A
hospital ward with patients treated with iron lungs USA 1952Patents: there is an impasse so far at
the WTO talks on establishing a TRIPS (patents) waiver to enable an equitable and timely, production and distribution of COVID vaccines across the world. It seems
that for the rich nations it is unthinkable that this should be proposed, it is
apparently just not the way our world works. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
My mother would remind our family
in the early seventies how fortunate we were that the swimming baths were open
through the summer holidays. She spoke of how polio epidemics had forced them
to be closed, along with cinemas before the vaccine was found.
Polio had been growing threat with seasonal epidemics
throughout her life and by the early 1950’s was getting out of control with
each summer bringing new localised but devastating epidemics. It is caused by a
virus spread from one person to another through food or water contaminated with
human waste. For the vast majority it passed as a mild gastroenteritis but for
a small number fever and muscle pains were followed by varying patterns of
temporary or permanent paralysis. In the UK several thousand were affected each
year, about 700 died, and some required months of help to breathe with ingenious
iron lungs. In 1950’s America only the thought of nuclear war caused more fear:
It was a worldwide phenomena.
Despite President Roosevelt having launched a nationwide
appeal in 1938 to fund research and support for the affected, there was no
solution and the situation was getting worse. The 1952 epidemic in the USA was
the worst ever with 57 000 cases, 21 000 with a permanent paralysis, and 3000
deaths. In that same year, Jonas Salk, a
virologist in Pittsburgh who had been working on polio for several years, announced
that he had a candidate vaccine. In 1955, following a trial with over a million
children, the injectable vaccine was declared both safe and efficacious. The
following year mass vaccinations started in the UK and annual numbers of cases
fell rapidly so that by the time I was born just 5 years later, in 1961 annual
case number had fallen by over 90%, and shortly afterwards with the change to an
oral vaccine, found by Albert Sabin, cases rapidly became vanishingly rare in
the UK.
This is an
amazing success story, but we have yet to mention the most surprising yet
crucial part of it. On April 10th 1955, the day that the vaccine was
declared safe and effective, Jonas Salk spoke with CBS news,
Interviewer : "Who owns this patent?"
Jonas Salk: " Well the people I would say
There is no patent
Could you patent the sun?"
Remarkably Albert Sabin also chose not to patent his oral polio vaccine, so that it could be widely and quickly produced and used for the benefit of the whole world, he said
"A scientist who is also a human being cannot rest
while knowledge which might be
used to reduce suffering rests on the shelf"
The COVID-19 pandemic is far more deadly than polio ever was, so now that we have a vaccine surely exceptional circumstances demand exceptional measures once again. Let us join with the WHO, BMS World Mission and a majority of the worlds nations in petitioning the WTO and our leaders so that the necessary special approvals can be made and patents lifted so that COVID vaccines can be made worldwide by any company that has the capacity to manufacture them"
joiN THE GLOBAL CHRISTIAN MOVEMENT FOR
EQUITABLE VACCINE ACCESS
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