‘Vaccine racist’: Bill Gates says no to sharing vaccine tech with developing nations, draws ire

Bill Gates was asked if it would be better to share intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines with developing countries. To this, he answered no.

REGINA MIHINDUKULASURIYA

1 May, 2021 11:36 am IST

File image of Bill Gates | Wikimedia Commons

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New Delhi: As India battles the deadly second wave of Covid-19 pandemic, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates’ recent remarks on patents in vaccine technology have sparked a row.

Gates, in an interview on 25 April with British news broadcaster Sky News, was asked if it would be better to share intellectual property rights on Covid-19 vaccines with developing countries. To this, he answered, no.

“The thing that’s holding things back, in this case, is not intellectual property… It’s not like there’s some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines,” Gates was quoted as saying.

He also said, “There’s only so many vaccine factories in the world, and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines…Moving a vaccine, say, from a [Johnson & Johnson] factory into a factory in India, it’s novel, it’s only because of our grants and expertise that can happen at all.”

His remarks drew criticism even from supporters of his philanthropic efforts.

mentator Krystal Ball, who co-hosts news web series Rising, said the US, European Union pharma companies have been trying to keep vaccine formulas a secret to profit from them and have “an extraordinarily powerful ally in that fight to protect their bottom line, human lives be damned – our own supposed savior of global public health, Bill Gates”.

In another episode of Rising, Democratic strategist Jennifer Holdsworth Karp said, “I think that Bill Gates has done a lot for vaccine competency over the years. Having said that, 100 per cent, this is about patent protection”, and not actually about concerns of vaccine production quality. Karp added, “If he was true to his mission that he’s been following for the last 20 years” of vaccine distribution, then Gates would now be at the “forefront” of making sure every capable factory was “operating at full capacity”.