A-Infos (en) Anarquista Socialismo Libertário OASL - Breach of vaccine patents: scientific knowledge cannot be privately owned! (ca, de, it, pt)[machine translation]

With the increase in the number of deaths and contamination by Covid-19 in the 
country, there is a dangerous tendency, due to the urgency of the pandemic, to 
put aside several important questions about the dismantling of public health and 
the advancement of the international pharmaceutical industry. In the effort to 
formulate our policies, it is essential to keep alive the debate on the private 
property of scientific knowledge for the production of vaccines. We need to speak 
more emphatically about breaking patents. ---- In a context marked by the 
predatory competition between laboratories, for social apartheid in supply and 
with the vaccination campaign walking at an ant's pace, it is important that we 
think about this situation in a structural way, pointing to the construction of 
alternatives that break with this way of thinking medicine and health research. 
The starting point is to make it clear that any more rational and egalitarian 
proposal to conceive knowledge will be constantly attacked by capitalists, 
considering that the public interest clashes with the interest of the 
pharmaceutical industry's profits.

If, on the one hand, the Covid-19 pandemic crisis can put us in a situation of 
myopia caused by a sense of urgency, on the other hand it leaves the 
contradictions of the pharmaceutical industry naked and raw. It is a market in 
which huge profits are produced from disease and human suffering. The industry is 
a financial machine driven by the predatory logic of shareholders' greed and to 
the detriment of public health interest. The pandemic crisis, due to this logic, 
becomes a great business opportunity for laboratories, in which vaccines need to 
be defended against competition through patents, a record of technology that 
cannot be used by any other company. The profitability logic makes access to 
treatments difficult, causes scarcity and further aggravates the situation of 
barbarism.

The corporatist media, allied to at least doubtful characters, such as the former 
Minister of Health, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, now glorified in the logic of the 
least worst, defends private research in every way and criticizes the breaking of 
patents. It exalts the speed at which vaccines were produced, tested and brought 
to the market, in an unprecedented record, as if this were due to the innovation 
generated by competition between private laboratories. What these advocates do 
not say is that all of this innovation would not have been possible without the 
huge numbers of public resources injected directly into vaccines. Just as they 
forget to mention that science is built by a series of open researches until it 
reaches the final "product".

What they call innovation is a rhetorical maneuver to legitimize the logic of the 
deregulated financial system, which increasingly brings catastrophe to the 
working class in all sectors. In Brazil, public research progressively loses its 
budget, transferring these public health resources to companies in the logic of 
competition and profitability. In such a model, the focus is only on short-term 
profit, which plays a fundamental role for society, as they do not bring 
immediate resources to shareholders. For example, what is the interest of 
companies in financing epidemiological control before a pandemic breaks out?

Doria's opportunism and the dismantling of the Butantan Institute
One of the most infamous episodes of this pandemic was the media dispute between 
the governor of SP and President Bolsonaro regarding vaccination. The Butantan 
Institute has become a centerpiece in this macabre chess of the government, 
considering that, at least until the month of May, it is responsible for more 
than 80% of the vaccines applied in the country. This important role in this very 
difficult moment ends up erasing some issues, such as the process that has been 
underway for years of scrapping the institute's civil service, in benefit of the 
entity's new institutional demands, which is the partnership with private 
companies and the sale of products.

In 2019, Butantan requested a loan of R $ 1.8 billion from BNDES to invest in a 
modern production center, capable of placing it among the major manufacturers in 
the world. Choosing the Big Pharmas profit logic, Butantan stopped, for example, 
manufacturing BCG vaccines (given to newborns) and ImunoBCG, aimed at patients 
with bladder cancer, to focus on the production of the flu vaccine, seeing an 
expanding market there. In addition to supplying the Ministry of Health, the 
institute hoped at that time to offer millions of doses to the Northern Hemisphere.

Within the logic of current managers, the pandemic of covid-19 and the 
protagonism of the Butantan Institute, contrary to what may seem, accelerate the 
dismantling towards the constant privatization of its services. The centennial 
mission of the institute to research, develop, manufacture and supply products 
and services for the health of the population has been destroyed and replaced by 
the vision of the pharmaceutical industry, in which the main objective is profit 
at any cost - even if the result is counterproductive. public health.

Health is not a commodity, for health at the service of the population!
Still using the example of the Butantan Institute, the working conditions of 
health workers are increasingly precarious. On the part of civil servants and 
civil servants, those who rise up against this logic are repressed with 
administrative processes; in the segment of female workers and contracted 
workers, there is no possibility of questioning, due to the flexibility of the 
contracts. Another party is hired as a position of trust and without any public 
oversight, leaving the way for private interests without obstacles.

It is urgent that we organize ourselves against the health privatization system, 
which throws our lives in the hands of shareholders. The production of medicines 
must be socialized under public control. Investments must be directed in a 
transparent manner to the research and health of the population, and not 
obscurely to financial market agents who pretend to be scientists.

In this moment of crisis, there is an urgent need to break patents! Vaccines 
cannot be a luxury item for a minority of rich countries: they must be available 
to everyone, anywhere on the planet. Breaking patents and intellectual property 
rights is a decisive factor!

Sources:

https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/saude/noticia/2019-07/mandetta-diz-que-pais-nao-deveria-quebrar-patente-de-medicamentos

https://www.cartacapital.com.br/sociedade/butantan-se-afasta-da-saude-publica-e-mira-em-grandes-laboratorios/

https://anarquismosp.wordpress.com/2021/05/10/quebra-de-patentes-das-vacinas/
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