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Abstract arguments made regarding intellectual property rights or the necessity of profit to commerce cannot be allowed to trump the lives of actual human beings in the event of a pandemic. Who in their right mind would argue that any corporation's 'right' to make the most profit possible must be protected, although huge portions of the human population will perish to preserve that right? It is precisely in the case of a global pandemic that we best can see the absurdity of basing a health care delivery system on free market fundamentalism.

A pharmaceutical company holding a patent on any precursor or component of a vaccine needed to quell a national or global pandemic ought reasonably to expect that it must be yielded up. Realistically, one cannot argue that any existing pharmaceutical corporation would be bankrupted by that requirement. Other products they sell will quickly recoup the loss, and existing corporations have billions in revenue to absorb adverse circumstances.

This being the case, any argument for the opposing side in this debate must be strictly abstract and academic. There is a place for such arguments, but they are not constructive if human lives are being lost all over the world.

If Big Pharma corporations were truthful, they would admit that a great deal of the research going into the patents they hold is subsidized by either government, governmental agencies, or public universities (which are funded by taxpayer dollars). When those patents strike gold, have any corporations been required to give an appropriate proportion of the profit back to taxpayers? Sadly, no. Although it would seem only fair, lobbyist-controlled legislatures have thus far failed to require that citizens be recompensed for profitable research they have subsidized. One might say Big Pharma owes We the People more than a life-saving patent.

There are times when humanity must decide what is really important, and a global pandemic is one of those times. I do not consider it sane to value corporate profits over the lives of millions, just as I do not consider it rational to ponder the rights and interests of corporations as being equal to the rights and wellbeing of citizens. If one must, for some reason, consider the plight of a multinational pharmaceutical company, one must admit that a decimated pool of actual and potential stockholders cannot be in any corporation's best interest.

Learn more about this author, Lezley Mcdouall.
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