Conflicts of Interest and Regulatory Erosion: The WHO's Case in Israel

A WHO mechanism, the "Emergency Use Listing" (EUL), conceived as a temporary tool for emergencies, has the potential to erode national regulatory sovereignty by imposing an external framework that conditions and pressures the internal decisions of member states.

A report reveals serious conflicts of interest in Israel's Emergency Committee during the evaluation of the nOPV2 polio vaccine. The committee's secretary, Lester Schulman, admitted to simultaneously working for the WHO and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, organizations promoting the drug, without this information being disclosed to the other members or the public at the time of the vote.

The case highlights how the WHO uses the Emergency Use Listing mechanism to influence the decisions of sovereign states. This procedure, lacking the legal and parliamentary oversight applied to national regulators, allowed an advisory committee to ignore warnings from Israel's Pharmaceutical Division, which lacked independent data on the safety and manufacturing of the product in Indonesia.

This dynamic turns states into validators of external regulatory frameworks instead of independent entities.

The lack of transparency and reliance on materials provided exclusively by the WHO pose significant risks to health sovereignty and accountability, demonstrating how international professional networks can push for the adoption of regulations that circumvent traditional licensing standards.

Israel acted as a "test case" for the WHO, demonstrating that it is possible to influence national regulatory decisions without assuming direct responsibility or submitting to democratic controls.

The case exposes risks to public health, transparency, accountability, and public trust by prioritizing an international emergency framework over independent and complete regulatory evaluations.