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Wonderful to hear of the commoning strategy of Salk and Sabin. On 3/16/2020 1:08 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote:
... Trump is trying to get an exclusive US patent on a German coronavirus candidate vaccine. Nobody seems to think there’s anything strange about this bit of international thuggery. What a long, sorry road we’ve come down since the days of Salk and Sabin.
Except that there was a parallel case in the early 2000s in which U.S. and European Big Pharma had Intellectual Property monopoly rights over AIDS medicines (antiretroviral drugs known as ARVs), which they charged $10 000/year for. Here in South Africa, this was affordable to only a tiny fraction of the five million people living with HIV at the time (now 7.7 million, as there's still no cure).
But the activists in Treatment Action Campaign plus allies like ACTUP! in the U.S. and Medicins sans Frontiers helped lobby to get a World Trade Organisation exemption applied. As even local state resistance (by the Mbeki government from 1999-2008) was overcome and roll-out began in the public sector, generic medicines began to be manufactured.
As access improved, life expectancy soared from 52 in 2005 to 65 today. In short, decommodification of the life-saving medicines was accomplished by deglobalizing capital and globalizing people.
(Let me know offlist if you'd like more on this inspiring example.) _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: https://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
