Owning the Sun

June 1, 2022

Should for-profit companies own patents on inventions that were created in U.S. government-funded labs? Is the current American model of privatized medicine a good thing? What happened to the glorious vision of spring 2020 in which commercial, government, and charitable institutions would freely share information on COVID for the good of all? Part history and part polemic, journalist Zaitchik's (The Gilded Rage: A Wild Ride Through Donald Trump's America) remarkable book addresses these questions and many more. Sixty years ago, patent-free polio vaccines were available to everyone. By late 2020, the U.S. government had not only signed over the basic technologies for creating mRNA vaccines to drug companies, but had also agreed to pay handsomely for each dose of vaccine made. Countries with less money got nothing. Despite Zaitchik's obvious biases, there is enough raw data in this work for the listeners to come to their own, sometimes different, conclusions. Narrator Johnny Heller's clear and low-key delivery ensures that the listener can follow the author's sometimes complex arguments. VERDICT Recommended for those interested in medical history, the politics and practices of the COVID pandemic, or the activities and objectives of the Gates Foundation.--I. Pour-El

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 6, 2021
Journalist Zaitchik (The Gilded Rage) takes readers through the labyrinthine history of medical patents in this expansive study. Zaitchik begins in Renaissance Italy, in which the first attempts at privatizing knowledge were introduced in the form of “royal grants” from princes, and moves through the establishment of the “progress clause” in the U.S. Constitution that gave “authors and inventors” exclusive rights to their discoveries. Zaitchik recaps the Bayh-Dole legislation in 1980, which broadened the scope of patents to include inventions developed using federal funding, and the war fought by the CEO of Pfizer in 1986 against the generic drug market, which ensured U.S. patents could be enforced globally. Zaitchik considers patent “dissenters,” including farmers who fought back against the patenting of common agricultural techniques in the late 19th century, and rounds things out with an outline of the race to find a Covid-19 vaccine (Bill Gates, despite his public image as a virtuous philanthropist, according to the author, worked “to ensure the pandemic response remained in line with the deep ideological commitment to knowledge monopolies”). It’s undoubtedly a dense study, but Zaitchik covers a remarkable amount of ground and never gets lost in the weeds. The result is comprehensive and illuminating. Agent: Kate Garrick, the Karpfinger Agency.