QUICK READ:There are times when I really want to quit working in the industry and the latest news about pharma is aiming at U.S. lawmakers to stop the global push to lift intellectual property through a waiver for Covid vaccines is just the latest.
Pfizer and Moderna are going to make billions of dollars from the development of their vaccines. Even if the vaccines cost a billion dollars to develop, the ROI here is staggering while countries like India see a huge wave of Covid deaths and patients. There is no mistake here; this about simply about corporate greed. It’s become so bad that Pfizer’s own shareholders want an explanation for their vaccine pricing strategy moving forward.
As I write this I’m struggling for words. To put corporate profits ahead of people who are dying around the world is more than jus arrogance it’s a big middle finger to humanity.
Pharma knows that patients need them more than they need patients. They could care less what people think or say about them because, without prescription drugs, we would be even more unhealthy than we are now. Raw Story reported, “Heidi Chow, senior policy and campaign manager for the U.K.-based Global Justice Now, called the corporate lobbying blitz fighting against increased vaccine production “utterly disgusting and immoral” amid a global pandemic that has already claimed north of 3 million lives worldwide”. She is right.
On Friday, as Common Dreams reported, Sen. Bernie Sanders led other U.S. lawmakers in Congress in a demand to the Biden administration to back the WTO waiver as they presented a petition signed by over 2 million people.
“We have the tools to save human lives, and those tools should be readily available to all people,” said Sanders during an online event Friday. “Poor people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and throughout the world have as much a right to be protected from the virus, to live, as people in wealthier nations. To me, this is not a huge debate, this is common human morality.”
Raw Story
If you work for Pfizer or Moderna, how do you feel? If you feel good about the decision, then you are part of the problem. Price controls and more industry oversight can’t come soon enough.