Sir, – Fintan O’Toole’s attack on Ireland’s relationship with the biopharmaceutical industry may be predictable but that doesn’t make it balanced (“Ireland has tested positive for political cowardice”, Opinion & Analysis, June 21st).
The World Trade Organisation’s recent decision to endorse a Trips (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) waiver for Covid-19 vaccines is worrying for the translation of science into solutions.
The past two years have shown that the key response to this pandemic – and to others – has been research, development and innovation in the discovery, production and delivery of vaccines. That has meant significant private investment over many years, alongside public funding. Perhaps there was full public funding and State control for Russia’s Sputnik vaccine or China’s Sinopharm vaccine. But for the innovative, assured vaccines the European and American authorities and people would accept, and are now provided globally, public authorities looked to partner with the European and American biopharmaceutical industry. The needed private-sector investment and capacity of the industry, built over many years, has been founded on a stable intellectual property framework.
To question the framework that catalysed the development of vaccines for Covid-19 in record time, and that facilitated more than 370 voluntary licensing agreements with suitable manufacturing partners globally, is not a good signal for investment in the medicines of the future. That our Government considers it important to “protect research and development” is encouraging since so many jobs, and the medicines that emerge from innovation, depend in large part on stable intellectual property rights.
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Our industry’s favourability score, measured for us last month by pollsters Ipsos, has risen some 10 points to 53 per cent since before the pandemic.
Three in five people trust the industry here, about twice the global average. Sometimes, maybe the public is ahead of commentators. – Yours, etc,
BERNARD MALLEE,
Director of Communications
and Advocacy,
Irish Pharmaceutical
Healthcare Association,
Dublin 2.