Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS, International Issues Subcommittee [Transcript]

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1 that our government has invested heavily our federal funds
2 in developing products and now has allowed itself to be
3 paralyzed, for years already, at the point at which any
4 other vaccine would have proceeded. Something is
5 desperately wrong.
6 RABBI EDELHEIT: Several years ago in my pulpit
7 in Chicago, you challenged those of us who were in your
8 presence regarding the ethical issue of ownership and
9 access. As your path has taken you over these last eight
10 or nine years since we've been together, as we've heard
11 more and more of the extraordinary impact of the pandemic,
12 could you reflect again on the ethical implications of
13 ownership and access as we move toward a preventive
14 vaccine?
15 DR. MANN: Well, I used to be kind of obsessed
16 with the idea that it was essential to have worked out some
17 mechanism for ensuring widespread availability of a vaccine
18 as the vaccine was being developed, and some of us came up
19 with some thoughts about how that might be ensured. I used
20 to say that if we just had a vial with a vaccine in it and
21 then started thinking about the distribution issues, that
22 it would be too late.
23 But I have to say that I've been just utterly
24 amazed by the paralysis -- there's no other word -- by the
25 paralysis and the failures of vaccine development itself.
26 No one is willing to talk about distribution of a product

FREILICHER & ASSOCIATES, COURT REPORTERS
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