Ep. 129 - Vaccine Apartheid: US Media's Uncritical Adoption of Racist "Intellectual Property" Dogma

“The COVID-19 vaccine is ripe for the blackmarket,” warns an NBC News opinion piece. “Iran-linked hackers recently targeted coronavirus drugmaker Gilead,” reports Reuters. “Hackers ‘try to steal COVID vaccine secrets in intellectual property war,’” blares a Guardian headline. As the COVID-19 pandemic raged and pharmaceutical companies raced to develop a vaccine, Western media routinely asserted without question or criticism the premise that vaccine “intellectual property” is a zero-sum possession that’s been “stolen” by malicious foreign actors, blackmarket criminals, and of course, dreaded “pirates.”

With rare exception, the conceit that intellectual property for the COVID-19 vaccine is a finite thing that can be leaked, spied on or stolen — presumably to the detriment of the average American, somehow — is simply taken for granted. Similarly, assumed across corporate media reports is the notion that it is the US government’s job — no, their duty — is to protect sacred American intellectual property. National security experts, weapons contractor-funded think tanks, and national security reporters uniformly decry the sinister and shadowy agents and adversaries out to snatch America’s hard-earned vaccine dominance.

Nowhere in all this fear mongering and hand-wringing is there any sense of the much greater injustice at work: that the vaccine is in fact hoarded by the security states of wealthy nations, secured for power and securitized for profit. It is virtually unquestioned that only some countries or companies should be allowed access to the knowledge of finding and developing a vaccine, and no consideration that, maybe, there’s no such thing as too many countries working toward the management and eradication of a deadly virus.

From this default capitalist — and as we will show, racist — mindset has emerged what activists have long argued would be inevitable: a global apartheid regime of vaccine access that tracks almost one-to-one with historical currents of colonialism. An extension of an IP regime that has cut off the Global South from other life-saving medicines for decades, exacerbating the devastating effects of epidemics such as malaria and AIDS.

In the wake of the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, much of American corporate media decided to audit their own internally racist practices, but for reasons of partisan expediency and capitalist ideology, this sudden concern for historical racism seems to have stopped at the water’s edge, and U.S. media has largely covered the emerging Vaccine Apartheid regime as an inevitable act of god, rather than springing from explicit white supremacist IP fetishization, codified and defended by leaders of both American political parties. Indeed, if one were to place a map of when a country can expect to be fully vaccinated over the next few years on top of a map of economic exploitation, colonial extraction and capitalism-imposed poverty in the Global South, it would be an almost exact match. This emerging Vaccine Apartheid — while potentially complicated by Chinese soft power efforts to vaccinate the Global South — is not only inevitable, but the deliberate result of our 1990s-era, post-Cold War economic order created by the World Trade Organization.

On this episode, we trace the colonial origins of American media’s uncritical adoption of “intellectual property above all else,” why the WTO is functioning exactly how it was designed to, and how U.S. corporate anti-racism discourse goes out its way to make sure discussions of white supremacy never examine the manifestly racist effects of the American and European-led capitalist order.

Our guest is Heidi Chow, Senior Campaigns and Policy Manager at Global Justice Now.

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Guest

Heidi Chow is the Senior Campaigns and Policy Manager at Global Justice Now, a UK-based organization that mobilizes people for change and acts in solidarity with those fighting injustice, particularly in the Global South. Heidi leads Global Justice Now's pharmaceutical campaign to fight for access to medicines in the UK and across the world, as well as the organization's trade campaign. She has played an active role in the global movement for food sovereignty and in the development of the People's Food Policy. She has also campaigned on a range of economic justice issues such as food speculation, Europe’s bilateral trade deals, the World Trade Organization and stopping RBS’s unethical investments. Follow her @hidschow.

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Show Notes

Biden Must Reject Trump’s “Vaccine Apartheid” Policy at the WTO

Sarah Lazare | January 12, 2021 | In These Times

Intellectual Property Monopolies Block Vaccine Access

Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram | December 15, 2020 | IPS

World Faces Covid-19 “Vaccine Apartheid”

Sharon Lerner | December 31, 2020 | The Intercept

With First Dibs on Vaccines, Rich Countries Have ‘Cleared the Shelves’

Megan Twohey, Keith Collins and Katie Thomas | December 15, 2020 | The New York Times

Pfizer Helped Create the Global Patent Rules. Now it's Using Them to Undercut Access to the Covid Vaccine.

Sarah Lazare | December 17, 2020 | In These Times

Want Vaccines Fast? Suspend Intellectual Property Rights

Achal Prabhala, Arjun Jayadev and Dean Baker | December 7, 2020 | The New York Times

Racism is baked into patent systems

Shobita Parthasarathy | November 2, 2020 | Nature

US Accuses Chinese Hackers of Stealing COVID Vaccine Research

Robert Farley | July 22, 2020 | The Diplomat

Who Owns the Knowledge Economy? Political Organising Behind TRIPS

Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite | September 30, 2004 | Corner House Briefing 32

White people are getting vaccinated at higher rates than Black and Latino Americans

Nicquel Terry Ellis and Deidre McPhillips | January 26, 2021 | CNN

The COVID-19 recession is the most unequal in modern U.S. history

Heather Long, Andrew Van Dam, Alyssa Fowers and Leslie Shapiro | September 30, 2020 | The Washington Post

Study shows vaccine nationalism could cost rich countries US$4.5 trillion

January 25, 2021 | International Chamber of Commerce

VIP vaccines: As availability tightens, the wealthy and well-connected push for access

Sasha Pezenik | January 25, 2021 | ABC News 

How rich people will cut the line for the coronavirus vaccine 

Shamus Khan | December 18, 2020 | The Washington Post

‘There absolutely will be a black market’: How the rich and privileged can skip the line for Covid-19 vaccines

Olivia Goldhill and Nicholas St. Fleur | December 3, 2020 | STAT

'Vaccination apartheid': Gaza struggling with Covid-19 infections while Israel rolls out jab

Maha Hussaini | January 25, 2021 | Middle East Eye

A Post-colonial Framework for Researching Intellectual Property History

Michael D. Birnhack | April 11, 2018 | Handbook on Intellectual Property Research: Lenses, Methods, and Approaches

Neo-Colonial Aspects of Global Intellectual Property Protection

Andreas Rahmatian | June 24, 2010 | The Journal of World Intellectual Property

Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights

Charan Devereaux, Robert Lawrence and Michael D. Watkins | September 1, 2006 | Peterson Institute for International Economics

Gore accused of working against cheap Aids drugs

Julian Borger | August 9, 1999 | The Guardian

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References

Exclusive: Iran-linked hackers recently targeted coronavirus drugmaker Gilead - sources

 Jack Stubbs and Christopher Bing | May 8, 2020 | Reuters

U.S. to Accuse China of Trying to Hack Vaccine Data, as Virus Redirects Cyberattacks 

David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth | May 10, 2020 | The New York Times

U.S. Officials: Beware Of China And Others Trying To Steal COVID-19 Research

All Things Considered | May 11, 2020 | NPR

U.S. Says Chinese, Iranian Hackers Seek to Steal Coronavirus Research

Gordon Lubold and Dustin Volz | May 14, 2020 | The Wall Street Journal

Coronavirus: Russian spies target Covid-19 vaccine research

Chris Fox and Leo Kelion | July 16, 2020 | BBC

The Covid-19 vaccine is safe — and scarce. That makes it ripe for the black market.

Roderick Jones | December 17, 2020 | NBC News

Going after patent pirates at Punta del Este 

Michael J. Zamba | September 18, 1986 | Christian Science Monitor

Stealing From The Mind

Barry MacTaggart | July 9, 1982 | The New York Times

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Transcript

For a full transcript of this episode, go here.

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