Jensen, Nele;
Barry, Andrew;
Kelly, Ann H;
(2022)
More-than-national and less-than-global: The biochemical infrastructure of vaccine manufacturing.
Economy and Society
10.1080/03085147.2022.2087899.
(In press).
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Abstract
The recent efforts to mount an R&D response to public health emergencies of international concern have led to the formation of what we term a biochemical infrastructure of vaccine development and production. In principle, this infrastructure is expected not only to curtail existing pandemics but also anticipate and contain yet-to-emerge future threats. Critically, by nature of its geographical distribution and technical modularity, that infrastructure promises both to accelerate and expand access to essential medical tools, and in so doing, redress global health inequities. In practice, however, the biochemical infrastructure of vaccines remains highly uneven, fragmented and unjust. Moving beyond calls for ‘global health solidarity’, this paper examines the key actors, normative techniques and socio-technical assemblages, from viral platform technologies to intellectual property waivers and from accelerated regulatory pathways to advance market commitments, that serve to link ‘just-in-case’ and ‘just-in-time’ modalities of global health R&D. We argue that the biomedical infrastructure of vaccine development and production emerging in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is unfolding across an innovation ecosystem that is more-than-national and yet less-than global: a reconfiguration that may offer possibilities for a new, radically-overhauled, model of vaccine equity.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | More-than-national and less-than-global: The biochemical infrastructure of vaccine manufacturing |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/03085147.2022.2087899 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2022.2087899 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third-party material in this article are included in the Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Keywords: | Vaccine R&D, COVID-19, biochemical engineering, infrastructure, equity |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10153332 |
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