Third-Way Proposals from Big Pharma and the WTO are the Same-Old Way: Commercial Control of Supply, Price, and Distribution

[Brook Baker] This Policy Brief from the People’s Vaccine Campaign, written by Prof. Brook K. Baker, is highly relevant to the discussions of the India/South Africa TRIPS waiver proposal at the WTO. The Policy Brief distinguishes between (1) industry controlled efforts to manage the global supply of COVID-19 vaccines and other health technologies that results in the inevitable consequence of inadequate supply, needlessly high prices, and grossly inequitable distribution and (2) government-led efforts to free additional qualified manufacturers from intellectual property and technology transfer barriers that stand in the way of building near-term and sustainable biopharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in underserved developing country regions around the world.