Big Pharma Makes Me Sick
There’s fuming and foaming throughout the land over Wall Street’s big-footing of small day traders — the so-called “dumb money” that outwitted the smart money by driving up the stock price of companies like GameStop and AMC (go, movie theaters!) after the big banksters had decreed that it was game over for these struggling businesses. So, yes, down with the Wall Street titans and the way they’ve rigged the stock trading system. But let’s also raise our pitchforks at the pharmaceutical manufacturers that are profiteering from the worldwide COVID plague at the expense of billions of people around the world — after getting heavily subsidized with OUR taxpayer money. In my mind, the executives who run these Big Pharma corporations are more loathsome creatures than even the corrupt czars of Wall Street. While we get sicker and poorer, they are robbing our public treasuries — on both the R&D AND distribution ends — to get infinitely richer and more powerful.
If you’re not feverish already, you will be after reading this article on the unmitigated greed of the coronavirus vaccine makers. These companies’ vaccine research was heavily subsidized by the U.S. and European governments, with Cambridge, Mass.-based Moderna admitting that the entire cost of its vaccine R&D was underwritten by taxpayer dollars. And yet these companies insisted on secret contracts with nations, complete immunity from lawsuits (no matter how serious the side effects turn out to be), and tight ownership of patents so poor countries have to wait patiently in line for the life-saving vaccines. And after this massive infusion of cash and this web of legal protections, the vaccine makers are STILL shaking down public treasuries for each shot that goes into an arm.
Pfizer is charging the U.S. government nearly $20 per vaccine —nearly $5 more per shot than the company is charging European governments. And meanwhile AstraZeneca — based in Oxford, England — is only charging the European Commission $2.19 per shot. Then there’s Maryland-based Novavax, which has proudly announced that its vaccine will soon be ready — after receiving a whopping $1.6 billion from the U.S. government (i.e., us). There’s only one catch — the Novavax shot might be useless against the rapidly spreading COVID variants. And there’s no provision for the U.S. to recoup its investment if the vaccine turns out to be a dud.
Why are the contracts with vaccine manufacturers still being withheld from the public? And since these life-saving drugs were developed at “warp speed” with billions of dollars of public money, why are the patents still private? India and South Africa have filed lawsuits to force the sharing of vaccine patents so they can begin the mass inoculation of their people. But Big Pharma has blocked these efforts, calling its rank profiteering the “lifeblood” of its industry. Unless the Biden administration intervenes, Big Pharma will will continue to play God, deciding who gets to live and die. And we’ll just have to keep underwriting their divine power.
