Vaccines and patents: how self-interest and artificial scarcity weaken human solidarity

We are living through a humanitarian crisis, yet design faults in intellectual property mechanisms and a faith-based approach to patents is steering governments into what the WHO has called ‘a catastrophic moral failing’, writes Siva Thambisetty. To explain patents and vaccines in the context of recent developments we need larger frameworks that are not contingent on the current crisis. Right now, the UK should show moral leadership in a post-Brexit world by supporting the intellectual property waiver on patents related to COVID-19 vaccines and treatments proposed by India and South Africa at the WTO.