The risks to public and global health, while we are still inside the Covid-19 pandemic, are structural.
Cordelia Kenney and Rachel Silverman, in a report for the Center for Global Development, address the central issue of the relationship between technological innovation and health. The authors’ argument is as complex as the topic at hand.
We emphasise, in particular, the point about the inequality between rich and lower income and poorer countries in access to innovative and appropriate technologies.
At a time like the present, investment in research and development makes a difference to people’s lives and the resilience of human communities. The ruling classes, therefore, need to take a strategic view of ‘potential risks’ and, at the same time, have the economic possibilities to act.
It is unacceptable, in the third millennium, to have a humanity divided over the right to health and the right to be able to innovate for the common good.