ABSTRACT
Unequal access to vaccines has been one of the most salient and devastating issues in the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly as it enters its third year. In light of the deepening disparities in global vaccine access, this chapter explores three foundational pillars in the political economy of therapeutic innovation: war-biomedical logics, asset accumulation logics, and intellectual property logics. Taking Operation Warp Speed as a point of departure, the chapter examines how an extractive innovation ecosystem of defence-funded biomedicine can reinforce North-South inequities in vaccine access. The central problem presented is that leading corporations in the biopharmaceutical sector own scientific innovations as private income-generating assets for financial gain. These assets are privately owned and protected through intellectual property right regimes enforced internationally, thus exacerbating structural inequalities in global access. Transforming publicly-funded therapeutics like vaccines into private assets further impedes meaningful public ownership and control over essential health care between and within regions. Without urgent and comprehensive reconfigurations in the very political economy of biomedicine, these disparities will continue to deepen with devastating consequences beyond the Covid-19 pandemic.
