Day October 23, 2020

Conflicting Interests, Competing Perspectives and Policy Incoherence: Covid-19 Highlights the Significance of the UN High-Level Panel Report on Access to Medicines

[Muhammad Abbas] ... The UN High-Level Panel Report on Access to Medicines is a great help in identifying and articulating the nature of the public policy problems faced by countries in response to COVID-19. After analysing the Report and its key recommendations, this paper evaluates the diverging responses to the Report which clearly highlight the conflicting interests of stakeholders. This article concludes that WTO Member States need to revive the spirit of the Doha Declaration which was arguably the best multilateral effort to accommodate the conflicting interests.

Open Education and Artificial Scarcity in Hard Times

[Rory Mir] The sudden move to remote education by universities this year has forced the inevitable: the move to an online education. While most universities won’t be fully remote, having course materials online was already becoming the norm before the COVID-19 pandemic, and this year it has become mandatory for millions of educators and students. As academia recovers from this crisis, and hopefully prepares for the next one, the choices we make will send us down one of two paths. We can move towards a future of online education which replicates the artificial scarcity of traditional publishing, or take a path which fosters an abundance of free materials by embracing the principles of open access and open education.

Deconstructing Moderna’s COVID-19 Patent Pledge

[Jorge Contreras] On October 8, Cambridge-based biotech company Moderna, Inc., a leading contender in the race to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, publicly pledged not to enforce its COVID-19 related patents against “those making vaccines intended to combat the pandemic.” ...In the high-stakes market for COVID-19 vaccines, it is worth considering the full range of factors that might motivate a private firm to relinquish valuable intellectual property rights for the public good. A better understanding of these factors could help policymakers to secure additional pledges from firms that have not yet volunteered their intellectual property in the fight against the pandemic.