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Commentary
Heritage Foundation

Pandemics, Patents, and Price Controls

Adam Mossoff
Adam Mossoff
Chair, Forum for Intellectual Property and Senior Fellow
Researchers at the UW Medicine Retrovirology Research Lab at Harborview Medical Center work on samples from the Novavax phase 3 Covid-19 clinical vaccine trial on February 12, 2021 in Seattle, Washington
Caption
Researchers at the UW Medicine Retrovirology Research Lab at Harborview Medical Center work on samples from the Novavax phase 3 Covid-19 clinical vaccine trial on February 12, 2021 in Seattle, Washington

Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown the world what decades of patent protection has made possible in the biopharmaceutical sector of the U.S. innovation economy. Nonetheless, price controls now threaten to stifle this innovation. If the government twists its own laws and arbitrarily imposes price controls on patented vaccines and drugs created by pharmaceutical innovators, innovation will not occur. Statist price controls kill innovation, destroy markets, and stymie or degrade economic development. We should prevent politicians and activists from exploiting the COVID-19 crisis to undermine both patents and biopharmaceutical advancement—harming people today and preventing an effective response to the next pandemic.

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