This event is co-sponsored by the Mellon Sawyer Seminar on “Race, Empire, and the Environments of Biomedicine”
With billions of people in low-income countries still without Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics, this pandemic has exposed the neo-colonial structures of the political economy of intellectual property system and the World Trade Organization (WTO). This talk will delve into an often overlooked history of how the WTO TRIPS Agreement came into existence and the impact it has had on the global South over the 27 years it has been in force – and how it will impact future pandemic preparedness and climate change.
Tahir Amin is a founder and executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge (I-MAK), a nonprofit organization working to address structural inequities in how medicines are developed and distributed. He has over 25 years of experience in intellectual property (IP) law, during which he has practiced with two of the leading IP law firms in the United Kingdom and served as IP Counsel for multinational corporations. His work with I-MAK focuses on re-shaping IP laws and the political economy of ‘innovation’ to better serve the public interest by changing the structural power dynamics that allow health and economic inequities to persist. He has served as legal advisor/consultant to many international groups, including the European Patent Office and World Health Organization, and has testified before Congress on the role of IP in rising drug prices. He is a former Harvard Medical School Fellow in the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine and was a 2009 TED Fellow.
Date | Time
October 19, 2022 | 12:15 – 1:30 PM [PST]
Free and open to the public
Venue | Location
Humanities Building 1, Room 210
University of California, Santa Cruz