At a a webinar hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the attorney for Johnson & Johnson’s chief IP counsel Robert DeBerardine compared vaccines to Grandma's cookies, in arguing that "poor" countries could not make vaccines. Robert DeBerardine said a WTO waiver wouldn’t help broaden global vaccine access, likening the free sharing of a vaccine “recipe” to “trying to duplicate” a classic family recipe.

“It would never come out right. It wouldn’t taste like Grandma’s cookies,” DeBerardine said.

My Grandma made wonderful cookies. But she was not Johnson & Johnson. She was an anarchist who did not believe in charging for her "intellectual property." (Although I admit I did not share her cookies with the other children as much as I should).

Unlike my Grandma's cookies, the ones who own the IP rights to the vaccines neither made up the recipe nor baked the cookies themselves. Scientists, lab technicians, and various human workers did that.

Unlike my Grandma, those who own the IP rights are not even human beings - They are fictional business entities whose sole purpose is to siphon more wealth from those who produce it to those who hoard it for more power.

Maybe DeBarardine was onto something.

We should put real Grandmas in charge of producing and distributing vaccines. They can put Bill Gates and Robert DeBerardine to work sweeping up the floor and washing the dishes.