 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we are joined with Alexander Zaychik Alex who's speaking to us from the United States. And we're going to discuss Mr. Bill Gates recent statement that actually intellectual property protection is not the issue on the question of vaccine manufacture. And it needs, as he said, our money and our expertise before a factory in India can produce vaccine because he gave it as an example. But that was really the crux of what he's been arguing for a long time, that it's western knowhow which has to come before anything can be done in the global south. Alex, you've been studying this issues for a long time. And you've also written an article on his, this particular in your Mr. Bill Gates and how he's been looking at this issues. Bill Gates is a bit of an iconic figure in the United States. So how does, how do things like this when stated, in fact, in India, the response has been that this is a racist statement. How does the western audience of the US audience look at this kind of statements? I think that there is a turn taking place where people are beginning to be internationally minded enough to consider the view from elsewhere. And people are understanding that this is in fact a racist statement, and that there's a lot of condescension involved. And quite frankly illogic in what he's saying. You know, people are learning more about the vaccine industry. People are starting to understand that many vaccines were already being produced around the world. And there's no reason why countries like India and other countries cannot produce these vaccines. And they're starting to ask questions that are rather uncomfortable for Gates and his allies, who are also, you know, quite frankly, the companies that don't want to give up their intellectual property, which is what he's addressing when he makes these statements. Of course, the Gates empire is built on intellectual property of Microsoft. So to his understanding, intellectual property would be the linchpin of his empire. And therefore, it sounds when it is transported into health, really the larger attempt to keep what shall we say, the hegemony of intellectual property to the western world. That's at least the broad sense that we get from here. But you know, this is very much a debate that I thought was put to bed in the nineties, when it and early 2000, when it came to the AIDS epidemic, because this is exactly the kind of situation arguments that were given then. And the argument was that philanthropic money, Western aid would cover what the African continent, for instance, or Asians would require. And we should really depend on handouts and not try and develop medicines for ourselves and break the intellectual property rights regime, which is what underpinned this whole monopoly of the pharmaceutical companies or what we call the big pump. So do you see that? Is this sort of does this resonate with the AIDS debate? Or do you think that this is something which the connections are yet to be made? No, I think that's absolutely right. These issues should have been put to bed. With that moral catastrophe to quote the director general of the WHO, in the context of COVID, the lessons should have been learned. And the fact that we're having to revisit these fundamental moral issues of the right to medicines is quite an unfortunate thing. But the echo is clear, and the issues are the same. And here we are 20 years later, which is a testimony to the power of the industries that forced through the regime that led to the African AIDS crisis with regard to medicines. That was three industries basically. It was pharmaceuticals, it was entertainment, it was software. And one of the companies that lobbied very hard for that WTO regime, known as TRIPS, that now is the center of so much debate, was Microsoft. Bill Gates was active in the pushing through of the system that we are now reckoning with. And that has been lost over the last 20 years as he's built up this image, as this great philanthropist who has engaged in this selfless crusade to bring vaccines to poor and middle income countries. But I think now we're starting to have the clarity that we need to see his true role as an ally and runner of interference of this industry and of this system that has failed again and again. And until we have that clarity, we're not going to get past this failure. We're not going to get past the system, which has proven incapable of meeting human needs and public health crises like the current pandemic. You know, the Doha declaration as you're referring to was the one which is supposed to settle this, that okay, in WTO there is an exception of epidemics or a public health crisis when intellectual property could be broken or could be bypassed. Now, that was a post again by the rich countries that the big pharma that was pushed through because it was completely unacceptable what was happening, the pricing and so on. But at that time, we had a huge ally in the West or in the home countries of big pharma, which was the AIDS affected patients because they wanted cheap medicines as well and also the empathy of all AIDS patients around the world. The global solidarity was a huge positive force. This time, that is not really there. There is no constituency which is affected similarly and which is arguing for cheap vaccines because you see that at least in the home countries, these countries in the United States, the European countries which have been opposing, any relaxation on intellectual property on the question of vaccines in WTO are also willing to get vaccines for free. They are socialists at home and capitalist abroad on the question of vaccines. So that is of course also because most of the vaccine development has come from public sector money. So they have at least that card to play at home. But it is interesting that when it comes to the other places, other countries and so on, that kind without that kind of constituency, how do you see the debate in the West shaping up? Because really, it is as much about countries in the global south. How do you see the West or the global North constituencies within that playing its role? Well, I think there's two avenues there for changing views in the United States, for example, where I am right now. I think one is to tap into a sense of moral obligation which can resonate here not as much as we would like necessarily, but it does exist. And the second avenue is self-interest which is to explain to people which I think people understand at some level is that the world is very small in 2021. And until, as all the global leaders have said, everyone is safe, nobody is safe. So there's an understanding that as variants emerge that it will risk undermining the health and safety of countries that have higher vaccination rates. And I think that is probably more fruitful in terms of getting political momentum towards lifting intellectual property restrictions than the sense of moral responsibility. But I would pursue both and I see both taking place, both of those conversations are happening and they need to be amplified. Alex, one last question for you. How do you see Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Bill Gates role, particularly in WHO? Because WHO had an alternate model, the CTAP model, which asked for patents to be put, intellectual property to be put. It's not about patents alone. Patents are a small part of the much larger intellectual property regime we are talking about, which is really know how sharing knowledge, that's the fundamental issue. But that was completely sabotaged by what Bill Gates, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation did. And what we have today, in fact, is that that patent pool idea is just dead. Yeah, unfortunately Gates played quite a significant role in undermining the momentum that was building towards a CTAP type IP pool that was going to be matched with a tech transfer mechanism. Because as you mentioned, it's obviously a bigger issue than just patents. We were going to require a truly global solidarity effort that was going to either force the companies to share their know how or create a pool where they were doing so on their own, which was the less likely scenario. But Gates basically showed up with the act accelerator and said, no, that's not necessary. Just trust us, trust the companies, just let the market forces plus a little sprinkling of philanthropy solve the problem. And a lot of people anticipated that that was not going to be enough. And they were saying so quite loudly very early on in the pandemic. And there's really no excuse for not listening to those voices because they turned out to be right. And their arguments were based on history and a very sophisticated analysis of how the world works and how this industry functions. And history is not going to look kindly on them or those who enabled them. And unfortunately Bill Gates counts in that column. In fact, Dawksford vaccine was originally planned to be made to be shared to all. And in fact, it's being transferred to AstraZeneca. It appears that Mr. Gates and his foundation later be grown in that as well. Yeah, that was a shame. And especially when you think back to the history of Oxford that they were trying to live up to. Look at penicillin during World War II, which was a comparable global crisis, they were developing penicillin and they brought it to America and they had a chance to patent the product or the process at that point. And they did shows not to. They kept it in the public domain and the US government at the time did as well. And they basically contracted with some companies, but the governments were in the dominant partner. They were the senior partner and the companies just made this stuff. And they made as much as possible. And it was a success. It was an example of the public sector, you know, developing a breakthrough medicine and not letting intellectual property slow down maximum production for a global crisis. And that model should have been adopted in the context of COVID. And it was not. And there's no good reason that it wasn't other than, you know, fealty to what is a fundamentally unjust and indivensible system of private profit over the public. It's interesting, Alex, when you talk about antibiotics, penicillin in particular, that this was also the battle in India in the 50s. And in fact, the American multinationals, the British multinationals fought a bitter battle to see the public sector in India does not develop antibiotics, because at that time, antibiotics was much costlier in India than even in the United States. So that was the battle we had to fight. And at that time, the pharmaceutical companies, I don't remember which one at this moment. In fact, one of the persons in the Senate hearing said, we are a part of the strategic battle against the Soviet Union. And in India, we have recently won a battle like this, where we have stopped a pharmaceutical public sector company from making antibiotics. So this is really a rehash of a much older battle that seems to be going on. And unfortunately, for us, Mr. Bill Gates brings the hat of a philanthropist today, and not the hat of a pharmaceutical spokesperson. That is also the problem that we seem to have. And therefore, his legitimacy, particularly the role he plays in WHO is, I think, something that we have to now contend with. And unless we are able to delegitimize his position as the global spokesperson for public health, we're going to have a tough time. Alex, thanks for being with us so late at night where you are and speaking to us on what is, I think, going to be a very important topic for our discussions in the future. Please do see, do click, and also visit our website.