April, 13 2021, 12:00am EDT
On Eve of WTO COVID Meeting: Director General's "Third Way" Is Same Old Way of Big Pharma Control Over COVID Vaccine Supply, Rebranded
The World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General (DG) is holding a "Third Way" COVID-19 vaccine confab in Geneva on April 14th that at best is a distraction from an effective initiative that falls squarely within the WTO's actual remit.
WASHINGTON
The World Trade Organization (WTO) Director General (DG) is holding a "Third Way" COVID-19 vaccine confab in Geneva on April 14th that at best is a distraction from an effective initiative that falls squarely within the WTO's actual remit. That would be a temporary COVID-19 waiver of patent, copyright, industrial design and undisclosed information terms of the WTO Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) agreement, to the extent they hinder the "prevention, treatment and control" of the COVID-19 pandemic.
By design, what the WTO DG has dubbed the "Third Way" is unlikely to help bolster COVID-19 vaccine or treatment supplies because it leaves the same few pharmaceutical firms in total control of supply. Relying on contract manufacturing and voluntary licensing is the approach that has led to massive shortages with a few firms controlling if, where and when supply will be manufactured and can be sold or distributed and at what price. Horrifyingly, the world is not expected to reach herd immunity until 2024 under this regime.
The WTO DG has said that current annual global COVID vaccine production capacity is 3.5 billion doses. But between 10-16 billion are needed to reach herd immunity, assuming 70% of population vaccination levels and some vaccines being two-shot regimes. There is no option but to create significantly more production capacity, especially given the prospect that these will not be one-time shots but perhaps needed on an ongoing basis if, like flu vaccines, they must be repeated or if booster shots have to be given.
The role of the WTO and its DG should be to facilitate negotiations among WTO member nations to fix the problem that is caused by existing WTO rules on intellectual property. Many health and vaccine-specific agencies already have initiatives underway that have failed to coax vaccine originator firms to license or otherwise share their technology. And, not one firm has participated in the World Health Organization's voluntary COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP). Various global and even national agencies are better suited than the WTO to play matchmaker between originators and prospective manufacturers.
But missed connections are not the issue: Until policies change so vaccine originating firms do not have total control over production, such as a WTO TRIPS waiver and related government actions to pressure for tech transfers, supplies of vaccines and treatments will remain short. Many qualified firms in developing nations have sought licenses or contract manufacturing deals. Instead of agreeing to boost global production, vaccine originators have used their IP monopolies to effectively block production to supply markets they consider unprofitable. Their focus is not on global access. Consider Pfizer's investor relations VP's recent announcement that the firm will shift production next year to boosters for sale to rich nations at higher prices.
Had the TRIPS waiver of some WTO Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS) been agreed when proposed last year, perhaps more than 27% of people in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) would be projected to get vaccines in 2021. Instead, few will have access until 2022. Many will wait until 2024. The pandemic will rage largely unmitigated among more than three quarters of the world's population.
A temporary TRIPS waiver can make sure "trade" rules are not an obstacle to countries' efforts to protect their residents' health and crush the pandemic. Indeed, the agreement establishing the WTO does not provide authority for the DG to broker deals between private firms. This activity is simply outside of its mandate.
In contrast, negotiating waivers of the obligations contained in WTO agreements due to the development of exceptional circumstances is an explicitly authorized function of the organization. If the COVID-19 pandemic does not constitute such exceptional circumstances, it is unclear what would qualify as such.
Today more than 100 WTO members support the waiver and consider it critical to boost worldwide production of COVID vaccines, treatments and diagnostic tests. Many hoped that the arrival of new WTO DG, economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, might move countries currently blocking the waiver. Because South Africa introduced it and the WTO Africa Group supports it unanimously, some WTO members and activists worldwide hoped that the first African WTO DG could help facilitate progress. However, Okonjo-Iweala did not endorse the waiver. Instead, she diverted attention away from it by suggesting a "third way" that is more of what has failed.
Namely, corporations determine where and how much vaccines and other drugs are produced through highly restrictive voluntary licenses and contract manufacturing arrangements, with the monopoly-holding firms deciding if, how much, where and under what terms chosen partners may produce. One example of what the WTO DG proposes is South African firm Aspen's contract manufacturing arrangement with Johnson & Johnson (J&J). According to South Africa's WTO Counselor, for many months 91% of doses produced in South Africa had to be sent for sale in Europe, while only 9% could be used in South Africa.
Many pharmaceutical industry interests oppose the waiver and have a litany of arguments intended to redirect attention away from the core problem of their monopoly control over supply. They claim developing country firms cannot make these vaccines, even as they make limited contracts for such firms to do so. They claim that IP barriers are not a real obstacle to greater production. If IP was not an obstacle, manufacturers all over the world would already have begun to organize more production to fill the chasm between supply and demand. Instead, there are a limited number of market-segmented contract manufacturing arrangements, as determined by developers who restrict access to the technology. Moderna declined to partner with a qualified Bangladeshi vaccine maker while other firms report never getting any response to their inquiries. Just in Africa, "Biovac and Aspen in South Africa, Institute Pasteur in Senegal, and Vacsera in Egypt could rapidly retool factories to make mRNA vaccines," notes a group of medicine-production experts in a recent Foreign Policy article. Indeed, while COVID-19 shone a spotlight on the mRNA platform, for two decades researchers around the world have attempted to harness it for vaccines and therapies. A former Moderna director of chemistry revealed that with enough technology transfer and knowhow-sharing, a modern factory should be able to get mRNA vaccine production online in three to four months. The result of the originators' unwillingness to partner is a huge gap between needed global supply and the production levels that vaccine developers deem useful for their business strategy, which is focused mostly on selling at higher prices to rich and upper-middle-income countries.
Failure to enact a waiver in the face of this unprecedented health and economic crisis could be the final blow that dooms the WTO. The existential and intensifying crisis that has wracked the WTO in recent years is in no small part a consequence of the organization getting involved in or being used to dealing with issues clearly outside of its mandate. And the WTO's increasing irrelevance is related to the body not succeeding in managing problems and concerns that are directly in its remit.
The "third way" approach would double down on the same mistakes. By not prioritizing the negotiation of waiver language agreeable to all WTO member countries and desperately needed to address THE priority concern of many, the organization will become more irrelevant, while also alienating 100-plus countries that support the TRIPS waiver. If the new DG pulls the WTO -- an organization devised to negotiate and administer rules -- into instead pretending to become an international deal broker, it will only amplify concerns about the WTO staff and structures overstepping the authorities provided by member countries.
The way forward at the WTO is clear. Existing WTO rules are obstacles to scaling up global production and thus facilitating more equitable distribution of affordable, safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, treatments and tests. Eliminating these obstacles is not the final step to greater production, but the first, so there is no time to waste. The DG's priority should be to pave a quick path to countries engaging in text-based negotiations on a waiver. If some WTO member countries have specific concerns with the waiver that South Africa and India have proposed, then the way forward is to offer changes to that proposal. Facilitating negotiations among WTO members to fix a problem caused by existing WTO rules, by preparing a waiver text that can be approved by all at the WTO General Council, is precisely the role of the DG and the WTO.
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Critics Blast 'Reckless and Impossible' Bid to Start Operating Mountain Valley Pipeline
"The time to build more dirty and dangerous pipelines is over," said one environmental campaigner.
Apr 23, 2024
Environmental defenders on Tuesday ripped the company behind the Mountain Valley Pipeline for asking the federal government—on Earth Day—for permission to start sending methane gas through the 303-mile conduit despite a worsening climate emergency caused largely by burning fossil fuels.
Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC sent a letter Monday to Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Acting Secretary Debbie-Anne Reese seeking final permission to begin operation on the MVP next month, even while acknowledging that much of the Virginia portion of the pipeline route remains unfinished and developers have yet to fully comply with safety requirements.
"In a manner typical of its ongoing disrespect for the environment, Mountain Valley Pipeline marked Earth Day by asking FERC for authorization to place its dangerous, unnecessary pipeline into service in late May," said Jessica Sims, the Virginia field coordinator for Appalachian Voices.
"MVP brazenly asks for this authorization while simultaneously notifying FERC that the company has completed less than two-thirds of the project to final restoration and with the mere promise that it will notify the commission when it fully complies with the requirements of a consent decree it entered into with the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration last fall," she continued.
"Requesting an in-service decision by May 23 leaves the company very little time to implement the safety measures required by its agreement with PHMSA," Sims added. "There is no rush, other than to satisfy MVP's capacity customers' contracts—a situation of the company's own making. We remain deeply concerned about the construction methods and the safety of communities along the route of MVP."
Russell Chisholm, co-director of the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (POWHR) Coalition—which called MVP's request "reckless and impossible"—said in a statement that "we are watching our worst nightmare unfold in real-time: The reckless MVP is barreling towards completion."
"During construction, MVP has contaminated our water sources, destroyed our streams, and split the earth beneath our homes. Now they want to run methane gas through their degraded pipes and shoddy work," Chisholm added. "The MVP is a glaring human rights violation that is indicative of the widespread failures of our government to act on the climate crisis in service of the fossil fuel industry."
POWHR and activists representing frontline communities affected by the pipeline are set to take part in a May 8 demonstration outside project financier Bank of America's headquarters in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Appalachian Voices noted that MVP's request comes days before pipeline developer Equitrans Midstream is set to release its 2024 first-quarter earnings information on April 30.
MVP is set to traverse much of Virginia and West Virginia, with the Southgate extension running into North Carolina. Outgoing U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and other pipeline proponents fought to include expedited construction of the project in the debt ceiling deal negotiated between President Joe Biden and congressional Republicans last year.
On Monday, climate and environmental defenders also petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, challenging FERC's approval of the MVP's planned Southgate extension, contending that the project is so different from original plans that the government's previous assent is now irrelevant.
"Federal, state, and local elected officials have spoken out against this unneeded proposal to ship more methane gas into North Carolina," said Sierra Club senior field organizer Caroline Hansley. "The time to build more dirty and dangerous pipelines is over. After MVP Southgate requested a time extension for a project that it no longer plans to construct, it should be sent back to the drawing board for this newly proposed project."
David Sligh, conservation director at Wild Virginia, said: "Approving the Southgate project is irresponsible. This project will pose the same kinds of threats of damage to the environment and the people along its path as we have seen caused by the Mountain Valley Pipeline during the last six years."
"FERC has again failed to protect the public interest, instead favoring a profit-making corporation," Sligh added.
Others renewed warnings about the dangers MVP poses to wildlife.
"The endangered bats, fish, mussels, and plants in this boondoggle's path of destruction deserve to be protected from killing and habitat destruction by a project that never received proper approvals in the first place," Center for Biological Diversity attorney Perrin de Jong said. "Our organization will continue fighting this terrible idea to the bitter end."
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Advocates praised the FTC "for taking a strong stance against this egregious use of corporate power, thereby empowering workers to switch jobs and launch new ventures, and unlocking billions of dollars in worker earnings."
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U.S. workers' rights advocates and groups celebrated on Tuesday after the Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 along party lines to approve a ban on most noncompete clauses, which Democratic FTC Chair Lina Khansaid "keep wages low, suppress new ideas, and rob the American economy of dynamism."
"The FTC's final rule to ban noncompetes will ensure Americans have the freedom to pursue a new job, start a new business, or bring a new idea to market," Khan added, pointing to the commission's estimates that the policy could mean another $524 for the average worker, over 8,500 new startups, and 17,000 to 29,000 more patents each year.
As Economic Policy Institute (EPI) president Heidi Shierholz explained, "Noncompete agreements are employment provisions that ban workers at one company from working for, or starting, a competing business within a certain period of time after leaving a job."
"These agreements are ubiquitous," she noted, applauding the ban. "EPI research finds that more than 1 out of every 4 private-sector workers—including low-wage workers—are required to enter noncompete agreements as a condition of employment."
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has suggested it plans to file a lawsuit that, as The American Prospectdetailed, "could more broadly threaten the rulemaking authority the FTC cited when proposing to ban noncompetes."
Already, the tax services and software provider Ryan has filed a legal challenge in federal court in Texas, arguing that the FTC is unconstitutionally structured.
Still, the Democratic commissioners' vote was still heralded as a "seismic win for workers." Echoing Khan's critiques of such noncompetes, Public Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert declared that such clauses "inflict devastating harms on tens of millions of workers across the economy."
"The pervasive use of noncompete clauses limits worker mobility, drives down wages, keeps Americans from pursuing entrepreneurial dreams and creating new businesses, causes more concentrated markets, and keeps workers stuck in unsafe or hostile workplaces," she said. "Noncompete clauses are both an unfair method of competition and aggressively harmful to regular people. The FTC was right to tackle this issue and to finalize this strong rule."
Morgan Harper, director of policy and advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project, praised the FTC for "listening to the comments of thousands of entrepreneurs and workers of all income levels across industries" and finalizing a rule that "is a clear-cut win."
Demand Progress' Emily Peterson-Cassin similarly commended the commission "for taking a strong stance against this egregious use of corporate power, thereby empowering workers to switch jobs and launch new ventures, and unlocking billions of dollars in worker earnings."
While such agreements are common across various industries, Teófilo Reyes, chief of staff at the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, said that "many restaurant workers have been stuck at their job, earning as low as $2.13 per hour, because of the noncompete clause that they agreed to have in their contract."
"They didn't know that it would affect their wages and livelihood," Reyes stressed. "Most workers cannot negotiate their way out of a noncompete clause because noncompetes are buried in the fine print of employment contracts. A full third of noncompete clauses are presented after a worker has accepted a job."
Student Borrower Protection Center (SBPC) executive director Mike Pierce pointed out that the FTC on Tuesday "recognized the harmful role debt plays in the workplace, including the growing use of training repayment agreement provisions, or TRAPs, and took action to outlaw TRAPs and all other employer-driven debt that serve the same functions as noncompete agreements."
Sandeep Vaheesan, legal director at Open Markets Institute, highlighted that the addition came after his group, SBPC, and others submitted comments on the "significant gap" in the commission's initial January 2023 proposal, and also welcomed that "the final rule prohibits both conventional noncompete clauses and newfangled versions like TRAPs."
Jonathan Harris, a Loyola Marymount University law professor and SBPC senior fellow, said that "by also banning functional noncompetes, the rule stays one step ahead of employers who use 'stay-or-pay' contracts as workarounds to existing restrictions on traditional noncompetes. The FTC has decided to try to avoid a game of whack-a-mole with employers and their creative attorneys, which worker advocates will applaud."
Among those applauding was Jean Ross, president of National Nurses United, who said that "the new FTC rule will limit the ability of employers to use debt to lock nurses into unsafe jobs and will protect their role as patient advocates."
Angela Huffman, president of Farm Action, also cheered the effort to stop corporations from holding employees "hostage," saying that "this rule is a critical step for protecting our nation's workers and making labor markets fairer and more competitive."
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'Discriminatory' North Carolina Law Criminalizing Felon Voting Struck Down
One plaintiffs' attorney said the ruling "makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society."
Apr 23, 2024
Democracy defenders on Tuesday hailed a ruling from a U.S. federal judge striking down a 19th-century North Carolina law criminalizing people who vote while on parole, probation, or post-release supervision due to a felony conviction.
In Monday's decision, U.S. District Judge Loretta C. Biggs—an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama—sided with the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute and Action NC, who argued that the 1877 law discriminated against Black people.
"The challenged statute was enacted with discriminatory intent, has not been cleansed of its discriminatory taint, and continues to disproportionately impact Black voters," Biggs wrote in her 25-page ruling.
Therefore, according to the judge, the 1877 law violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause.
"We are ecstatic that the court found in our favor and struck down this racially discriminatory law that has been arbitrarily enforced over time," Action NC executive director Pat McCoy said in a statement. "We will now be able to help more people become civically engaged without fear of prosecution for innocent mistakes. Democracy truly won today!"
Voting rights tracker Democracy Docket noted that Monday's ruling "does not have any bearing on North Carolina's strict felony disenfranchisement law, which denies the right to vote for those with felony convictions who remain on probation, parole, or a suspended sentence—often leaving individuals without voting rights for many years after release from incarceration."
However, Mitchell Brown, an attorney for one of the plaintiffs, said that "Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to reengage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
"It also makes our democracy better and ensures that North Carolina is not able to unjustly criminalize innocent individuals with felony convictions who are valued members of our society, specifically Black voters who were the target of this law," Brown added.
North Carolina officials have not said whether they will appeal Biggs' ruling. The state Department of Justice said it was reviewing the decision.
According to Forward Justice—a nonpartisan law, policy, and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social, and economic justice in the U.S. South, "Although Black people constitute 21% of the voting-age population in North Carolina, they represent 42% of the people disenfranchised while on probation, parole, or post-release supervision."
The group notes that in 44 North Carolina counties, "the disenfranchisement rate for Black people is more than three times the rate of the white population."
"Judge Biggs' decision will help ensure that voters who mistakenly think they are eligible to cast a ballot will not be criminalized for simply trying to re-engage in the political process and perform their civic duty."
In what one civil rights leader called "the largest expansion of voting rights in this state since the 1965 Voting Rights Act," a three-judge state court panel voted 2-1 in 2021 to restore voting rights to approximately 55,000 formerly incarcerated felons. The decision made North Carolina the only Southern state to automatically restore former felons' voting rights.
Republican state legislators appealed that ruling to the North Carolina Court of Appeals, which in 2022 granted their request for a stay—but only temporarily, as the court allowed a previous injunction against any felony disenfranchisement based on fees or fines to stand.
However, last April the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed the three-judge panel decision, stripping voting rights from thousands of North Carolinians previously convicted of felonies. Dissenting Justice Anita Earls opined that "the majority's decision in this case will one day be repudiated on two grounds."
"First, because it seeks to justify the denial of a basic human right to citizens and thereby perpetuates a vestige of slavery, and second, because the majority violates a basic tenant of appellate review by ignoring the facts as found by the trial court and substituting its own," she wrote.
As similar battles play out in other states, Democratic U.S. lawmakers led by Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont in December introduced legislation to end former felon disenfranchisement in federal elections and guarantee incarcerated people the right to vote.
Currently, only Maine, Vermont, and the District of Columbia allow all incarcerated people to vote behind bars.
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