The Illinois Biotechnology Innovation Organization (iBIO) joined 47 independent state biotechnology associations in a letter to President Biden expressing our serious concerns with the proposed expansion of the WTO TRIPS waiver to include not only vaccines, but also COVID-19 therapeutics and diagnostics.

“The support for an intellectual property waiver by the US government would severely undermine the United States leadership in biopharmaceuticals and cede much of our IP to foreign countries, sending jobs in manufacturing overseas. As an organization that represents more than 90,000 life sciences employees primarily in the pharmaceutical and medtech industries, we care deeply about the life sciences workforce across the state of Illinois. The proposed expansion of the WTO TRIPS waiver would have serious consequences for iBIO’s members, including small and medium sized biosciences companies.”

Illinois is home to one of the largest life sciences clusters and expanding this waiver would affect over 20,000 jobs. The waiver would be inconsistent with President Biden’s recent Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation. A wavier would cost US Biomanufacturing jobs, by allowing U.S. innovative technology to be manufactured overseas and exported without regard to intellectual property protections. It is counterproductive to hand over American innovations to countries looking to undermine our leadership in biomedical discovery if we truly want to see American infrastructure be further built up.”

You can read the full letter here

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