Dr. Nicole Saphier: Biden vs. Big Pharma – here's why waiving patent rights on COVID vaccines is a big mistake

Rather than congratulating Big Pharma on their tremendous efforts during a time of peril, last week President Biden held true on a controversial campaign promise doing the opposite. 

Following increased scrutiny from progressive activists, the Biden administration announced its support of a plan rescinding intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines, saying, "The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines."  The United States is the global leader in pharmaceutical development, largely in part due to robust intellectual property right laws and free-market pricing. Intellectual property rights as they relate to Big Pharma often have a depraved reputation of solely trying to maximize profits, but they actually serve multiple important functions, including continued work on innovation and reducing lesser quality products from entering the market. Our addiction to lionizing does not yield much in terms of increased understanding or progress.