• bort@sopuli.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    Civil society organizations active in poorer nations, including Doctors Without Borders, expressed discomfort with the notion that Western-dominated groups, staffed by elite teams of experts, would be helping guide life-and-death decisions affecting people in poorer nations. Those tensions only increased when the Gates Foundation opposed efforts to waive intellectual property rights, a move that critics saw as protecting the interests of pharmaceutical giants over people living poorer nations

    https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/14/global-covid-pandemic-response-bill-gates-partners-00053969

      • bort@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        8 months ago

        i remember hearing, that their argument was, that a strong profit-incentive would motive the manufacturer to increase production as well as quality. I also remember that the debate around that topic was drowned out by some weirder theories. E.g. during that time q-anon was on the rise, and some people argued, that the gates foundation was using covid to implant microchips into people or something like that

        source: my memory from a couple years back

        • SporeAdic@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          A not insignificant line of reasoning (though probably less important to people in power than the profit incentive) was also to keep the secrets of making the vaccine from bring revealed to other countries, which would apparently erode the USA’s pharmaceutical research advantage. An interesting article about this from the former director of NIST is here but I don’t necessarily agree with the reasoning.