Giving away Alabama’s biotech future would hurt Black workers

Birmingham’s growing life sciences sector got a major boost last October when it was named one of 31 finalists for a federal “tech hub” grant. The city is now in the running to receive up to $75 million in funding.

Even without the potential grant, Birmingham is on track for a biotech boom that will benefit workers throughout the region in the years ahead. 

As someone who has advanced racial equity as the head of Birmingham’s Black Lives Matter chapter, I’m particularly optimistic about the opportunities this historic influx of biotech investment could bring to our city’s Black workers and families. 

Black Americans have historically been underrepresented in the life sciences workforce, accounting for just 6% of life sciences workers while representing around 13% of the U.S. population. Standing up more biotech facilities here in Birmingham is a chance to change that.

But this more equitable future is by no means guaranteed. And one of the most urgent threats to Alabama’s burgeoning life sciences economy is a trade policy being pushed by foreign governments at the World Trade Organization (WTO). 

The proposal would waive patent protections on Covid-19 therapeutics and diagnostics produced in the United States. In so doing, it would inflict enormous harm on America’s world-leading bioscience research ecosystem, endangering Birmingham’s growing role as a nexus of biotech investment and innovation.

It’s up to our leaders in Congress to defend the prosperity of Alabama’s Black workers by urging the Biden administration to oppose this IP waiver right away.

Equitable global access to medical products is crucial. But there is simply no evidence that IP protections limit access to Covid-19 therapeutics or diagnostics. In fact, there is a significant surplus of Covid-19 therapeutics today, in no small part due to a significant fall-off in global demand for these products.

Waiving IP rights for these products would be catastrophic for bioscience firms around the country, and particularly here in Alabama.

Our state is currently home to 780 different life sciences firms, which together employ almost 18,000 state residents.Alabama is betting its economic future on the biotech industry, investing heavily in everything from new facilities to career training for future life sciences workers. 

Since 2021, companies have invested $230 million to bolster the state’s life science sector. And just last year, the non-profit Southern Research began construction on a flagship biotech center in Birmingham which is expected to make an annual economic impact of $300 million.

The proposed waiver would call this future into question, while handing some of the U.S. bioscience industry’s most valuable inventions to foreign competitors. 

If the reform takes effect, scores of biotech manufacturing jobs that could have otherwise gone to historically marginalized communities here in Alabama would instead go to facilities elsewhere in the world, as foreign manufacturers begin making their own versions of these products.

The waiver also plays right into the hands of China — a country that has been working tirelessly in recent years to overtake the United States as the world’s top source of biotech innovation. Stealing American IP has always been a part of China’s biotech strategy. The waiver on Covid-19 therapeutics and diagnostics would eliminate the need for such theft by willfully gifting them technologies that American firms have spent billions of dollars creating.

The Biden administration delayed a decision on the proposed patent waiver last year, but appears poised to make its decision in the weeks ahead. This means that Alabama’s representatives in Congress have one last chance to implore the administration to reject this misguided patent waiver. Our trade policies ought to build up our state’s biotech economy while providing opportunities for groups who traditionally haven’t had a seat at the table. Sending inventions overseas undercuts these shared goals.

Cara McClure is a Birmingham resident who serves as Executive Director of Faith & Works, a Black-led, nonpartisan, statewide civic engagement, and social justice collective. The activist and community organizer is a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Birmingham Chapter.