What do Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, and the far-right have in common?
A recent @inthesetimesmag article revealed that tobacco companies funded advocacy groups against the TRIPS waiver—a proposal tabled at the WTO to relax intellectual property rules during the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure equitable and a timely supply of vaccines, tests, medicines and health equipments.
In Europe, where these groups have been especially active, far-right Members of the European Parliament are among their constituencies, according to the Corporate Europe Observatory.
Their common goal? The defense of intellectual property for tobacco products, an ambition to enter the billionaire Covid-19 vaccine business and the opposition of public health measures. More specifically, the defense of intellectual property rights safeguards them against the plain packaging of tobacco products and other tobacco epidemic mitigating measures, as established in the WHO Convention on Tobacco Control, one of their key battlegrounds on which they rely on IP.
#Fem4PeoplesVaccine #bigpharma #EndCovidMonopolies #Tobacco #farright #covid #TRIPSWaiver
