A patent is akin to a book and its copyright. If I have a book on neurosurgery I frankly would not dare operate on someone, even if I knew every page in the book. On the other-hand the experienced surgeon may not know every detail in the book but the surgeon has done the operation successfully a thousand times.
Thus destroying patent protection means nothing unless one knows the details, the problems, the remedies. The Guardian notes:
Pope Francis has given his backing to the campaign calling for the suspension of coronavirus vaccine patents to boost supplies to poorer countries. In a video message to the Vax Live event, Francis backed “universal access to the vaccine and the temporary suspension of intellectual property rights”. And he added his condemnation of the “virus of individualism” that “makes us indifferent to the suffering of others”. “A variant of this virus is closed nationalism, which prevents, for example, an internationalism of vaccines,” he told Vax Live, an online charity concert, which was aired this weekend in aid of the international Covid vaccination effort.
Yes the Bishop of Rome is at some rock concert event prognosticating on what will cure the world's ills. Using what is in a patent will not likely produce a viable result. One need look no further than the J&J experience in Baltimore! They had everything but still managed to mess up millions of life saving doses.
The Bishop of Rome perhaps is best kept focusing on religion and avoid stating how to make vaccines.
Posts
