Renowned Italian political scientist and economist Riccardo Petrella says the WTO decision not to waive intellectual property rights during the pandemic will make crucial medicines and technology unaffordable. It could condemn millions to death. On theAnalysis.news podcast with Paul Jay in collabora

Renowned Italian political scientist and economist Riccardo Petrella says the WTO decision not to waive intellectual property rights during the pandemic will make crucial medicines and technology unaffordable. It could condemn millions to death. On theAnalysis.news podcast with Paul Jay in collaboration with Other News.

Transcript has been edited for clarity.

Paul Jay

Welcome to theAnalysis.news, I'm Paul Jay. This episode is produced in collaboration with Other News, an international platform that disseminates analysis, reports, and information of global interest in Spanish, English, and Italian. It can be found at Other-News.info.

Amnesty International reports that on October 15,  members of the World Trade Organization failed to agree on a landmark proposal made by India and South Africa to temporarily waive certain provisions of the TRIPS Agreement - a global treaty governing intellectual property rights - relating to COVID-19 medical technologies.

If agreed, the waiver would suspend the implementation, application, and enforcement of certain intellectual property rights, such as patents on pharmaceutical products, and facilitate the development and manufacture of more and lower-cost COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. Amnesty said Faced with an unprecedented pandemic, there is an urgent need to remove any barrier that may prevent the development and production of sufficient quantities of affordable COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines said Amnesty.

Medicine Without Frontiers, MSF,  reports that the proposal is a landmark move, that would allow all countries to choose to neither grant nor enforce patents and other intellectual property (IP) related to COVID-19 drugs, vaccines, diagnostics, and other technologies for the duration of the pandemic until global herd immunity is achieved. MSF said that 

“A global pandemic is no time for business-as-usual, and there is no place for patents or corporate profiteering as long as the world is faced with the threat of COVID-19,” said Leena Menghaney, South Asia Head of MSF’s Access Campaign. “During the pandemic, treatment providers and governments have had to grapple with intellectual property barriers to essential products such as masks, ventilator valves and reagents for test kits.”

Now joining us to discuss this is Ricardo Petrella. He is an Italian political scientist and economist;  In 1991, he founded the Lisbon Group, which was composed of 21 academic, business, media and cultural decision-makers, so as to enhance the critical analyses of the current globalization. He is also a member of the World Social Forum and the Porto Alegre Manifesto. He established the International Committee for a global water contract in 1997 (of which he is the general secretary). Starting in 2003, he took the initiative to set up the University of the Public Good. He is an Emeritus Professor at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium).

Riccardo PetrellaThank you for the invitation.

Paul JaySo start with how you got involved in this issue and why you think it's so important.

Riccardo PetrellaFor many years, I have worked with France and the world, in particular, the Lisbon group inthe 90s,