by: Luke Hawksbee, Martin McKee, Lawrence King
In “Don’t Worry about the Drug Industry’s Profits When Considering a Waiver on COVID-19 Intellectual Property Rights,” PERI researcher Lawrence King and co-authors challenge Big Pharma’s claim that relaxing intellectual property rights around COVID-19 will disincentivize investment necessary for life-saving innovation. They show that pharma has been, by far, the most profitable sector in the U.S. since 1955. Moreover, despite record profitability around the time of the coronaviruses that produced SARS and then MERS, these companies failed to invest in vaccines or antiviral drugs that would have provided major benefits during the COVID pandemic.
>> Read article published by The BMJ
In an article published by The BMJ, PERI's Lawrence King and colleagues argue that policy makers should prioritize public health over private monopolies in the debate around global access to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments.
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