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insightful @TomBollyky @ChadBown collective action probs won’t be solved by charity.
BUT: story of AIDS drugs is not chastened pharma and charity actions. Govts + activists used state power, forced generic production.
Means a different lesson for collective action & COVID... https://twitter.com/tombollyky/status/1343938456154742785
BUT: story of AIDS drugs is not chastened pharma and charity actions. Govts + activists used state power, forced generic production.
Means a different lesson for collective action & COVID... https://twitter.com/tombollyky/status/1343938456154742785
As @ellenthoen and others have shown, govts used their flexibilities under WTO hundreds of times to compel generic production—making use of funding sources but using state power
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/96/3/17-199364.pdf
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/96/3/17-199364.pdf
These are flexibilities won by leading southern govts in the Doha Declaration that grew out of AIDS crisis... it was collective action, and most of the charity structures stayed very much on the sidelines 3/
@Mandeep_Dh @Correa_CEIDIE @juditrius @TAvafia
https://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/hivaids/Discussion_Paper_Doha_Declaration_Public_Health.pdf
@Mandeep_Dh @Correa_CEIDIE @juditrius @TAvafia
https://www.undp.org/content/dam/undp/library/hivaids/Discussion_Paper_Doha_Declaration_Public_Health.pdf
Prices fell by more than 99% not because companies made voluntary concessions or b/c of groups like gates or global fund—even mechanisms like patent pool work b/c backed by the ultimate threat of compulsory licenses and state power, for example... 4/
@MSF_access @ElsTorreele
@MSF_access @ElsTorreele
...eg in South Africa the norm has become HIV drugs have to enter with multiple generic options and low prices only because of the competition commission’s actions led by activist lawyers./5
@SECTION27news @Jon_M_Berger https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/oct/17/southafrica.sciencenews
@SECTION27news @Jon_M_Berger https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/oct/17/southafrica.sciencenews
..the problem has been AIDS has been treated as the exception, when countries try to do the same in other contexts US and European powers have put them on watch lists and threaten sanctions /6 https://www.reuters.com/article/idUKN19221363
So I’m in radical agreement @TomBollyky about the need for attention to international relations, institutions, and state power. Voluntarism won’t work. lesson from HIV: South will likely need to take action together, as @_HassanF and others have said, time is now /7 https://twitter.com/_hassanf/status/1343256033511284736
Biden admin should make a radical break and support the (frankly very minimal) TRIPS waiver proposed by India & SAfrica for COVID commodities /8
https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2020/october/20201015_waiver-obligations-trips-agreement-covid19
https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/pressreleaseandstatementarchive/2020/october/20201015_waiver-obligations-trips-agreement-covid19
push companies to do tech transfer (especially where US public money paid for the R&D) and mobilize significant vaccine manufacturing capacity in South while building more. Only state-to-state collaboration can actually get it done, not charity/fin
