Bill Gates, one of the worldâs richest men and most powerful philanthropists, was the target of criticism from social justice campaigners on Sunday after arguing that lifting patent protections on Covid-19 vaccine technology and sharing recipes with the world to foster a massive ramp up in manufacturing and distribution â despite a growing international call to do exactly that â is a bad idea.
Directly asked during an interview with
Sky News if he thought it âwould be helpfulâ to have vaccine recipes be shared, Gates quickly answered: âNo.â
Asked to explain why not, Gates â whose massive fortune as founder of Microsoft relies largely on intellectual property laws that turned his software innovations into tens of billions of dollars in personal wealth â said that: âWell, thereâs only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done