Professor Jacob Sherkow was featured on Marketplace Morning Report, where he discussed the idea that a temporary suspension on patents for COVID-19 vaccines could increase supply around the world by allowing other countries to manufacture them. 

Sherkow is skeptical that waiving patents alone would solve the problem.

“It presumes that if we just, like, write it down like it’s a recipe for chocolate chip cookies, we can just make vaccine tomorrow. And that’s simply not true,” Sherkow said.

“It needs skilled, highly specialized facilities. It needs skilled technicians to actually conduct some of the manufacturing processes,” Sherkow said, some of which are company secrets. Forcing drug companies to share their patents would not necessarily force them to share those secrets.

Read the full article or listen to the clip at marketplace.org.