Senators Opposed To Generic COVID Vaccines Have Received Twice As Much Pharma Cash

In October 2020, India and South Africa issued a landmark proposal at the World Trade Organization (WTO) that parts of its Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement be waived during the pandemic so that the intellectual property behind COVID-19 treatments could be shared freely to scale up production of life-saving vaccines.

Photo Insert: Sen. Mike Crapo, a Republican who is at the forefront of the effort to scrap the vaccine waiver, has raised nearly $714,000 from the pharmaceuticals and health products industry,

The Biden administration eventually stated its support for a TRIPS waiver in early May but has since stood passively by, declining to advance the proposal in recent WTO meetings.

COVID-19 vaccine recipes and technologies of treatments like Moderna’s, developed with the co-participation of the National Institute of Health, have still not been shared with other countries, and in the past few months the Omicron variant has emerged and spread while vaccinations rates remain low in many parts of the world, David Moore reported for Sludge.

The Biden administration’s statement in favor of a TRIPS waiver received immediate pushback from Republicans in Congress. On May 20, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the ranking member of the Committee on Finance, which has jurisdiction over reciprocal trade agreements, filed an amendment that sought to make it harder for the US to agree to waive the TRIPS Agreement for COVID-19 vaccines.

The amendment would have required an evaluation process among US departments and congressional approval for any TRIPS waiver, seeking assurances it would not extend to Russia or China, which it posed as threats to US intellectual property.

“I am concerned the Administration did not — because it could not — provide any evidentiary support for its claim that a waiver would facilitate access,” Crapo said. Over 100 countries have joined in support of the proposed TRIPS Agreement waiver introduced on Oct. 2, 2020. About 73% of COVID-19 vaccine doses have gone to people in high- and upper-middle-income countries.

The Crapo amendment was co-sponsored by 17 Republican senators, including Mitt Romney of Utah, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and John Cornyn of Texas, who are among the top recipients of campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical and health products industry to U.S. senators, according to OpenSecrets.

The 18 GOP senators have received, on average, nearly twice as much in pharmaceutical and health products campaign donations over their careers as have the 32 GOP senators who did not co-sponsor it, according to a Sludge review of OpenSecrets data.

The signers have received an average of $708,442 in contributions from the pharmaceuticals and health products industry, 1.9 times more than the $372,000 average for non-signers.

Sen. Crapo has raised nearly $714,000 from the pharmaceuticals and health products industry, putting him 13th among current Republican senators. His amendment was co-sponsored by other large recipients of drugmaker donations, including retiring Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania with nearly $875,000, and Todd Young of Indiana, with over $745,000.

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