enough people choose to protect themselves and their loved ones by getting vaccinated. But in the years to come, we will still need to defend against a pandemic side effect: collective amnesia. As public health emergencies recede, societies often quickly forget their experiences — and fail to prepare for future challenges. For pandemics, such a course would be disastrous. New infectious diseases have been emerging at an accelerating pace, and they are spreading faster. Our federal government is responsible for defending the United States against future threats. That’s why President Biden has asked Congress to fund his plan to build on current scientific progress to keep new infectious-disease threats from turning into pandemics like covid-19. As the president’s science adviser, I know what’s becoming possible. For the first time in our history, we have an opportunity not just to refill our stockpiles but also to transform our capabilities. However, if we don’t start preparing now for future pandemics, the window for action will close. Covid-19 has been a catastrophe: The toll in the United States alone is more than 614,000 lives and has been estimated to exceed $16 trillion, with disproportionate impact on vulnerable and marginalized communities. But a future pandemic could be even worse — unless we take steps now. It’s important to remember that the virus behind covid-19 is far less deadly than the 1918 influenza. The virus also belongs to a well-understood family, coronaviruses. It was possible to design vaccines within days of knowing the virus’s genetic code because 20 years of basic scientific research had revealed which protein to target and how to stabilize it. And while the current virus spins off variants, its mutation rate is slower than that of most viruses. Unfortunately, most of the 26 families of viruses that infect humans are less well understood or harder to control. We have a great deal of work still ahead. The development of mRNA vaccine technology — thanks to more than a decade of foresighted basic research — was a game-changer. It shortened the time needed to design and test vaccines to less than a year — far faster than for any previous vaccine. And it’s been surprisingly effective against covid-19. Still, there’s much more to do. We don’t yet know how mRNA vaccines will perform against other viruses down the road. And when the next pandemic breaks out, we’ll want to be able to respond even faster. Fortunately, the scientific community has been developing a bold plan to keep future viruses from becoming pandemics. Here are a few of the goals we should shoot for: The capability to design, test and approve safe and effective vaccines within 100 days of detecting a pandemic threat (for covid-19, that would have meant May 2020); manufacture enough doses to supply the world within 200 days; and speed vaccination campaigns by replacing sterile injections with skin patches. Diagnostics simple and cheap enough for daily home testing to limit spread and target medical care. Early-warning systems to spot new biological threats anywhere in the world soon after they emerge and monitor them thereafter. We desperately need to strengthen our public health system — from expanding the workforce to modernizing labs and data systems — including to ensure that vulnerable populations are protected. And we need to coordinate actions with our international partners, because pandemics know no borders. These goals are ambitious, but they’re feasible — provided the work is managed with the seriousness, focus and accountability of NASA’s Apollo Program, which sent humans to the moon. Importantly, these capabilities won’t just prepare us for future pandemics; they’ll also improve public health and medical care for infectious diseases today. Preparing for threats is a core national responsibility. That’s why our government invests heavily in missile defense and counterterrorism. We need to similarly protect the nation against biological threats, which range from the ongoing risk of pandemics to the possibility of deliberate use of bioweapons. Pandemics cause massive death and disruption. From a financial standpoint, they’re also astronomically expensive. If, as might be expected from history and current trends, we suffered a pandemic of the current scale every two decades, the annualized cost would exceed $500 billion per year. Investing a much smaller amount to avert this toll is an economic and moral imperative. The White House will put forward a detailed plan this month to ensure that the United States can fully prepare before the next outbreak. It’s hard to imagine a higher economic or human return on national investment. Ecosystem sensitivity from climate change means future pandemics will cause extinction—assumes COVID Supriya 4/19 Lakshmi Supriya got her BSc in Industrial Chemistry from IIT Kharagpur (India) and a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from Virginia Tech (USA). She has more than a decade of global industry experience working in the USA, Europe, and India. After her Ph.D., she worked as part of the RandD group in diverse industries starting with semiconductor packaging at Intel, Arizona, where she developed a new elastomeric thermal solution, which has now been commercialized and is used in the core i3 and i5 processors. From there she went on to work at two startups, one managing the microfluidics chip manufacturing lab at a biotechnology company and the other developing polymer formulations for oil extraction from oil sands. She also worked at Saint Gobain North America, developing various material solutions for photovoltaics and processing techniques and new applications for fluoropolymers. Most recently, she managed the Indian RandD team of Enthone (now part of MacDermid) developing electroplating technologies for precious metals.) “Humans versus viruses - Can we avoid extinction in near future?” News Medical Life Sciences, 4/19/21, https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210419/Humans-versus-viruses-Can-we-avoid-extinction-in-near-future.aspx RM Expert argues that human-caused changes to the environment can lead to the emergence of pathogens, not only from outside but also from our own microbiome, which can pave the way for large-scale destruction of humans and even our extinction. Whenever there is a change in any system, it will cause other changes to reach a balance or equilibrium, generally at a point different from the original balance. Although this principle was originally posited by the French chemist Henry Le Chatelier for chemical reactions, this theory can be applied to almost anything else. In an essay published on the online server Preprints*, Eleftherios P. Diamandis of the University of Toronto and the Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto, argues that changes caused by humans, to the climate, and everything around us will lead to changes that may have a dramatic impact on human life. Because our ecosystems are so complex, we don’t know how our actions will affect us in the long run, so humans generally disregard them. Changing our environment Everything around us is changing, from living organisms to the climate, water, and soil. Some estimates say about half the organisms that existed 50 years ago have already become extinct, and about 80 of the species may become extinct in the future. As the debate on global warming continues, according to data, the last six years have been the warmest on record. Global warming is melting ice, and sea levels have been increasing. The changing climate is causing more and more wildfires, which are leading to other related damage. At the same time, increased flooding is causing large-scale devastation. One question that arises is how much environmental damage have humans already done? A recent study compared the natural biomass on Earth to the mass produced by humans and found humans produce a mass equal to their weight every week. This human-made mass is mainly for buildings, roads, and plastic products. In the early 1900s, human-made mass was about 3 of the global biomass. Today both are about equal. Projections say by 2040, the human-made mass will be triple that of Earth’s biomass. But, slowing down human activity that causes such production may be difficult, given it is considered part of our growth as a civilization. Emerging pathogens Although we are made up of human cells, we have almost ten times that of bacteria just in our guts and more on our skin. These microbes not only affect locally but also affect the entire body. There is a balance between the good and bad bacteria, and any change in the environment may cause this balance to shift, especially on the skin, the consequences of which are unknown. Although most bacteria on and inside of us are harmless, gut bacteria can also have viruses. If viruses don’t kill the bacteria immediately, they can incorporate into the bacterial genome and stay latent for a long time until reactivation by environmental factors, when they can become pathogenic. They can also escape from the gut and enter other organs or the bloodstream. Bacteria can then use these viruses to kill other bacteria or help them evolve to more virulent strains. An example of the evolution of pathogens is the cause of the current pandemic, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Several mutations are now known that make the virus more infectious and resistant to immune responses, and strengthening its to enter cells via surface receptors. The brain There is evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 can also affect the brain. The virus may enter the brain via the olfactory tract or through the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) pathway. Viruses can also affect our senses, such as a loss of smell and taste, and there could be other so far unkown neurological effects. The loss of smell seen in COVID-19 could be a new viral syndrome specific to this disease. Many books and movies have described pandemics caused by pathogens that wipe out large populations and cause severe diseases. In the essay, the author provides a hypothetical scenario where a gut bacteria suddenly starts producing viral proteins. Some virions spread through the body and get transmitted through the human population. After a few months, the virus started causing blindness, and within a year, large populations lost their vision. Pandemics can cause other diseases that can threaten humanity’s entire existence. The COVID-19 pandemic brought this possibility to the forefront. If we continue disturbing the equilibrium between us and the environment, we don’t know what the consequences may be and the next pandemic could lead us to extinction. Warming – NC Shell Climate Patents and Innovation high now and solving Warming but patent waivers set a dangerous precedent for appropriations - the mere threat is sufficient is enough to kill investment. Brand 5-26, Melissa. “Trips Ip Waiver Could Establish Dangerous Precedent for Climate Change and Other Biotech Sectors.” IPWatchdog.com | Patents and Patent Law, 26 May 2021, www.ipwatchdog.com/2021/05/26/trips-ip-waiver-establish-dangerous-precedent-climate-change-biotech-sectors/id=133964/. sid The biotech industry is making remarkable advances towards climate change solutions, and it is precisely for this reason that it can expect to be in the crosshairs of potential IP waiver discussions. President Biden is correct to refer to climate change as an existential crisis. Yet it does not take too much effort to connect the dots between President Biden’s focus on climate change and his Administration’s recent commitment to waive global IP rights for Covid vaccines (TRIPS IP Waiver). “This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures.” If an IP waiver is purportedly necessary to solve the COVID-19 global health crisis (and of course we dispute this notion), can we really feel confident that this or some future Administration will not apply the same logic to the climate crisis? And, without the confidence in the underlying IP for such solutions, what does this mean for U.S. innovation and economic growth? United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai was subject to questioning along this very line during a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing. And while Ambassador Tai did not affirmatively state that an IP waiver would be in the future for climate change technology, she surely did not assuage the concerns of interested parties. The United States has historically supported robust IP protection. This support is one reason the United States is the center of biotechnology innovation and leading the fight against COVID-19. However, a brief review of the domestic legislation arguably most relevant to this discussion shows just how far the international campaign against IP rights has eroded our normative position. The Clean Air Act, for example, contains a provision allowing for the mandatory licensing of patents covering certain devices for reducing air pollution. Importantly, however, the patent owner is accorded due process and the statute lays out a detailed process regulating the manner in which any such license can be issued, including findings of necessity and that no reasonable alternative method to accomplish the legislated goal exists. Also of critical importance is that the statute requires compensation to the patent holder. Similarly, the Atomic Energy Act contemplates mandatory licensing of patents covering inventions of primary importance in producing or utilizing atomic energy. This statute, too, requires due process, findings of importance to the statutory goals and compensation to the rights holder. A TRIPS IP waiver would operate outside of these types of frameworks. There would be no due process, no particularized findings, no compensation and no recourse. Indeed, the fact that the World Trade Organization (WTO) already has a process under the TRIPS agreement to address public health crises, including the compulsory licensing provisions, with necessary guardrails and compensation, makes quite clear that the waiver would operate as a free for all. Forced Tech Transfer Could Be on The Table When being questioned about the scope of a potential TRIPS IP waiver, Ambassador Tai invoked the proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” While this answer suggests primarily that, in times of famine, the Administration would rather give away other people’s fishing rods than share its own plentiful supply of fish (here: actual COVID-19 vaccine stocks), it is apparent that in Ambassador Tai’s view waiving patent rights alone would not help lower- and middle-income countries produce their own vaccines. Rather, they would need to be taught how to make the vaccines and given the biotech industry’s manufacturing know-how, sensitive cell lines, and proprietary cell culture media in order to do so. In other words, Ambassador Tai acknowledged that the scope of the current TRIPS IP waiver discussions includes the concept of forced tech transfer. In the context of climate change, the idea would be that companies who develop successful methods for producing new seed technologies and sustainable biomass, reducing greenhouse gases in manufacturing and transportation, capturing and sequestering carbon in soil and products, and more, would be required to turn over their proprietary know-how to global competitors. While it is unclear how this concept would work in practice and under the constitutions of certain countries, the suggestion alone could be devastating to voluntary international collaborations. Even if one could assume that the United States could not implement forced tech transfer on its own soil, what about the governments of our international development partners? It is not hard to understand that a U.S.-based company developing climate change technologies would be unenthusiastic about partnering with a company abroad knowing that the foreign country’s government is on track – with the assent of the U.S. government – to change its laws and seize proprietary materials and know-how that had been voluntarily transferred to the local company. Necessary Investment Could Diminish Developing climate change solutions is not an easy endeavor and bad policy positions threaten the likelihood that they will materialize. These products have long lead times from research and development to market introduction, owing not only to a high rate of failure but also rigorous regulatory oversight. Significant investment is required to sustain and drive these challenging and long-enduring endeavors. For example, synthetic biology companies critical to this area of innovation raised over $1 billion in investment in the second quarter of 2019 alone. If investors cannot be confident that IP will be in place to protect important climate change technologies after their long road from bench to market, it is unlikely they will continue to invest at the current and required levels. Biotech innovation crucial to stopping warming. Mcmurry-Heath 5-21: Michelle Mcmurry-Heath {Michelle McMurry-Heath is a physician-scientist and the president and CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization}, 21 - ("To help solve climate change, look to the biosciences," STAT, 5-21-2021, https://www.statnews.com/2021/05/21/climate-change-solutions-from-biosciences/)//marlborough-wr/ President Biden’s pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 is an admirable and ambitious undertaking. It’s nearly double the goal set by President Obama in 2015. And it establishes the United States as a world leader in battling climate change. But reaching the president’s target in just under 10 years is a monumental task. It’s so big, in fact, that we’ll never get there by government action alone. No amount of vehicle efficiency standards, forest conservation efforts, or gas taxes can fully solve the problem. We have to science our way out of it. The biosciences, including biotechnology, will play a pivotal role in the fight against climate change. It is already leading the way on several fronts. According to a report from BIO, the organization I work for, the biotech industry’s green initiatives could mitigate the equivalent of 3 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year by 2030, or about half of the country’s annual CO2 emissions. Take food, for example. Food consumption — and production — is central to human existence. Global food production accounts for one-quarter of greenhouse gas emissions. A recent report from an international team of researchers concluded that even if all other fossil fuel emissions were eliminated, emissions from food production alone would prevent us from reaching a key goal of the climate change agreement signed in Paris: preventing the global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. Halting food production isn’t an option, so biotech companies are helping farmers become part of the climate solution. Take, for example, Boston-based Joyn Bio. It is engineering bacteria that pull nitrogen directly from the atmosphere. These microbes then pass the nitrogen to crops like wheat and corn, reducing the need to make, transport, and apply nitrogen fertilizers, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions. Minnesota-based Acceligen is using a technique it calls precision breeding that improves the health of livestock while reducing their waste, greenhouse gas emissions, and water usage. Biotechnology can also help protect food from climate change. As fungal and bacterial infections accelerated by human-driven environmental disturbances threaten to wipe out Cavendish bananas, Tropic Biosciences in the United Kingdom is using CRISPR gene-editing technology to engineer infection-resistant bananas. Companies are also rethinking how food is packaged to reduce plastic pollution and open high-tech paths to broader adoption of biodegradables. This would be a game-changer in the interlinked fight to modulate climate change and protect the oceans. Globally, 100 million tons of plastic are produced every year, 8 million of which ends up in the oceans. The production of plastic requires at least 8 of the world’s petroleum. Greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production and incineration could rise from the current 850 million tons a year to 3 billion tons a year by 2050. And discarded plastic that ends up in the ocean slowly breaks down in sunlight, releasing greenhouse gases and toxic microplastics. Georgia-based Danimer Scientific — partnering with the Mars Wrigley candy company — is working on biodegradable packaging that uses plant oils to manufacture “plastic” that dissolves in soil and water. Bioplastics and biopolymers can reduce greenhouse gas emissions reductions by up to 80 more compared to their petroleum-based counterparts. Fuel is another target for biotechnology. Transportation accounts for the highest percentage of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. While electric cars are gaining popularity, and the $174 billion allocated to support the transition to electrics in Biden’s American Jobs Plan is important, biofuels — which are carbon neutral — will be needed to help reduce emissions in transportation and need comparable support. The biotech company Synthetic Genomics, for instance, is utilizing saltwater algae, which convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into biomass, to make sustainable auto fuel. By 2025, 10,000 barrels of the algal biofuel could be produced per day for commercial use. Biofuels will also play an important role in air travel. While flying accounts for less than 3 of global CO2 emissions a year, on a per-mile calculation it’s the least green form of travel. With the number of air travel passengers expected to double by 2040, the Biden administration is upping the financial incentives — through tax credits — for companies that produce sustainable aircraft fuels. Biotech firms are already stepping up. Companies like Neste, Gevo, and World Energy are using everything from algae to used or wasted cooking oil to create sustainable jet fuels. LanzaTech recycles carbon from industrial emissions and other sources and turns it into aviation fuel — and has recently partnered with other corporations to bring that fuel to market for commercial airline use. With help from biotechnology, the U.S. can achieve the climate change goals outlined by the Biden administration and the Paris Agreement. Human progress and technology got us into this mess. That same ingenuity can help get us out. Climate change destroys the world. Specktor 19 Brandon writes about the science of everyday life for Live Science, and previously for Reader's Digest magazine, where he served as an editor for five years 6-4-2019, "Human Civilization Will Crumble by 2050 If We Don't Stop Climate Change Now, New Paper Claims," livescience, https://www.livescience.com/65633-climate-change-dooms-humans-by-2050.html Justin The current climate crisis, they say, is larger and more complex than any humans have ever dealt with before. General climate models — like the one that the United Nations' Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used in 2018 to predict that a global temperature increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) could put hundreds of millions of people at risk — fail to account for the sheer complexity of Earth's many interlinked geological processes; as such, they fail to adequately predict the scale of the potential consequences. The truth, the authors wrote, is probably far worse than any models can fathom. How the world ends What might an accurate worst-case picture of the planet's climate-addled future actually look like, then? The authors provide one particularly grim scenario that begins with world governments "politely ignoring" the advice of scientists and the will of the public to decarbonize the economy (finding alternative energy sources), resulting in a global temperature increase 5.4 F (3 C) by the year 2050. At this point, the world's ice sheets vanish; brutal droughts kill many of the trees in the Amazon rainforest (removing one of the world's largest carbon offsets); and the planet plunges into a feedback loop of ever-hotter, ever-deadlier conditions. "Thirty-five percent of the global land area, and 55 percent of the global population, are subject to more than 20 days a year of lethal heat conditions, beyond the threshold of human survivability," the authors hypothesized. Meanwhile, droughts, floods and wildfires regularly ravage the land. Nearly one-third of the world's land surface turns to desert. Entire ecosystems collapse, beginning with the planet's coral reefs, the rainforest and the Arctic ice sheets. The world's tropics are hit hardest by these new climate extremes, destroying the region's agriculture and turning more than 1 billion people into refugees. This mass movement of refugees — coupled with shrinking coastlines and severe drops in food and water availability — begin to stress the fabric of the world's largest nations, including the United States. Armed conflicts over resources, perhaps culminating in nuclear war, are likely. The result, according to the new paper, is "outright chaos" and perhaps "the end of human global civilization as we know it."
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No inherency – governments and the WTO are already reducing IP protections for medicines related to COVID-19. WTO No Date WTO, no date, "TRIPS, the intellectual property system and COVID-19," No Publication, https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/trips_e/trips_and_covid19_e.htm accessed 8/10/2021JH TRIPS, the intellectual property system and COVID-19 ¶The way in which an intellectual property (IP) system is designed at national or regional levels – and how effectively it is put to work - can be a significant factor in facilitating access to existing technologies and in supporting the creation, manufacturing and dissemination of new technologies, such as medicines, vaccines and medical devices, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This question – the relationship of IP to the pandemic response – has sparked a vigorous debate within and beyond the WTO, and is a high priority for technical assistance and policy support for WTO members. This page gives access to background information and current WTO documents (including members’ proposals) on this urgent question. ¶Introduction ¶From the beginning of the pandemic, the pressing need was clear for both the development of new vaccines and treatments, and access to these medicines for all – a global challenge unprecedented in both scope and urgency. ¶Governments and other stakeholders have therefore focused on how innovation mechanisms and tools for enhancing access to medical technologies can contribute to the pandemic response, well beyond a reliance on “business as usual”. This has led to a range of initiatives by international organizations, governments and private actors for the voluntary sharing, pooling or non-assertion of IP rights (IPRs), responding to the spirit of collaboration that dominates the global effort to tackle the pandemic. ¶A range of pro-health policy options and interventions are also available for WTO members under the TRIPS Agreement, as implemented in domestic law. ¶Transparency and the availability of up-to-date information on IP and COVID-19 respond to an immediate and critical need. They contribute to the empirical basis that is essential for policy-making in a rapidly evolving trade landscape in the mutual interest of all stakeholders, including governments and economic operators. ¶In furtherance of this objective, the following sections provide access to useful WTO and other resources that specifically address the interface between IPRs and COVID-19, as well as to the work of the TRIPS Council ¶Work of the TRIPS Council ¶Members have exchanged information and experiences relating to IP measures taken in the context of COVID-19 at the TRIPS Council, and have considered members’ proposals. The interface between IPRs and COVID-19 has been considered in TRIPS Council meetings since July 2020, supported by communications to the TRIPS Council. ¶WTO resources ¶Members have exchanged information and experiences relating to IP measures taken in the context of COVID-19 at the TRIPS Council, and have considered members’ proposals. The interface between IPRs and COVID-19 has been considered in TRIPS Council meetings since July 2020, supported by communications to the TRIPS Council. ¶COVID-19 and world trade ¶COVID-19: Measures regarding trade-related intellectual property rights ¶A non-exhaustive list has been compiled by the WTO Secretariat from official sources and confirmed with WTO members concerned. It represents an informal situation report and an attempt to provide transparency with respect to measures regarding trade-related IPRs taken by WTO members in the context of the COVID-19 crisis. The list is regularly updated. ¶Information Note: The TRIPS Agreement and COVID-19¶This note discusses the role and some of the key contributions that the global IP system, including its policy options and flexibilities as implemented in domestic law, can make to address COVID-19. It also provides an overview of measures taken by members. ¶Information Note: How WTO members have used trade measures to expedite access to COVID-19 critical medical goods and services ¶This note on access to COVID-19 critical medical goods and services includes information on using IPRs and policy tools to facilitate innovation in and access to COVID-19-related technologies. ¶Information Note: Developing and delivering COVID-19 vaccines around the world ¶This note looks at issues with trade impact and discusses trade policy choices, including in the area of intellectual property rights, that may be considered along the vaccine value chain to support access to COVID-19 vaccines. ¶An integrated health, trade and IP approach to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic ¶A standalone section on COVID-19 in the 2020 study jointly published by the World Health Organization (WHO), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and WTO, Promoting Access to Medical Technologies and Innovation: Intersections between public health, intellectual property and trade (second edition), maps the multiple challenges posed by the pandemic in relation to the integrated health, trade and IP policy frameworks set out in the study. ¶Working Paper: Patent-related actions taken in WTO members in response to the COVID-19 pandemic¶This working paper provides an overview of the patent landscape of medical treatments and technologies related to COVID-19, and of the patent status of two investigational medical treatments: remdesivir and lopinavir/ritonavir. It presents various patent-related actions taken by legislators, policymakers, industry sectors and civil society organizations in members since the outbreak. Furthermore, it elaborates on patent-related policy options provided by the TRIPS Agreement, and members' national implementation and utilization of these options in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 2. No inherency - The Covid vaccine waiver will pass in the status quo—many countries are switching their positions now . Meyer 6/10 David Meyer senior writer for fortune, 6/10 - ("COVID-19 vaccine-patent pressure grows in Europe as lawmakers back temporary waiver," Fortune, 6-10-2021, accessed 7-5-2021, https://fortune.com/2021/06/10/covid-vaccine-patent-waiver-european-parliament-commission-wto/)//ML The temporary suspension of COVID vaccine patents—a move that's intended to help expand manufacturing and speed up the global vaccination drive, thus shortening the pandemic—was originally proposed by South Africa and India last year. Over recent months, it has gained new supporters like the World Health Organization (WHO), the Pope, and, crucially, the Biden administration.¶ However, Europe—home to major players such as BioNTech and AstraZeneca—has resisted the waiver. Just last week, the European Commission submitted an alternative plan to the World Trade Organization (WTO), proposing other measures such as limits on export restrictions, and the compulsory licensing of the patents in some circumstances.¶ That doesn't go far enough, said members of the European Parliament on Thursday, as it passed an amendment calling for a temporary waiver of the WTO's TRIPS Agreement, the global intellectual-property rulebook, in relation to COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and equipment.¶ The amendment passed by 355 votes to 263, with 71 abstentions. The European Parliament cannot tell the Commission to change its influential tune on the issue, but the vote sent a strong political message nonetheless: Europe, with its many national votes at the WTO, is gradually shifting to the pro-waiver camp.¶ Within the Parliament—the only EU lawmaking institution whose members are directly elected by citizens—the split over the issue has largely followed left-right lines, with leftists such as the Socialists and Democrats (SandD, Parliament's second-biggest voting bloc) backing the waiver and those on the right, such as the European People's Party (EPP, the biggest bloc), opposing it.¶ "With today’s vote, the European Parliament calls on the Commission to finally do the right thing and save lives by supporting the lifting of patents for COVID-19 vaccines and medical equipment," said Kathleen Van Brempt, the SandD's lead negotiator on the subject, in a statement after the vote. "The TRIPS waiver may not prove to be a miracle solution, but it is one of the essential building blocks of a strong global vaccination campaign. Exceptional situations call for exceptional measures.¶ "The alternative proposal submitted by the European Commission to the WTO falls short in the face of the epochal challenge we are facing," she added.¶ But it is not just the European Commission that is becoming more isolated on the issue. Germany, too, is increasingly lonely in its opposition to the waiver.¶ French President Emmanuel Macron, who has previously sided with Germany, traveled to South Africa a couple of weeks ago to discuss the waiver with President Cyril Ramaphosa. On Wednesday, just ahead of the G7 summit, he flipped and joined the patent-suspension camp. That means at least two G7 leaders (also including U.S. President Joe Biden) now favor the waiver.¶ Add to that the fact that the WTO agreed on Wednesday to fully debate the waiver—a step that the EU and some other countries had previously resisted—and it seems the tide may be turning.¶ There is still a way to go, though. World Bank President David Malpass slammed the waiver idea on Wednesday, saying “it would run the risk of reducing the innovation and the RandD” in the pharmaceutical sector. (Malpass, a Trump appointee, is therefore now in opposition to the current White House.)¶ 3. IPR is key to stopping counterfeits. Kilbride 2020 Patrick, vice president of International Intellectual Property for the Global Intellectual Property Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, IP Watchdog, "Calls for WTO to Suspend IP Rights for Vaccine Innovation Would Jeopardize Incredible Progress" December 9, https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2020/12/09/calls-wto-suspend-ip-rights-vaccine-innovation-jeopardize-incredible-progress/id=128085/ Finally: A safe, legitimate marketplace. Patents facilitate a market for innovative medicines, throughout the development stage, as well as in commercialization. Licensing arrangements facilitate the types of collaborations that have proven so successful in 2020; they also ensure that third-party manufacturers are making, using, and selling COVID-19 solutions safely and ethically. Without it, counterfeiters and other bad actors could put shoddy, unreliable, and downright dangerous dupes on the market, all the while marketing them as legitimate products. It’s literally a matter of life and death: Thousands, if not millions, of people die each year at the hands of counterfeit drugs. Turns case – increased vaccine hesitancy means you’ll never solve. Baschuk 2021 Bryce, reporter for Bloomberg News, "Covid-19 pandemic: WTO holiday from vaccine talks draws calls for action" July 26, https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/covid-19-pandemic-wto-holiday-from-vaccine-talks-draws-calls-for-action-121072601721_1.html Specifically, opponents to the waiver say it would create a chaotic patchwork of laws, unravel existing industry partnerships, lead to a supply crunch for scarce vaccine inputs and inject even more uncertainty into already complex arrangements.¶ There’s also the possibility that an IP waiver could result in the production of counterfeit and substandard medicines, which could increase vaccine hesitancy that’s already pervasive in even the world’s wealthiest nations.
Patents are good-~--key to innovation Laxminarayan 1, Ramanan Laxminarayan directs the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy. He is also a Senior Research Scholar and Lecturer at Princeton University. - See more at: http://www.cddep.org/profile/ramanan_laxminarayan#sthash.YqaghohJ.dpuf Spring 2001 http://www.rff.org/files/sharepoint/WorkImages/Download/RFF-Resources-143-antibiotic.pdf The Role of Patents Firms that manufacture antibiotics face conflicting incentives with respect to resistance. On the one hand, bacterial resistance to a product can reduce the demand for that product. On the other hand, the resistance makes old drugs obsolete and can therefore encourage investment in new antibiotics. Pharmaceutical firms are driven to maximize profits during the course of the drug’s effective patent life—the period of time between obtaining regulatory approval for the antibiotic and the expiration of product and process patents to manufacture the drug. Given the paucity of tools at the policymaker’s disposal, the use of patents to influence antibiotic use may be worth considering. A longer effective patent life could increase incentives for a company to minimize resistance, since the company would enjoy a longer period of monopoly benefits from its antibiotic’s effectiveness. Patent breadth is another critical consideration. When resistance is significant, other things being equal, it may be prudent to assign broad patents that cover an entire class of antibiotics rather than a single antibiotic. In such a situation, the benefits of preserving effectiveness could outweigh the cost to society of greater monopoly power associated with broader patents. Broad patents may prevent many firms from competing inefficiently for the same pool of effectiveness embodied in a class of antibiotics, while providing an incentive to develop new antibiotics. TRIPs encourages innovation Margaret Kyle and Yi Qian 14, Kyle is Professor of Economics. Center for Industrial Economics, “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS AND ACCESS TO INNOVATION: EVIDENCE FROM TRIPS,” https://www.nber.org/papers/w20799 The TRIPS Agreement, which generally strengthened and harmonized IPRs across countries, does appear to have changed market outcomes. On average, access to new pharmaceuticals has at least not decreased following TRIPS. Point estimates show an increase in the probability of new product launch and quantities sold, although differences are not always statistically significant. While patents are also associated with higher prices, there is some evidence that prices in poorer countries have fallen, though not to the level of off-patent products. However, the effect of IPRs may be confounded by other policy changes. It is certainly possible that in the absence of countervailing policies, stronger IPRs would have resulted in a larger increase in prices. It is also likely that IPRs have very different implications for countries with a large generic sector (e.g., India) than for most of the developing countries we examine. Nevertheless, we believe the results should be considered relatively good news about the relationship between IPRs and access to innovative medicines, although considerable work remains to improve the latter.
TRIPS reduces global health inequality Samir Raheem Alsoodani 15, “"The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) may offered an access to essential pharmaceutical drugs for developing countries,” Journal Of the College of law /Al-Nahrain University 2015, Volume 17, Issue 2, Pages 393-410, https://www.iasj.net/iasj/article/109180 To conclude, it is beyond doubt that the TRIPS Agreement and its later, permanent amendment of 2005 attempted in good faith to address an urgent issue faced by many developing countries with regards to accessing essential medicine. To a certain extent in its basic tenets, it has had a profound and positive effect on the system, as it has made permanently possible the opportunity for the poorest countries to obtain medications more cheaply through manufacture in developing countries under a compulsory licensing system. Certain positive outcomes arguably include the fact that disputes have been brought under the jurisdiction of one regulatory body, and the least developed Members have found some redress in the power balance regarding costs paid to the pharmaceutical industries based in the wealthier, developed countries (even if this redress has only been to the extent of facilitating increased bargaining capability). This can be considered a triumph from the perspective of universal human rights.
Backlines-~--TRIPS=/=GHI
TRIPS enhances human rights Samir Raheem Alsoodani 15, “"The WTO Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) may offered an access to essential pharmaceutical drugs for developing countries,” Journal Of the College of law /Al-Nahrain University 2015, Volume 17, Issue 2, Pages 393-410, https://www.iasj.net/iasj/article/109180 In contrast, Anderson and Wager (2006) believe that the TRIPS Agreement provisions enhanced human rights principles, because of the many features throughout the TRIPS Agreement, such as the emphasis on the need for a balance between the advantages, the commitments, and the rights for both the users and the producers of the invention. Other examples include nondiscrimination treatment, and the stipulation that all disputes must be settled under the WTO system, which secures the rule of law governing international trade. The TRIPS Agreement has favoured the least developed countries with distinctive and more lenient treatment, as these countries have until 2016 to enforce protection of patent rights with regards to undisclosed data relating to pharmaceutical products.