The world needs more the 6 billion of its population vaccinated to immunise the breeding ground of the Corona virus - the human. Every human is at risk of contracting Covid-19 if they have to lead a normal life of at the least socialising with other humans, a natural instinct of being a gregarious species.
If we don’t immunise the population of the planet fast, all of us will run a higher risk of dying early! So immunisation is a common purpose for every country and every individual, because who wants early death!!!
Questions:
1. Will Big Pharma that has spent millions on the research & development (R&D) of these vaccines be ready to allow anyone to manufacture them without any license fee to recover the cost of development?
2. Should a drug development & manufacturing company’s accounts be allowed to be audited by a statutory body to ascertain the cost of each shot after factoring in the cost of R&D and a nominal profit percentage be added to the total cost to make the retail price more affordable?
3. Should another manufacturer who is using the intellectual property of a drug discovering entity pay a nominal royalty so that the drug discovery company can recover costs of R&D?
One Solution:
Worldwide quotas for deciding the quantity of annual production of a particular patented drug can be set by the World Health Organisation and based on this quantity and audited costs of R&D, the royalty can be worked out to recover the costs of R&D.
Questions and solutions are being discussed about intellectual property rights when the ultimate beneficiary is the whole of humanity.Elon Musk has already lead the way in 2014 with the Tesla Motors patents being opened up for anyone's use in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology. “Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport”, wrote Musk in his blogpost - All Our Patents Belong To You.
In that spirit, let us all contemplate a few more questions-
- Why does the planet earth have humans?
- Is there a collective purpose?
- Should each human be responsible for the upkeep of the planet in terms of sustainability so that the collective purpose may be realised?
- Should profiteering be limited to an optimum that allows both money for innovation to the producer and affordability to the user?
- Should "Right to Life" override "Rights of Patent Holders"?
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