Bioética, cooperação internacional, solidariedade e compartilhamento de benefícios: do HIV/AIDS à COVID-19

This paper aims to analyze the right to access the benefits of scientific and technological development, using the vaccines against COVID-19 as a study case. The text is methodologically supported by articles in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights (DBHR) that have a direct relationship with the proposed situation. The study begins with the presentation of the DUBDH and a brief history of its basic assumptions. Based on Articles 21 and 24, which deal respectively with Transnational Practices and International Cooperation, the reflection indicates recent significant changes in relation to the universality of access to health, replaced in the instances of the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank for the proposal of universal health coverage, with a very different meaning and scope. Based on Article 13 of the DUBDH, which deals with Solidarity and Cooperation, the text defends the concept of cooperative solidarity, based on the classic bilateral conception of solidarity as help from rich countries to others most in need, although this possibility is with frequency replaced by situations of the so-called exploratory solidarity. Finally, based on Article 15, which deals with Sharing of Benefits – central to the present study – a comparative analysis is presented between: a) historical facts related to the permission to break patents within the scope of the World Trade Organization (WTO) that enabled broad access to antiretroviral therapies to control HIV/AIDS; and b) facts that have happened since 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic regarding the right of access to vaccines.